The concept of online has yet however to permeate the thinking of most of those charged with buying and organising meetings in the public sector.

But it should.

To fully understand the benefits that online meetings software can deliver, it’s wise to step back in time to the origins of SMMP – strategic meetings management programmes. Just like transient business travel, corporate meetings had long been purchased in a fragmented fashion within companies. However, in the 1990s the trend by many organisations to have travel departments to manage and control the cost of staff travel had moved into the area of meetings and events.

The first companies to do this were those in industries whose business models relied on large sales forces and multiple product lines such as pharmaceuticals which produced hundreds of meetings and events each year. Large numbers of similar meetings not unsurprisingly meant that an SMMP could make savings.

Since those early days of the 90s though when bookers used to telephone or fax their travel consultants, office life has moved on and technology has become an integral part of all processes.

Meeting purchasing and management is no exception.

Kevin Iwamoto is Vice President, Enterprise Strategy for Starcite, a company which provides web-based solutions to help buyers manage their meetings by connecting buyers and sellers online for event planning, procurement and management.

“[Online meeting management is] more than a theory now; it’s proven. More and more [organisations] are recognising that it’s the right thing to do and the efficiency gain more than justifies [implementing],” says Iwamoto.

Businesses such as Starcite maintain that companies gain visibility, control and cost savings in their meetings spend and enable them to have a proper strategic meetings management programme. Consolidated tools also reduce the likelihood of error.

Buyers can source meetings in a competitive environment and compare different supplier rates or responses in a consistent way. An online tool can also store historical data to help buyers manage and leverage suppliers.

Just as with an online travel self-booking tool, the technology can force users to go only to preferred suppliers.

Iwamoto believes that such systems can take the information about the meeting or event and allow suppliers to reply “with a consistency in format, RFPs, responses. Traditional RFPs mean manually gathering the information and scoring the RFP. Technology improves efficiency and reduces the potential for error and costs.”

Online meeting management tools tick every government box – transparent, low cost, open access – but for some reason it is rarely used. Iwamoto thinks that it’s because “a lot of people are intimidated by technology – they know what they know and have done it in a certain way for years.

“Technology is only an enabler – it allows manual processes to become more efficient.”

Of course, there are potential drawbacks with online meeting tools. Some suppliers have complained that it is so easy for buyers to request quotes in this way that the number of tenders goes up so that less effort goes into each one – and the conversion rate down.

Professionals such as Iwamoto say that their business is a partnership and “suppliers are our customers as well so it’s a responsibility to educate them as well. We ask them why do you want so many to quote – is it really to improve the quality of the RFP?”

Online management tools can improve efficiency and take out cost for both buyers and sellers of meetings. They can also be used for both onsite and offsite meetings.

Surely it’s only a matter of time before they are embraced by public sector meeting planners.

After lengthy planning, disputes with the local business community and struggles to gain Government approval, Nottingham City Council finally imposed a levy on parking spaces provided by the city’s employers for their staff.

All employers with 11 or more parking spaces will be liable for the levy which will be £288 per space per year. This is expected to raise £8 million in 2012/13, which the Council is legally required to devote to public transport.

The levy is scheduled to increase quite sharply – to £334 in 2013/14, £364 in 2014/15, £381 in 2015, and thereafter in line with inflation.

So far employers have registered 45,500 spaces, of which some 28,000 are chargeable.

Nottingham is the first council to introduce such charges despite local authorities having had the power for 12 years.

Everywhere else has faced such uproar from business and motoring lobbies that local politicians have backed down.

But Nottingham says it has no other way to finance three vital pieces of work-related local transport upgrades: an extension to its tram system, a major refurbishment of the main railway station and the Link bus network, all of which serve major employment areas.

The levy will raise part of the money needed, but the City Council also has another objective. Nottingham City Council believes that companies will create green staff transport plans which in turn will stem the growth of traffic congestion.

Most employers are expected to pass the levy cost on to their staff, a move which the council expects will encourage an increase in the use of feet, bicycles and public transport.

Jane Urquhart, the Council’s portfolio holder for transport and planning, says: “The workplace parking levy provides a vital funding stream. Without it we wouldn’t be having two more tram lines, or indeed the railway station redevelopment.

“Many of the major employers in the city are taking proactive steps to introduce parking management schemes. This is helping to slow the likely growth of road traffic congestion while raising money for further investment in our transport infrastructure.”

Public sector employers – including the council itself – are liable to the levy, with the exception of frontline NHS workers.

One such is the University of Nottingham, which did not previously charge for parking.

It will now charge users according to the emissions rating of their car, whether they are a student or staff, and additionally for the latter by pay grade.

This produces a complicated charging structure, ranging from a £44 a year for a student with a car that emits up to 120g of CO2 per kilometre, up to £490 for a senior staff member with gas guzzler emitting in excess of 200g CO2 per kilometre.

