Results at a glance
- Relevant and accurate data meets stakeholders’ needs and saves time
- Expert consultant provides insight specific to client
- Bottom line savings
Challenge
Multinational aerospace company was swamped by travel data. With a total annual travel and expense spend of 300M euros globally, there was reporting galore. It was generated by consultants at CWT Solutions Group, the client’s program manager and others, but how useful was it?
Information that should have proved invaluable was not always being put to good use. The company was concerned about:
- Potential discrepancies or gaps in travel data if methodology differed between territories
- Too many reports being received but not used internally
- Lack of a clear course of action to be taken as a result of issues highlighted by reporting
The company, which is headquartered in Paris, France, worked with us to identify how data could better meet its needs.
Solution
We held workshops to assess the company’s reporting needs and define a new data infrastructure. Our aim was to streamline data production to avoid errors and eliminate information that wasn’t relevant for them. We also considered the audience for reporting – was it senior management, business unit leaders or travelers? Reports needed to make sense and be relevant to the intended recipients.
As a result of this pragmatic approach, we agreed on sets of reports and a dashboard that would be produced on different frequencies, and planned their distribution. We also created customized reporting for senior management, who needed particular information that looked great and included specific deliverables.
The next part of the plan was to dedicate a business insight consultant (BIC) full-time to the client.
Marine Bergeron, consulting director CWT Solutions Group, explained: “The role of a BIC is to ensure all of a client’s data is managed by them as a central contact. We have a team of BICs, with each one dedicated to just one or two clients. They help clients crunch data and deliver insight based on that information.”
Jakub Badelek took up the role of BIC for this client in 2017. Like all our BICs, Jakub is trained to have a deep understanding of trends, suggest action in response to data and identify new areas of savings. For example, if we notice a leakage in hotel booking, the BIC will propose action to the client to make sure we track directly to that hotel.
“It’s about using data in relation to the program to drive strategy,” said Marine.
Since Jakub’s appointment, all requests for data must go to him. This ensures all reporting is generated from the same database using a single methodology to prevent confusion.
Further clarity is achieved by consolidating data not only from CWT as travel management company, but also from suppliers and expense sources.
Jakub said: “The biggest challenge is to keep the data uniform and consistent for the client. As a former travel agent myself, I knew how ambiguous this process could be if not well managed. Business travel is an indirect procurement category, so there are almost endless possibilities to interpret the data, but what excites me is finding the real story for my client.
“Since I’ve joined this account, we have improved understanding of the company’s travel pattern and helped it implement actions to keep employees happy while keeping travel costs low.”
Results
The project addressed stakeholders’ data needs by streamlining the reporting process and clarifying the right set of reports and deliverables. As a result, they benefit from:
- Data and figures they can trust
- More time to focus on strategic topics as irrelevant information has been eliminated
- Flexibility to request ad hoc reports from BIC
Over the past two years, CWT Solution Group’s data monitoring projects have evolved significantly. We have shifted our insights priorities with this client, including:
- Projects calculating efficiency of airline subscription cards for frequent travelers
- A comprehensive monitoring of key routes on key markets
The project team has learned that our observations and corrective actions are not always immediately impacting data, but thanks to continued monitoring we can deliver extraordinary results. For example, our analytical report monitoring trends on the French domestic market identified existing travel performance, potential hard dollar savings levers and actions to be implemented. After a few months of the monitoring project, we were able to impact the client’s travel spend by generating more than 1.15M euros efficiency gained on top routes.
Jakub concluded: “That reconfirmed the direction we have agreed on within the project team and helped us in driving further innovative projects.”