Policy with Purpose: How to Create a Travel Program that Meets Both Employer and Employee Needs with Fox World Travel

As the role of corporate travel managers has evolved from gatekeepers of travel policy to crafters of value-rich, culture-aligned business travel experiences, there is a growing need to shift the mentality around travel policy to meet these new expectations. The “set it and forget it” mentality of years past is not only outdated, but inadequate. Today’s travel policies — and the policies of tomorrow —must be agile, regularly reviewed and adjusted, and created in support of company goals and in alignment with company culture.

In this episode of the SAP Concur Conversations podcast, Ben Claxton, Online Technology Manager for Fox World Travel, and Jeff Saydah, Director of Global Client Solutions for Fox World Travel, share the “secret sauce” for building a world-class travel program (spoiler: your travel program is NOT a rotisserie chicken), detail how to leverage data to inform travel policy and program decisions, break down how to measure the success of your travel policy and program, and discuss how the best programs both shape and are shaped by company culture.

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Read the transcript from this episode of the SAP Concur Conversations podcast below:

Barb Bammer:

Welcome to the SAP Concur Conversations podcast. Each episode we sit down with industry experts, visionaries, and leaders as they share what it takes to build forward-thinking spend and travel programs. Our goal is to get you thinking differently about how your organization spends its time, energy, and money.

My name is Barb Bammer and I'm a Senior Solutions Consultant here at SAP Concur. I help customers understand the value and benefit of SAP Concur solutions and services. Today I'm joined by Ben Claxton and Jeff Saydah of Fox World Travel, and we're going to dive deep into the how, what, and why of building a best-in-class travel program. To start, Ben and Jeff, please take a moment to introduce yourselves. Ben, let's start with you.

Ben Claxton:

Thanks, Barbara. My name's Ben Claxton. I'm the Online Technology Manager here at Fox World Travel. So anything related to Concur Travel or online booking itself through the support or maintenance of the sites itself, or support of the end users comes through my team. Thanks for having us today, Barbara.

Barb Bammer:

Thank you. And Jeff?

Jeff Saydah:

My name's Jeff Saydah. I am the Director of Global Client Solutions at Fox World Travel. I manage the team of, in a sense, account managers that are dealing with the day-to-day needs of our customers.

Barb Bammer:

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today. So one of the things that I did in preparation for our conversation was I took a look and reminded myself of how great Fox World Travel is, and one thing that I noticed is that you have a tagline of, your success is our success. And that resonated with me because we here at SAP Concur agree to that sentiment. So can you talk through how you prepare yourselves for customer conversations knowing that you're armed and ready to help them succeed and how do you approach it if they're not willing to share as much as you'd like in order for you to help them along that journey?

Jeff Saydah:

I guess I can start with this one. So we're dealing with customers that have various stages of development of travel policies and travel programs. So part of what we do on the client solutions team is really, our goal is to really understand where they are in that level of development. And what we do from a consulting standpoint is, after we do some evaluation and we take a look at their travel policy, we really want to go to them and say, "Hey, there's some things within your policy that either are missing or you should have. We want to understand your organization better so we can help you figure out where we can help you enhance your travel policy."

Ben Claxton:

Exactly Jeff. And then so from that standpoint, when Jeff and his team work with the clients directly and get that information, they ask those questions, they dig in deep to see what are your goals, how can we help you succeed. Because like you said, our client success is our success. So they dig in and really get to the meat of what those questions are and what those goals might be from an organizational standpoint. And then from the online team, from my team's perspective, we get to take that information and then really, where the rubber meets the road and really apply that directly. So we do that through a lot of different channels at Concur, whether that be through additional policy getting added through messaging, through the way we sort results, we are able to really take their goals through all these questions that Jeff has asked and his team and really get to the heart of what their goals are and then really be able to apply those directly into Concur.