A University spokesman said it was “committed to improving transport for its staff, students and visitors and promoting more sustainable forms of transport”, with measures that include free inter-campus buses, bike hire and discounts at cycle stores.

Not everyone is happy. A spokesman for the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce, long an opponent of the levy, condemns it as “not a business friendly way to pay for transport infrastructure”.

Alliance Boots, one of the city’s largest employers, “continues to be opposed to the tax on car parking which affects around 7,500 colleagues,” according to a spokeswoman.

Boots will part-subsidise the levy, with staff paying between 30p and 70p a day, in proportion to their salary and working time.

A Council spokesman says it feels that businesses want things both ways – supporting the transport improvements but not the means to pay for them.

“Business continues to oppose it. It is not happy, and never has been, but it supports the transport improvements and can’t say how else the money would be raised,” he says.

“Some companies are passing the charge onto their employees who may therefore be thinking about walking, cycling or public transport.

“We don’t think it will solve congestion in Nottingham but the expectation is that some employers will use green travel plans or that employees will decide on other ways to travel.”

Workplace parking levies have crucially lacked a live UK example until now.

Nottingham taking the plunge may inspire other councils to try it.

The entire relocation of certain BBC departments to Salford has cost £189.3m, and within that sum the corporation set aside £19.9m for ‘migration’.

According to a BBC statement in response to PST’s Freedom of Information request, that sum covered the move of staff and departments from London to Salford (and a few already in Manchester that also moved into the complex) between May 2011 and April 2012.

“The BBC budgeted in advance to allow for an expected increased staff travel and hotels which were necessary during the dual running of departments between London and Salford,” the corporation stated.

“As departments complete their migration, the amount of travel between our new base at Media City UK and London will decrease and therefore we anticipate that travel and hotel costs will also drop.

“As BBC North is still in the process of moving to a fully operational base it is too early to estimate the cost of supporting guests and performers.”

However, the BBC anticipates that the establishment of the Salford operation will ultimately reduce its costs through a combination of greater operational efficiencies, more cost efficient buildings and improved ways of working.

It also points out that one of the objects of the move was to use established and new talent in northern England, and so it will decreasingly rely on transporting TV stars to and from London.

The latest available figures published by the BBC for its travel spend give an indication of the cost of BBC North only at its outset, as they cover the year to March 2011.

These show that in that period the operation spent £3m on hotels, £2.9m on flights, £1m on taxis, £476,000 on rail and £434,000 on hire cars.

To put that figure into perspective, in 2010/11 the BBC spent £19.6m on hotels for all its purposes, £15.5m on flights, £12.5m on taxis, £7.5m on rail and £4.9m on hire cars.

The relatively low spend on rail, compared with air, is explained in part by change in its expenses policy in December 2010 that is yet to show up in a full financial year.

This now stipulates that rail is now the default mode of travel for journeys in the UK and to Eurostar destinations, except where flying is cheaper or a train journey would be impractically long. The ‘rail first’ policy had previously applied only to England.

Opening the BBC North base in Salford has not changed the requirement for travel and accommodation be booked through the BBC’s appointed suppliers.

At present these are: coaches (Kings Ferry); lease vehicles and fleet management (Lex Autolease); hotels and conferences (Access Bookings), UK private hire transport (One Transport), rail (thetrainline.com); travel services (American Express Business Travel).

As BBC North develops on its 200-acre site, it should generate custom from BBC staff for nearby Manchester airport.

The departments that have moved to Salford are BBC Children’s, BBC Radio 5 live, parts of future media and technology, BBC Learning, BBC Sport and BBC Breakfast. It also houses a number of support services, including marketing, training and human resources.

The BBC’s travel and accommodation spending data over the next few years should reveal whether, in these respects at least, it has achieved its ambition of serving the north better while also saving money.

The easiest area in which to make these gains is undoubtedly rail where travel options are available in one location with no ancillary charges about which to worry. And the fulfilment (the production of the rail ticket, in other words) is easy.

Last year’s travel management company tender included figures detailing the breakdown between off and online booking by department and travel areas. Although some departments such as Defra, BIS and the Ministry of Justice had already successfully migrated all their rail bookings online and the DWP had reduced its offline bookings to only 3% of its 200,000 plus rail trips per annum, other departments such as the MOD, HMRC, the Department of Health and the Home Office still had a very large number of rail journeys being booked offline.

But those processes described as online are not necessarily offering the same service at the same price. An online booking in everyday parlance is one that has had no human touch – so, simply put, it is made using either a TMC portal, a proprietary self-booking tool or a rail booking site such as thetrainline.com or the train operating company’s own website.

Although each method should have the same result, namely a ticket to enable travel for the desired journey, they do not all offer the same service at the same cost, as discussions at Public Sector Travel’s Engage conferences have demonstrated.

The train operating companies

The train operating companies’ (TOCs) offer a booking facility on their own websites. Users can book trips not only on the site’s own network but any rail journey in the UK. These are unapologetically aimed at the consumer market.

