ABT Educational session: budget management through agreements with providers
The scheduled Educational session of the Russian Association of Business Travel entitled «Agreement work with providers as a budget management method» took place in Baltchug Kempinski on February 17th, 2014. The event was visited by heads of travel departments, travel managers, administrative directors of the largest Russian and international companies: Kaspersky Lab, BBDO, Siemens LLC, FC Otkritie, Bayer, Shell, Synergy group of companies, Surgutneftegaz, Lamoda, Russ Outdoor, Colgate Palmolive ZAO and others.
Partners of ABT Educational session were Kerzner International, HRS.сom, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, The Leading Hotels of the World, UTS Group.
Reports were presented by Maria Sergeeva, director of travel department of FC «Otkritie», Anastasiya Shalnova, head of corporate department of Aeroflot, Marianna Uspenskaya, director of strategic purchase, business travel and marketing in Siemens.
Moderator of the event was Anjelika Snitko, manager of event arrangement purchase group in Bayer.
In 2013 many companies followed the trend of travel cost cutting. The number of business trips is growing, but the management sets travel department employees the task to use their budget with maximum efficiency.
«If we examine the structure of expenditure for regular business trips, 58% of travel budget is spent for air and railway tickets, 34% are accommodation costs, 8% account for other services. So when we plan budget for the next year, we should pay close attention to the hotel program», Maria Sergeeva said. «To determine the cost grid, we should analyze real expenditure of the previous period. When we have gathered statistics, we can proceed to the hotel program».
The expert added, that the hotel program was always intended for people. The employee should always feel care and attention, in this case he will work well and eagerly.
Anastasiya Shalnova, who presented her report «Particular aspects of corporate cooperation in case of Aeroflot», offered various kinds of agreements and cooperation forms, as well as the structure of relations between airlines, agents and customers, types of contractual obligations and their management. The speaker stressed that the corporate agreement guaranteed certain terms, discounts and bonuses in exchange for loyalty reinforcement.
The second part of the educational session started from Marianna Uspenskaya`s report «Particular aspects of agreements with TMCs: key details». The speaker noted that it was almost impossible to take account of all the nuances when concluding agreements with providers: «But we should try to foresee as many details as possible. No doubt, every company has its own specifics and its own rules. Lawyers will correct the wording. But it is us, employees, whose job duties include business trip arrangement, who are the first to take the draft agreement and to start making the necessary corrections. Lawyers may not know some aspects of work with a travel agency, which we may want to include».
Ms Uspenskaya gave practical advice on drawing up agreements with a business travel agency: «The main thing is to state all the main requirements for the agency, to stipulate provisions and payment terms, the agent’s efficiency and other main factors. If a TMC confirms its participation in the tender after it received all your tender requirements, the process of agreement negotiation will be much quicker.
All the requests received by a travel agency, should be in written form. It is recommended to include the request form as an appendix to the agreement. It makes sense including into the tender the time period of request procession by the agency, the ways to check authorization. All the processes should follow established procedures».
Anjelika Snitko told the participants about the ways to work with MICE agencies.
«Why do you have to work with a MICE agency at all? It means service consolidation by one provider. Of course, it is much more convenient to have one provider and to sign a service provision agreement with him».
The speaker pointed out the main advantages of such agreements and cited the main parameters you should pay attention to when choosing a MICE agency.
Participants of the Educational session received lots of useful recommendations and had an opportunity to ask questions during the panel discussion. In particular, the discussion included the question whether it was correct to use corporate rates for employees’ personal purposes. In the opinion of Maria Sergeeva, business travel is a service, but you should always take into account the human factor. Besides, tickets and hotels (even booked for personal use) let you get additional booking volumes, which is advantageous if the company participates in loyalty programs.
In the unanimous opinion of the guests, the topic of the educational session was very useful.
«Now our managers have set us the task to cut costs, but at the same time we can not afford to maltreat our employees. The only way out is to use our own resources to the maximum, to plan and to analyze. Participation in the Educational session has allowed me to take a new look on some things that seemed evident», Christina Krivtsova from Lamoda remarked.
«I absolutely agree that business travel is a service, but you have to understand two things: it is a service for people, and people work in this industry. You should always think about employees’ comfort, even if you have to save. And secondly, agreements are always an area of enhanced responsibility, and it is sometimes better to check everything one hundred times, ask once again, than get into huge problems», Tatiana Moschagina, head of UTS Group customer department, stressed.
ABT partners also delivered their presentations during the educational session.
Anna Kolebaeva from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide acquainted the guests and the participants of the educational session with Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty program that lets you get Starpoints and exchange them for free nights in hotels or flights with partner airlines.
Artem Litvin, the representative of the Leading Hotels of the World spoke about corporate values and the call center service that helps find a suitable hotel for a business trip.
Nataliya Nechaeva spoke about programs offered by HRS.сom, that give you an opportunity not only to compare event offers, but also to book them directly.
Ksenia Rebrova from UTS Group presented the UTS24 online service.
The next educational session is to take place on April 10, 2014.
The photo report of the event is available on ABT’s page in Facebook in Photos section, Albums subsection.
(https://www.facebook.com/ABT.Russia/photos_albums).
Sofiya Dukorskaya
Oleg Abarnikov