Consumer travel strategies yield corporate program success

Ask business travelers how they make trip-related choices, and you’ll get a simple answer with complex implications: Consumer travel technology influences their decisions as much as corporate travel policy does.

Corporate travel policy cannot outpace this trend, so how can companies capitalize on it? BCD Travel’s latest white paper, The Customer Always Knows Best: Leveraging B2C Strategies in Managed Travel Programs, offers answers.

The white paper explores key communication strategies and program-management tactics that reflect consumer-driven traveler expectations. It presents case studies from companies of varying sizes in different sectors — from U.S. Foodservice to Lego to Salesforce.com — that have harnessed B2C strategies to drive cost savings, efficiency and swift decision-making.

“BCD Travel is deeply engaged in helping clients make sense of the opportunities and challenges presented by new technologies, new behaviors and new objectives in the consumer and managed-travel spaces,” said April Bridgeman, senior vice president for strategic marketing at BCD Travel.

The Customer Always Knows Best offers travel managers concrete tips on helping travelers be more effective on the road. Among the white paper’s findings:

1. Mature corporate travel programs have begun “maxing out” savings achieved by the traditional twin pillars of procurement and policy. Now, they need to aim for better than-policy results by layering influence and enablement over their existing program framework.
2. Business success today is defined by helping people share information; making smart choices on the fly; and enabling people to choose their mode of communication. Travel managers need to embrace a model that reflects and respects travelers’ consumer-driven behaviors and expectations — including those of Millennials, who by 2014 will comprise nearly half the U.S. work force.
3. Corporate travel objectives get a boost from mobile through improved behavior management (for example, encouraging use of preferred suppliers); better travel risk management; and simpler and more accurate expense-management processes.
4. No single app is a silver bullet. Travel managers should be prepared to evaluate and pick multiple applications to create the solution package that best fits their program.
5. Promoting and facilitating the exchange of information between employees can have a profound impact on travel management, particularly by reframing in-company expertise: The company and its travelers can — and should — capitalize on the knowledge of road warriors who constantly travel the globe.
6. Incentivizing and motivating travelers to adhere to corporate travel policy is a winning strategy. Whether through “batting averages” or online booking rewards modules, creating competition for compliance drives results.
7. When choosing technologies and tools to power a traveler-centric program, the traditional procurement process won’t work. Rapid innovation in this space means that your decision-making process must allow you to be nimble.