According to Emma Passey, web manager for East Coast, “All TOCs’ web sites are really B2C although they are used by a lot of individual travellers and small companies.”

East Coast has a rewards loyalty scheme which allows those business travellers booking ‘anytime’ tickets online to receive points which can be converted into free or discounted rail tickets.

Emma says that East Coast is looking at launching an SME site later this year which will allow small organisations that book via the site to be recognised, earn points and get more management information than is possible from casual bookings.

She stresses that such initiatives are not aimed to lure travellers away from travel management companies but that East Coast will compete with other train operating companies and with other rail aggregators.

“We want our larger business customers to use a travel management company,” says Emma. “It takes a lot of resource and a lot of effort to understand each corporate business, their travel profile, the general management of that account, the MI [management information]. Multiply that by all the customers across the routes and it’s a lot of resource. And look at it from the corporate perspective. They don’t want to deal with someone from East Coast, someone from Virgin Trains, etc; they want one single source of contact for rail. The TMC has the resource to do it. It doesn’t make sense for us to do it.”

What do the travel management companies, who the representatives of train operating companies are keen for their business customers to use, offer their customers?

TMC portals

TMC portals are a popular way to make an online booking for a business rail trip. There will commonly be a link from the organisation’s intranet to a unique page of the travel management company. In other words an agency will have a number of corporate clients, each of which will have their own area in which their designated employees – approvers, bookers or travellers – can log on.

The pages can potentially incorporate the travel policy of the organisation and configure travel options accordingly, eg show only standard class options if that is the policy. Some will show rail and air options on different pages, some will show them on the same page – useful for business trips where both are feasible such as London-Newcastle and London-Manchester.

Jon Reeve, trade relations director of Evolvi Rail Systems, believes that travel managers, bookers and travellers want an easy-to-use system which can also provide fulfilment. “They want something that captures management information, apportions the cost and ensures compliance to travel policy,” says Reeve.

Of course not all TMC tools are the same. Although many TMC systems will be powered by Evolvi, not all will make use of its complete functionality. Trainline, which powers other TMC booking sites as well as other sites and also sells direct to corporate and consumers, is a much more straightforward tool aimed at driving bookings to Trainline.

Ian Cairns, head of distribution at Trainline, says “What Trainline is offering is the rail element, one pure offering so we’re charging only for that element.

“MI is coming out of Trainline but it’s generated by us in different ways and sent on to the TMC who, in a majority of cases, is manipulating before sending out to clients.”

Cairns does stress that in cases where Trainline is supplied directly to the organisation that it will provide all the management information, compliance reporting and CO₂ reporting.

Cairns says that content across all the websites is broadly the same (train companies are allowed to advertise discounts or specials for their web-only fares) but the display of content can be different and can be configured to the client’s specification.

Trainline’s range of tools includes Epiphany which sends out targeted and dynamic messages either pre, during or post booking – to promote such things as route deals, offers for free parking at a specific station or a free coffee.

Self-booking tools

Rail is available on leading business self-booking tools such as KDS, GetThere and Amadeus e-Travel Management, but the content is limited to the individual technology company – or TMC’s – relationship with the rail companies. As is the case with air, fulfilment will be done, as with offline bookings, by the travel management company.

Fulfilment can only be done by those with a rail licence issued by ATOC, the Association of Train Operating Companies. ATOC manages the RSP, the Rail Settlement Plan, which collects payment from all its licensees every four weeks for the tickets they have fulfilled on behalf of clients’ purchases.

Rail booking sites

As well as TOCs’ own sites such as Virgin Trains and ScotRail, you can book tickets for anywhere in the UK on aggregated sites such as redspottedhanky.com and thetrainline.com.

The online options are many, but business travel is about more than what happens during the journey.

The product

As with flights, transporting the passenger between A and B is only part of what the business customer pays for.

Some websites are set up with only the consumer in mind, which means the booker considers the options on the site, makes a choice, pays by card and either has a ticket posted, printed off or collected at the station.

But business travel usually demands more.

Evolvi’s Reeve says, “Corporates are looking for a pre-trip approval process for bookers and approvers and increasingly people are looking to add a second booking. They want something which is capable of cost allocation – to a project, a budged, cost codes, an employee number.”

Business travel expects such features as the ability to recognise travellers from a specific organisation, a call centre or other means of support for travellers, the ability to include travel policy or to offer only content appropriate to the organisation’s requirements including the ability to compare rail travel with alternatives such as air or videoconferencing, ability to integrate with self-booking tool, management information, remote ticket printing, exception reporting, pre-trip approval.

The cost

Online fees are generally less than offline fees so it is no wonder that the GPS is keen to migrate as many bookings as possible online. However not all online bookings cost the same. Redspottedhanky boasts that it charges no booking fees. Most business booking solutions will charge but the amount of that charge can vary from £1 upwards.

