Main Conference Day 2

Travel managers are inundated with a deluge of messy data from multiple sources which makes it challenging to compile and analyze travel and expense data. Many companies have relied on third parties (travel agencies, consulting firms) to provide insight into their data or spend countless hours reconciling and cleaning data using traditional tools. Enter self-service business intelligence – user friendly and intuitive tools that enable end users to make sense of their data even if they don’t come from an analysis or BI background. This session will highlight how Tableau uses Tableau to see and understand their own travel and expense data.
• Intro to getting, preparing, and storing T&E data
• Analyzing and visualizing the data
• Common KPI’s

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Natural disasters, infectious disease and terrorism have impacted how travelers approach specific markets and their willingness to travel altogether. Travel professionals are more accountable than ever before when it comes to knowing where employees are at all times and giving travelers the ability to receive help when needed, 24/7. This session will examine the systems and safeguards in place to manage the duty of care:
• What’s the standard of care that travel professionals should strive to attain?
• New technologies for tracking travelers
• Communicating confidence and benefits of your program - helping employees to feel safe

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The sharing economy is here and not addressing it in your policy is delaying the inevitable. This panel will discuss how travel managers can begin this transformation and lessons-learned already from this disruption. Hear from those who have embraced sharing economy - such as Uber, Airbnb and Lyft and learn how to incorporate terminology, traveler safety, risk and expense reimbursement.
• What are the legal concerns and questions (taxation, Compliance)?
• Do these new shared economy vendors sacrifice traveler safety?
• Benefits that arise when embracing this culture?

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Jay Sklar, CPO at Hub International opens up about his vision for travel and travel’s place in the procurement world. Sklar has been in the travel space for almost 20 years and has the unique perspective of someone who has tackled travel from the procurement perspective in both buyer and solution provider environments.
• Where does travel sit on your CPO’s ‘to-do’ list?
• The art of the pitch- how do you pitch proposals to the CPO and CFO to gain C-Level buy-in for new technologies and policies
• Learn how to “tell your story” to the CPO in order to show the value of your policies: learn which metrics are the most important

Recent instability have necessitated caution on the part of travelers and travel managers. Travel managers are tasked with ensuring safe travel and scrutinizing any supplier or partner that doesn’t align with this priority. This case study will examine the prioritization toward duty-of-care at BMS, including:
• Implementation approach to a duty-of-care program
• New technologies for tracking travelers and warn them if necessary
• Managing travel to emerging markets and international hot-spots

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Last year, one of the conference highlights was the riveting panel discussion on the role of traveler preferences. This year, we’re putting two thought-leaders on different sides of the “aisle” and debate the merits of incorporating traveler preferences into policy. This interactive session will also feature audience polling to see how opinions are swayed by our speakers!

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Category management is a strategic approach which organizes procurement resources to focus on specific areas of spends. Category Managers focus on understanding the current market trends, benchmarking with other companies, spend analysis, internal service delivery model, and procurement sourcing strategies to fully identify cost savings/ business process improvements opportunities to produce improved business results. Kathy Briski, a procurement and corporate travel leader will explain the category management methodology and how this methodology is used for the Travel Category. Participants will be lead thru the category profile process specifically for the travel, and will leave the workshop with tools for success.

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So you’ve survived implementation, but how does the procurement department continually drive excellence within the meeting management function? This panel features executives with fully-integrated meetings management departments discussing the importance of program maintenance:
• Defining the scope of services
• Strategies to maintain compliance
• Check-ins with suppliers to ensure no slippage of customer service
• Evolving your programs from ‘basic’ to ‘best-in-class’

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Global expansion means significantly more overseas travel which in turn, means more global partners to work with and additional complexity with data management. This panel will feature travel professionals sharing best practices for communicating with overseas counterparts, overcoming language barriers, time zones and culturally different traveler preferences in order to create and enforce a cohesive travel program.
• Communicate and deliver the value and success of your program globally
• Managing organic growth versus acquisition
• Vendor management and choosing between larger global partners or local, regional specialized providers

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Suppliers can be the biggest resource for managing a travel & meetings program but building a transparent and symbiotic relationship isn’t always as easy as it seems. With TMC’s and other service providers crucial to success of a travel management program, this session will examine what strategic partnerships really mean, and what tools you can use as the travel lead to ensure success:
• Aligning suppliers with company-wide travel policies
• The upside and downside of outsourcing the entire travel function
• Industry consolidation and the impact on your supplier relationship
• Establishing good communication and goal setting practices
• Sources of data collection

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