Barb Bammer:

That's great. I know that in my past as an implementation person quite some time ago, one of the things that I tended to be challenged with was the fact that a lot of times you start your conversation around policy and you get to understand when the last time the policy was updated. And at times, the answers were a little shocking. I won't name the company, but recently I found out there was one that hadn't updated theirs since 2013. And so I think it's pretty prevalent in a lot of areas where there's this “set it and forget it” mentality. And I'm sure that those are things that you guys have come across. And I find it interesting, especially in this day where employee experience is really, really huge. The Great Resignation really forced organizations to reevaluate their employee experience. And I think a lot of finding that their travel policy or their travel program is a reflection of their culture in their organization, and that their culture could or should be reflected through their travel program.

And so have you found through those conversation that that's pretty accurate or have you come up against trying to get to the root of why a specific policy has been set? Maybe because there's some challenge in interpreting it and how it's going to be enforced, whether it be in the online booking tool or whether it be via the agent consultant. Have you found that has maybe revealed a little bit more about the organization and has it drummed up some aha moments in that regard?

Jeff Saydah:

Yeah, I would say a couple things about this. Sometimes it takes an external event to get people to pay attention to the travel policy. Typically, you mentioned travel policies are you put in place and they just move on on their own and no one takes a look at them. And I think that's very typical, but think about COVID in terms of how that impacted organizations when they had to all of a sudden understand how are they going to manage duty of care, how are they going to manage their expenses, how are they going to get people out on the road during these times? So I think for many organizations, they don't quite realize the impact their travel policy has number one on, you mentioned a couple things, employee satisfaction, the financial aspects of how they're managing travel. So I just think that it takes at times some external need for someone to pay attention to it.

And once they do, then they start understanding that the policy itself touches so many different things because it's generally travel and expense policy associated with it. So it touches so many different aspects of any organization that when they're prodded by some external need, then all of a sudden eyes are opened up to this. And then they have to go through, I think through a process of understanding or trying to figure out, well what do I do next now that I understand this is a need, what should I be doing? What's best in class? What's going to work for my organization? How do I get there? And that's where we as consultants come in and try to help them.

Ben Claxton:

Exactly, Jeff, I'm on the same path there. So just like you said, Barb, your travel program and really your travel policy, both, they're not a rotisserie chicken. You can't just set it and forget it or and move on and then go about your day and work on the other stuff. So when we look at, like Jeff was talking about, sometimes it takes that external event and sometimes it is an internal event, something within your company. What we know is, your company, no matter which company it is, most likely different than it was in 2013. So over the last almost 10 years, a lot of things have changed, your workforce has changed, your goals as a company have changed. So we want to continue to reassess. And that doesn't happen once a decade. That is happening every year. You're getting new people into the workforce, you're getting some people retiring.

The goals that you have as a travel program should be a little bit different. Now we're not talking wholesale changes, but we're talking a little bit different year over year. So we want to reassess that. Like I said, everyone's goal is to save money to have a better travel experience, but there's different avenues of that. So the number one way to save money in a travel program is through the better application of travel policy. So we know that, and Concur gives that ability to encourage better choices, whether that is better choices from a cost perspective, whether that's better choices from a time perspective, whether that's better choices from a sustainability preference. So there's a lot of avenues. What is it? Yeah, sustainability in 2013 wasn't the same conversations we're having right now.

Barb Bammer:

Correct, yeah.

Ben Claxton:

So all of those things have changed. And again, we don't want to do it one decade at a time, but we want to look at it from an annual or even quarterly basis of, what are your goals and are we still accomplishing those goals? The goals don't need to change every quarter, they shouldn't even change every year. But are these still the goals that you have? Are these still the goals that your company has? And are we actually making progress on those goals? Are we moving forward in the way that we need to? If not, where can we tweak that policy, that program, that data set that we're getting? What information can we gather or what are the information are we gathering that's not helping? We continually basis of the maturation of your travel program to continue to move you forward towards the goals. Even if those goals are changed now, where are the new goals and how do we keep moving forward in that direction?

Jeff Saydah:

And just to reiterate just quickly on that, when you're looking at goals, they need to be realistic in terms of... I think we could call all come up with a list of a hundred things we want to change right now, but you need to prioritize within any event where you're looking to increase adherence to a policy. So again, they should be measurable, but they should be achievable and they should be minimum number that you're looking at, your top couple priorities every time. And then once you're done with those, then you can reprioritize and then bring in the next set of prioritizations.