Travel management companies will charge more than straightforward booking sites but the same product is not being offered. Travel management solutions allow policy to be included and detailed management information, including exception and carbon emission reports, to be provided.

Suppliers can offer a lot of functionality but buyers need to take care to identify just how much management information and which tools they really need. The more functionality you seek, the more you will pay.

Jon Reeve believes that you ignore rail in your travel management programme at your peril. “Treat it as an equal in the managed part of your travel programme. Use the available technology to define your purchasing framework to deliver the most suitable fares for the traveller requirement and manage policy by exception,” he says.

“If you’re only reimbursing expenditure, what incentive is there for them to purchase wisely?”

Online rail booking will cut the cost of the booking but you may have to pay more per booking if you really want to cut the cost of the travel.

In this second part of our exclusive interview with Redfern Travel, the winning bidder of Lot 2 (domestic) in the recent central government travel management tender, we see how the Yorkshire-based travel management company will use its well-regarded online booking tool suite to deliver low-cost, high-value services as well as how it will manage relationships with our travel suppliers.

At Public Sector Travel, we are privileged to have been granted access to Redfern Travel managing director Ian Wotton to find out what the company has planned. We have asked Wotton a number of incisive questions about its success in winning the tender and its strategy.

You can still read the first part of this interview, which looks at the company’s background, its success in the tender and its plans for growth.

PST: Much has been made of the excellence of your online product. Can you tell us where and how offline requests will be managed?

Bradford of course!

I’d love to share the information in the tender with you, but it is of course confidential. What I can say however is that these government customers have made massive commitment to moving their transactional processes to online booking. Some do already conduct a lot of transactions online, particularly rail, but more impressive is their stated intention to achieve online adoption rates well over 90% across the board.

I guess it is all about proper, prior preparation. Our track record with these customers consistently shows that the effort we put into implementation with massive commitment to user training quickly pays off with high online adoptions from day one. As always, we will be totally focussed on ensuring that, as each new customer goes live, they are immediately over 90% online for rail and over 80% for hotel and air.

Historically, online adoption for hotel bookings seems to have been hard for some of these customers and feedback tells us that this has been because of technical issues such as single sign-on to booking tools, poor presentation of available Government and/or preferred supplier rates and content issues such as limited availability of Premier Inn, Travelodge and LateRooms. Our technological solutions do not have these limitations.

From your recent articles, you appear to have a thorough grasp of the scale of the transactions and their face value. If you work the numbers through, you will see that the scale of the offline transactions is nowhere near as large as people have been guessing and the majority are around hotels.

PST: By all accounts your online product tRIPS is excellent. Can you describe to our readers how it differs from other self-booking tools on the market?

That’s a difficult one and I don’t want to upset anyone!

We obviously continually review all systems in the market and the system behind tRIPS is not unique to Redfern, it is commercially available to all from Micros. Of course, we have invested in the development of the system in response to the key functionality that customers told us is of vital importance including:
• Single sign on.
• Simple password management and resetting.
• Content – not limited to GDSGlobal distribution system – international computer reservation systems which amalgamate the content and enable booking on multiple suppliers, but able to incorporate any API or XML feed from any aggregator or supplier. Hence there are direct feeds to LateRooms, Premier Inn, aggregators like Conferma, multi-GDSGlobal distribution system – international computer reservation systems which amalgamate the content and enable booking on multiple suppliers, web airlines and so on. Technically there is no limit to what content can be delivered to the system’s supplier gateway and the customer experience is not compromised – what they see on the screen could be from any channel.
• Shopping basket.
• A logic engine which delivers:
o simultaneous multi-modal searches,
o holistic cost of travel (including man-hour, emission offset costs etc)
o intelligent packaging (eg bundling of rail and hotel to offer alternative off-peak combinations),
o splitting return rail and air tickets into one-way combinations,
o breaking return rail tickets to take advantage of off-peak rates en-route.
• Extensive profile management at many levels, eg Corporation, Administrator, Travel Manager, Booker and Traveller.
• Seamless integration to mid-office, back-office and MI.
• Online help and live support.

PST: Can you share how supplier content to be loaded onto your tool will be chosen? Will you be creating a new Government Hotel Programme and/or Government Air Programme for all central government departments or will stakeholders be able to nominate their preferred suppliers?

As previously mentioned, the Supplier Gateway within tRIPS can accept content from any supplier. All that the supplier needs is to either participate with a GDSGlobal distribution system – international computer reservation systems which amalgamate the content and enable booking on multiple suppliers or have a decent API or XML. Either way, their content can be incorporated so tRIPS will scan their inventory during any booking process. It is so flexible, we have even had it popping up restaurant availability at destination cities.

You are well informed – in a previous article, you have already correctly reported that as part of the contract, we have to create and manage an hotel programme for central government which is across Lot 1 and Lot 2. The winners of Lot 1 – HRG – have to reciprocate with an air programme.

