Case Study: Adopting Travel Management
A leading health care company successfully integrates a new department into its managed travel program, saving time and money.
Customer Profile:
A successful 35-year-old health care company recently completed an international acquisition, adding important capabilities to its portfolio of industry-leading products.
The new international colleagues had never booked travel under a managed program, and language barriers were creating complications to travel program adoption.
Business Objective:
The health care company needed to capture unmanaged travel spend stemming from its international travelers who booked across multiple time zones with differing languages and thus, create an established travel policy.
CI Azumano Business Travel implemented a custom solution that improved the following: thorough communication to mitigate language barriers, 24-hour in-house agent assistance to eliminate time zone challenges, and ensuring the availability of local airlines and hotels.
The CI Azumano Solution:
CI Azumano strategically combines in-house travel experts and its proprietary software, with 3rd party solutions from industry-leading service providers, such as SAP Concur to deliver best-in-class travel management to their clients.
Established coverage for international time zones: CI Azumano established a team of dedicated agents working multiple shifts to provide global coverage. These agents now service requests by phone or by email, providing timely responses for international travelers.
Improved access to local suppliers in key markets: CI Azumano’s travel technology team worked to configure SAP Concur’s online booking platform to create easy access as well as cost-effective choices for local airlines and hotels.
Produced dynamic reporting: CI Azumano worked directly with the health care company to design customized reports to best track traveler visibility, program adoption and proactively address travel disruption.
Unused ticket management: Specific reports were also created to track each unused airline ticket, consequently providing both the value of the unused ticket as well as, detailing the precise rules that accompany it.
“We’ve seen quite an increase in adoption as a result of CI Azumano’s international servicing solution.”
Business Outcome:
As a result of the improved international traveler program, the health care company received the following:
Travel spend visibility over their international business employees
Improved traveler satisfaction by reducing friction related to time differences and communication challenges
Reduced support costs for the corporate travel manager by shifting the burden of international support to a dedicated team of travel agents
Leveraged detailed reporting to proactively protect travelers, document unused ticket value, and optimize travel spend
“CI Azumano Business Travel is responsive. Our international team is located throughout the word. CI Azumano recognized the urgency to respond to requests from different time zones and give those travelers the support they needed. We also had challenges finding specific flights in our online booking tool, so we worked with CI Azumano to find the local airlines that made sense for our travelers.”
-Health Care Travel Manager
Conclusion:
By working with CI Azumano Business Travel, the health care company has seen a measurable increase in program adoption and traveler satisfaction. They have been able to reduce support costs, protect travelers during the COVID 19 crisis, and retain the value of unused tickets.