Ben Claxton:

But Jeff, to that point, you can't manage what you can't measure. So exactly. So if they have to be ones that we can, whether it's from a data set that we can capture, whether it's whatever that avenue is or whatever that goal is that we have to be able to measure it so we know if we're capturing it or we know we're moving in that direction or not. Because we got to can be data driven, is the goal we have for whatever your goal might be. How can we make it data driven and how can we move forward in that same direction?

Barb Bammer:

Yeah, data is king. Right?

Ben Claxton:

Exactly.

Barb Bammer:

Data is king. And I do think it's important what we've all been through the last couple of years. My hope is that others have caught up to the idea that their travel program or travel policy should be ever-evolving and should be iterative. I do think there are some leaders that, a good number of organizations that have known that, and they are best in class and I think others are trying to catch up. I've had numerous conversations with folks admitting that yeah, we have been forced by an external event or an event, a compelling event, internal or external, which has required us to take another look at what our program is doing for our organization, but not only for our organization, what's it doing for our employees?

And I think the shift should be, when a customer is open that with you, what questions do you tend to raise that they should be thinking about when it comes to them realizing that we need to take a healthy look at how we're managing things so we can better move forward and create a better experience, not only for the people that are traveling on our behalf, but the organization as a whole? So what types of questions or what types of conversations do you have or what types of things would you suggest they think about when starting to reevaluate their program or policy?

Jeff Saydah:

Yeah, it's a good question. So the first thing is, who's going to be involved when you think about a policy. Who is involved in actually crafting that policy? Who are the key constituents of any organization that should have a role in defining what the policy is going to be? Typically you would think executives would be involved, department leaders, but I also think travelers and employees need to be a part of the conversation as well. Because the way I look at a travel policy, it's in a sense an agreement between the organization and the traveler. It's a compact that says, here's a statement of our shared values. Here's the statement of our culture and here's how we are going to address what we think is important within that policy. That will help define how the traveler's going to interact with the policy. It's going to help define how the employer is going to interact with the traveler within that policy. And it's going to really define what the goals are, the overarching goals of your travel policy is.

And to your point as well, I think that employees are looking at travel policy, especially those that are doing a lot of travel for their employers to see, well, is this going to be difficult? Is this going to be hard? And again, it's a statement of value. It's against that compact. That's how I look at it.

Ben Claxton:

Another question I'd probably ask also is, who is traveling and why are they traveling? Is all your travel internal? Are you going to other offices, other locations? Is it all salespeople traveling to get new business? Is it all one off, people are traveling for a conference or is it big meetings that you're traveling a bunch of people at once? So you got to determine why your travelers are traveling. That also helps when we talk about crafting that travel policy is, why are they traveling? And maybe you have more than one travel policy because you have one group that is traveling under a certain set of circumstances, maybe they're all traveling last minute because of whatever. And then maybe you have another portion of your company that is traveling under different set of circumstances.

So the more about your traveler base, the people who are actually traveling, who they are, where they're going, why they're traveling, is most of their travel domestic, is most of it international? That leads you to knowing what the goal should be and how we can create a travel policy and a travel program that really serves them, not just to have a policy and have a program, one that actually serves the people who are doing the traveling.

Barb Bammer:

I think travel policy with a purpose, instead of it being what a lot of employees I think tend to think of as being just a bunch of arbitrary rules that are put in there just to make their lives challenging. And as somebody who travels, there are moments where you feel that way, right?

Jeff Saydah:

Sure.

Barb Bammer:

In regards to, and I think those are all really great points. In fact, my brain started firing in a couple of different directions with those responses, so thank you very much. What are some of the things that organizations should be wary of, like little gotchas. What type of rabbit holes should they not fall down or fall through when they are looking at their travel program? And I'll just give one example, anticipating unintended consequences, some things like that. Are there any things that they should be wary of as they do this, as they reorganize their program and policy?