Of course there is already a functioning Government Hotel Programme (GHP) and many of our customers have their own preferred suppliers alongside this. Naturally all of these rates are available and managed via tRIPS. It is interesting to note that over 85% of bookings made through tRIPS are at rates lower than GHP. Of further interest is that nearly 50% of our customers’ bookings are at chains like Premier Inn and Travelodge (who pay no commission) or via LateRooms inventory which do tend to be at the top in tRIPS when availability is displayed in ascending price order.

We have been managing preferred supplier programmes for our customers for many years and we have some innovative ideas and processes around a new Hotel Programme which will bring instant rate reductions for Central Government Customers and much better yield management for hoteliers. We are already putting in place new arrangements with hoteliers for this contract.

PST: This contract will have a high proportion of hotel and rail transactions, both of which still pay commission. Will these commissions be shared centrally or on a department-by-department basis?

Don’t forget the airline sales and marketing agreements, hotel over-ride commissions and GDSGlobal distribution system – international computer reservation systems which amalgamate the content and enable booking on multiple suppliers sector payments as well!

Seriously though, Redfern is not interested in supplier commissions – we believe they compromise our position as acting on behalf of the customer in the supplier-GDSGlobal distribution system – international computer reservation systems which amalgamate the content and enable booking on multiple suppliers-TMC-customer chain. Therefore, we pass them all back to our customers and have done so for many years. In fact we wish they would all go to net rates, thereby reducing ticket prices and hotel rates to all of our customers – there is a lot of money spent and wasted on administering commission schemes.

Wherever possible, we refund commissions at the point of sale. In the case of retrospective commissions, these are refunded when we receive them from the suppliers.

We can refund centrally, or customer by customer and indeed to individual cost centres within a customer if that is required.

PST: What arrangements are you making for meeting your new customers and training their bookers in the use of your tool?

I have already mentioned that the process of customer migration has already started. Our largest on-boarding to date involved the migration of a customer who was 100% offline to full online booking on day one. That project involved setting up 12,000 traveller profiles, over 500 corporate cost centres and business streams and training just under 800 “super-users” on how to use our systems. It took us a month and included floor-walking as each of the customer’s main sites went live.

We’re really looking forward to getting involved with our new customers and helping them to really make best use of the online booking process to improve their efficiencies, buy cheaper and drive down their process costs. Our MI will help them accurately quantify cost reductions and we are looking forward to sharing the results in due course.

PST: Can you describe what you will be doing to enhance the traveller experience? For example, will there be a traveller tracking programme or mobile alerts?

From the conversations we have been having with the new customers, tRIPS brings many improvements to the booking experience and some of these have been mentioned earlier – single sign-on, simultaneous multi-modal bookings and intelligent packaging always seem to be a “breath of fresh air” for new customers whilst the holistic cost of travel at point of sale makes the booking experience far more educated than previously and yes, traveller tracking has been an inclusive part of our offering for many years.

PST: There has been some very public criticism of this award not on the basis of your quality but on the size of your company’s turnover in relation to the value of the contract. How would you reply to this criticism?

Of course we have read the comments and observations which have been published and had a little chuckle to ourselves to be honest.

In assessing our ability to perform and do the job, people need to decide what is the important measurement here. The exact numbers projected for this lot are of course confidential and will be influenced by travel policy and departmental needs, but the headline numbers in the press seem to be £110m to £120m of annual turnover across about 1.5m transactions.

The reality is that the £110-£120m is the “wash through” value of the travel arrangements – what you often refer to as the total cost of travel – and includes fees, taxes, any commission refunds, any GDSGlobal distribution system – international computer reservation systems which amalgamate the content and enable booking on multiple suppliers sector refunds, ticketing surcharges as well as ticket price and room price paid. Redfern already has a considerable percentage of this business because we already have supply contracts with a number of the customers included in Lot 2 and it is the wash through value of the NEW business which is relevant if this is the chosen measure. But even so, yes, these numbers look large in comparison to our audited turnover figures which you have kindly published recently.

However, it’s not the accurate story – the ticket price and room rate paid makes up the vast majority of these large numbers and has no value for a company like Redfern where there is no dependence on commission – the money just washes through us from customer to supplier.

The key number in assessing our ability to perform is of course the number of NEW transactions being administered, these are where Redfern adds value and earns its fees. This is the volume of work being processed – and this number will represent about 50% to 55% of our business once it is all “on board”. A ratio that will continue to decrease as it is diluted by our burgeoning wider public sector and private sector customers.

PST: Can you describe the degree of management information that tRIPS will be providing?

Phew – not enough space! Basically everything shown to a customer in tRIPS (and we use also the system internally) is captured and can be included in the MI. We have a clever bit of technology which meshes bookings and invoiced data to ensure our customers’ MI reconciles exactly to what they are invoiced.

PST: British taxpayers are understandably keen to get good value from Government suppliers. Will you be delivering that?

Absolutely. Price and achieving value for money was a key part of our submission and will be at the focus of the delivery of our services. There will be instant savings on fees in comparison to what was previously paid and customers will find their average costs per mile travelled will fall as tRIPS delivers more intelligent ticketing and packaging options to them at point of sale. We also look forward to a steady reduction in average hotel rates per city as customers enjoy transparent net rates and benefit from dynamic pricing.

You can still see the first half of this interview by clicking here.

At Public Sector Travel, we are privileged to have been granted access to Redfern Travel managing director Ian Wotton (pictured) to find out what the company has planned. We have asked Wotton a number of incisive questions about its success in winning the tender and its strategy. Our in-depth interview is divided into two parts: the first part looks at the company’s background, its success in the tender and its plans for growth while the second – appearing next week – looks at booking tools, supplier relationships and business models.

PST: For those of our readers that are not familiar with Redfern Travel, can you tell us something about the business?

Based in Bradford since its inception, Redfern Travel Ltd has a history stretching back to 1937 but the business today is very different from the traditional travel agency that operated until its change of ownership in 1999 when it became a subsidiary of the AiT Travel Group.

Under the new management and against the backdrop of the removal of airline commission payments, the focus of the business was changed to move away from a traditional “hands-on” agency reliant on supplier commissions to become one of the first proper travel management companies, operating “open-book” practices and clearly representing the corporate customer in what, until then, often appeared a blurred relationship between supplier, agent and customer.

• We moved to a business model whereby all commissions were refunded to customers with our earnings being derived from transaction fees.
• We identified the future of the business as one based around incredibly efficient and automated internal systems coupled to the increasing use of the internet at that time – the first generation of online booking tools were just entering the market.
• We realised that online bookings would become an increasingly important distribution channel and committed to utilising these technologies to the maximum, not just the customer facing element but internally within our organisation to drive out unnecessary administration costs.

It sounds simple, but it took a considerable amount of time and effort – what we wanted from the available technology just was not there with those first and second generation booking tools and we also had to work really hard with our key technology suppliers to improve mid- and back-office systems to achieve the automation levels we wanted.

After a challenging five years, our change in direction started to pay real results as our customer base began to grow strongly, but more importantly our number of transactions began to race ahead, with 2004 and 2005 proving to be the cusp, during which our efficiencies manifested themselves in rapidly reducing transaction costs which we were able to pass on to further grow our customer base.

In 2006, Government Procurement Service (formerly Buying Solutions) administered the procurement of the first Government Travel Framework and we were able to submit a very competitive bid, successfully winning a place on the Framework and we have subsequently maintained that success, winning a place on its “One Stop Shop” Framework in 2009, the re-let of the first Travel Framework in 2010 and most recently Lot 2 of the Central Government Travel Tender.

Throughout this period, we have listened very closely to our customers and we are very quick to integrate their feedback into our upgrade paths – a tribute to our key technology partners include Micros, Evolvi, Conferma and Sabre who have been brilliantly flexible in accommodating our customers’ needs.

Our business model is flexible and adaptable, constantly under review in light of customer feedback and it would appear that we are delivering what the customers want with both public sector customers and with our rapidly increasing private sector customers.

We remain totally committed to driving out any unnecessary costs in the supply side of travel, where we believe there is too much emphasis on legacy business models and accounting and we wholeheartedly embrace any new ideas or systems which can improve our customers’ experience, improve internal efficiencies (ours and our customers) and deliver cheaper transaction fees.

PST: There are many fine travel management companies in the UK. Why do you think you won this highly prized, hotly contended tender?

Firstly, we entered the bid confident that we would deliver a proposal which presents a very different and innovative way of supplying travel booking services in a flexible and competitive way.

Secondly, our success on the previous Government Procurement Service travel frameworks, allied to the scalability of our technological solutions meant we already held service contracts with some central government departments of a scale which enabled us to satisfy emphatically the due diligence requirements of the procurement process.

Thirdly, since 2006, our online booking tool and internal technologies have been continually developed and improved in light of customer feedback. We were able to demonstrate capability in a live environment, showing how we continue to deliver method, automation and value in the provision of our services. not just describe it. I guess the capability and flexibility of our offering was there for all to see.

Finally, a key element of the tender process was to facilitate cost savings for central government. Our efficiencies mean we can maintain a very high service standard yet still provide a very low cost per transaction which in turn ensures cost savings, rate savings and efficiency savings for our customers.

Therefore in summary we are providing:

• a high level of practical experience in working with government departments;
• a service and product based on advanced technology offering flexibility and practical solutions, based on customer requirements;
• a significantly different model for travel booking services;
• a significantly lower cost base, with costs savings passed on directly to our customers.

PST: The Government is keen not to disadvantage British businesses in tender in order to stimulate job creation. How many new positions do you foresee creating at Redfern to manage the requirements of this award and will you need to grow your office space?