Jeff Saydah:

Number one, make it simple. I'd say the first thing you want to do with any policy, it should never be complex. If the policy is complex and it makes it difficult for not only travelers, but those who are enforcing it and monitoring it to understand what's going on, then it'll never work. So the policy needs to be simple and to the point. It needs to answer the why as to why we're doing this. So clearly having that statement of purpose, here's why we are crafting our policies this way. We're taking into account, we want to make sure culturally that we're meeting, that we're addressing the company's culture. We want to address the financial aspects of travel. So those are two things that I think of immediately when I am starting to think about travel policies.

Ben Claxton:

Only thing I would add to that is, Jeff, you mentioned it earlier, of trying to do too much at once. If you can go from zero to a hundred and it's too hard for your travelers to catch up. So if you go from booking wherever they want to mandating a certain booking site or booking platform and then incorporating all this policy of approvals and all, we can write all those. But if you go in from a zero to a hundred, your travelers won't be able to keep up and it becomes too much at once. Your goals become too scattered and you won't be able to accomplish anything individually because you're working on too many across the board. So I would say take it in incremental bites, take a little bit out of one. If our goal is to get to a hundred, let's start out by doing a little bit along the way so we can get there. It just doesn't have to all be happen once.

Barb Bammer:

So, one of my last questions for you two lovely gentlemen is, what is your recommendation in terms of measuring the success of a travel program? I'm sure a lot of organizations come to you and say, "Well, we thought we knew what we were doing, but clearly after talking to Fox World Travel, we have some reassessing to do." So what would you tell them in terms of the best way to measure the success of their program?

Jeff Saydah:

Again, we talked about making things simple in beginning. So if we could define a couple items at the very front that we're going to measure, and it could be as simple as online adoption for a certain segment of your travelers, domestic travel, things of that nature, which should typically designed for tools like Concur. So how do you measure that? You are going to understand where you're at right now, where you're going to set a goal and then achieve a pathway to get there. Could be that we engage with Ben’s team, provide training to our customers, help them understand, train those people in order to use tools better, do tons of communication out to those travelers, things of that nature. So that becomes a very measurable thing to manage. It's the low hanging fruit, but it's a very impactful type of change.

And again, we know that we can get from 60% to 80%. There is not only good... You can measure that. You can measure the savings in terms of average ticket price, in terms of any costs associated with the bookings. It becomes, again, something that is, we can help you establish what those goals are and by understanding your program help you lay out the pathway, how we're going to achieve that, and then work with you.

Barb Bammer:

Awesome. We've talked about a lot of things today, so I'm going to just assess some of the key things that I heard through our conversation — three elements that would help an organization become best in class from a summary perspective. I'm going to start with expectation-setting and communication. I think those two go together. You want to make sure that you're setting the expectation of your employees, those people that are going to be traveling on behalf of your organization, but also the leadership team that you're going to work to. Because ultimately, whoever manages the travel program, whether that's travel manager or procurement, they've got to walk a fine line between those two groups of people. So, expectation-setting and good communication.

I think the other thing is, that you all brought up is, identifying the key constituents of that policy. Who is this serving and why? The why? I think that's key. That's a really big part of it, in fact. And I think the third thing is recognize and embrace the idea of an iterative program. Be assessing it regularly. And it doesn't have to be once a month. It could be a quarter, it could be twice a year. At the very least it should be yearly, I would think. But ultimately it needs to be iterative. You want to make sure that you are getting feedback and understanding what's working and what's not. Is it reflecting your culture if that's your goal? And I've come to believe that it's a signifier of an organization's culture, the policy is. So, I do believe that those are three key items that are heads of the travel program of their organizations. That's how you can set yourself on a path of being best in class.

Jeff Saydah:

Thanks Barb.

Ben Claxton:

Thanks so much.

Barb Bammer:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the SAP Concur Conversations podcast. To hear more exclusive insights and interviews from the world of business travel expense and invoice processing, be sure to subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts. And please join us again for our next SAP Concur conversation.

Want to hear more conversations like this one? Check out the SAP Concur Conversations podcast, and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.