A key element of the tender is to offer value for money to customers. This is a primary aim for Redfern, which is assisted by our advanced technology systems. Another important requirement of Government, to assist in efficiencies and cost savings means that there is a focus on a significant move to online services. Our service provision is a significantly different model and our experience of working with central government will assist us to finalise our staffing requirements, in accordance with our contractual obligations.

No, we will not need to grow our office space to service this award. We occupy a lovely old building in Bradford where we have more than enough space to accommodate everyone required and indeed the many more we will need over the forthcoming years as more wider public sector and private sector customers continue to find their way to us.

PST: Do you expect to take on staff from other travel management companies who are already working for the government departments covered by this lot?

Implementation and transitioning plans for each of the government departments with whom we are not already trading were fully detailed in our tender. The consultation process with those providers has already begun, to ensure that everyone becomes clear as to the process which is being followed.

How excited are your team to have won this prestigious contract?

Very excited of course!

The whole team at Redfern recognise this as a massive recognition of the work that started way back in 2000 and 2001.

We have increased in size by over five times since 2006, going live customer by customer, many with over 100,000 transactions per annum. By mandate, this contract brings about another ten customers of similar size on a staggered programme extending out until summer 2012 and we are really looking forward to extending our low fees and outstanding service to them.

The second part of this feature will be published next week.

Heathrow runs at nearly full capacity and is pretty well unavoidable for government officials travelling beyond Europe, for social workers escorting children to countries of origin, for economic development officers seeking investment from burgeoning emerging economies and, in fact, for any business traveller seeking an onward connection not available from their regional airport.

Well, they are likely to be waiting a very long time for extra capacity at Heathrow, whose problems appear insoluble as all three main political parties now oppose its expansion.

Moving some flights to other London airports might make a small difference, while more radical solutions – such as an airport on an artificial island in the Thames estuary airport touted by London mayor Boris Johnson – would take years and be grossly expensive.

Only 18 months after the coalition scrapped Labour’s plan for a third runway at Heathrow (and a second at Stansted), a combination of the businesses lobby, airlines and elements of the Conservative party seeks to reopen the issue.

But is this politically possible? Labour’s shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle has reversed her party’s position saying: “The local environmental impact means that this is off the agenda.”

The Liberal Democrats, with seats to defend in south-west London, are hostile to Heathrow expansion, and for the Conservatives a sudden backtrack would cause embarrassing damage to their hard-won environmental credentials.

London First, a business lobbying group, has set up an independent Connectivity Commission, due to report in January, on how to develop “a national transport strategy that supports both London’s ability to remain competitive with other world cities and the UK’s long-term growth”.

Chief executive Baroness Valentine says: “Blocking the growth of London’s international air links won’t stop people flying from Paris or Frankfurt instead [and] a credible approach to solving the problem would be for the Government to revisit its aviation policy.”

The Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC) agrees. Its chief executive Anne Godfrey says: “Ultimately Heathrow will need to be both bigger and better should it wish to remain a leading European hub.

“The Government needs to balance far better the demands of the green lobby with the needs of UK businesses.

“Business organisations in general, and the business travel sector in particular, need to be more united in our argument for additional capacity.
She warns that business travellers can and have ‘voted with their feet’.

The GTMC’s 2010 survey of business travellers found 61.5% had taken a connecting flight through a non-UK airport in the previous year, 41.9% of them because they had no other way to reach their destination, a particular issue with South America and China.

Frankfurt has 47 flights per week to China, compared to Heathrow’s 30, the GTMC pointed out, and Paris has 48 flights per week to Brazil, compared to Heathrow’s 20.

Heathrow’s capacity problem means that if an airline wanted to serve a new destination it would have to drop an old one, a risk few are willing to take.

Godfrey adds: “Heathrow is losing out to other major European hubs whose additional runway capacity means they can offer a wider range of destinations in emerging markets.”

That is also the position of the Board of Airline Representatives in the UK (BAR UK), whose chief executive Mike Carrivick says: “While the UK dithers, other countries are grasping the economic opportunities offered by the lack of key hub airport capacity where it matters – London.

“If Heathrow expansion is off the menu, then what, where and when is the viable alternative, and who pays?”

Tory peer and donor Lord Glendonbrook, who as Michael Bishop was the former owner of carrier BMI, has joined this battle, stating: “There is a strong and sound – both environmental and economic – case to continue building at Heathrow.”

Another prominent Tory, London Assembly member, Victoria Borwick, has floated the idea of linking Heathrow and Gatwick by high-speed rail to form a single hub with the latter becoming a feeder for the former.

This thought was rubbished by Colin Stanbridge, chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said: “Business travellers want to transfer within the same airport they arrive at.”

Johnson has enthusiastically canvassed the Thames estuary airport idea as an outright replacement for Heathrow. This though provoked startlingly rude responses from Kent Tories.

A proposal from leading architect Lord Foster for an airport on the Isle of Grain drew this rebuke from Medway Council’s Tory leader Rodney Chambers: “This is, quite possibly, the daftest in a long list of pie-in-the-sky schemes.” He questioned whether Lord Foster had even troubled to visit the area.

Kent County Council’s Tory leader Paul Carter has called any estuary airport “undeliverable, unaffordable and unnecessary”, and the idea of closing Heathrow “ludicrous”.

Johnson cannot authorise projects outside London, but has said in a submission to the Department for Transport that Heathrow was “totally incapable of responding to the emergence of new business destinations in Asia and elsewhere…as well as rival continental hub airports”.

More capacity at Heathrow was “not an option as the local environmental consequences of growth are too great”, he added.

Carter’s alternative is to increase use of the large, and largely deserted, former military airport at Manston, but its remote location near Margate and poor transport links makes this unlikely.

Roger Hayes, director of Green Brain, a planning and public affairs consultancy that works with developers seeking planning permission, sees Heathrow expansion as highly problematic.

He says: “It is hard to see how, in the current climate, the business and airline lobby can do anything to change the nature of the political debate.

“They haven’t a hope of seeing a third runway or a sixth terminal, and Boris Johnson’s idea carries all the same objections, even if someone had the tens of billions of capital investment needed.

“What business and the airlines would need to do is mount a campaign on a hitherto unseen scale to show how constraint at Heathrow was damaging the regional and national economy, but even then they would face an almighty fight.”

Hayes thinks Heathrow expansion is off the table until such time as someone invents a quiet and non-polluting aircraft.

Expect the airlines and London businesses to put up a fight over this, but it might be time to consult timetables for other hubs.

£138M has been saved, audited and signed off by the ERG. Stranger still, the majority was proclaimed by an incumbent that might well wish to be seen to be doing what it is paid to do, especially as it hopes to win another term in office.

What immaculate timing. Can such claims stand scrutiny? Have civil servants continued beavering around the country, and indeed the world, with the post election axe still hovering above their job-fearful heads?

Endlessly racking up the same amount of travel miles, hotels and expenses, they miraculously managed to do this for £138m less. I wonder – it is perhaps possible, especially if a suitable get-out clause was chosen. Though I choose to assume that they are proclaiming proudly that they simply don’t travel anymore. How modern.

Of course, questioning the actual need to travel remains rule number one in any travel policy.

Q: Do you need to travel?
A: (invariably) Probably not.

Post election, non-essential travel was ruled out. In fact all spending, aside from a new office for a deputy PM and new PM ‘friends’, was ruled out. These hard times seemed an ideal opportunity to homogenise departmental travel policy but it hasn’t happened. Some managed to hurdle this perennial stumbling block. Others (stand up again MOD) did not.

The ‘return on investment’ is the principal travel qualifier – what more do you gain from a face-to-face meeting? Could we use Webex, Skype, video-conferencing or simply pick up the phone? Of course we could.

Demands made of TMCs to facilitate the mechanisms to deliver sustainable alternatives were quickly removed from the recent Government RFP. Why? Surely such a demand was not beyond any of the combatants.

Sadly that chance has gone. We await news (with no surprises) on just who has secured that RFP. We must now look to colleagues in the wider public sector, with their oft over-looked billions of travel spend, to learn from our mistakes and ensure that their forthcoming travel procurement fairs far better.

The university challenge remains the protectionist owners of often very hard-earned grant funding, but the most hard boiled of eggs and department heads must see the logic of releasing travel spend to travel spend managers. Trust them to manage travel whilst academics concentrate on their core activities. These monies can no longer be considered untouchable and therefore beyond policy. Many millions of travel pounds will need consolidation. In our new private education system, OJEU considerations may well take a back seat. Openness, clarity, clearly defined specifications, joined up policy and an appetite for real dialogue and change should see the seats of learning teaching us all a very valuable procurement lesson.

• This column represents the views of the author and are not necessarily those of Public Sector Travel.

Vanessa Amissah, Procurement Manager, Marcomms Events and Travel at RMG, explains the benefits that RMG has reaped.

Prior to BSI’s appointment, hotel and meetings bookings were managed offline at RMG. Vanessa Amissah says, “I had not joined RMG at the time the contract was awarded but I understand the organisation’s focus was on other areas and at the time travel was not that high on the RMG agenda. Historically, there was little drive to embrace online technology but there’s been a huge culture change over the last six months.

“We wanted to appoint a provider with relevant specialist expertise, the leverage to negotiate good rates and the ability to support our sustainability strategy. However we also knew that the best way to take the organisation’s travel programme forward was to move our hotel bookings online. BSI came up with a great hotel programme and good rates.”

According to BSI, no online booking system will deliver the required savings unless the preferred hotel programme to which it provides access meets the organisation’s financial, quality and convenience thresholds. The RFP undertaken by BSI on its client’s behalf was highly successful in keeping costs down for RMG, and was based on a three-pronged strategy.

RMG is committed to driving volume into their preferred suppliers and where possible, BSI tried to keep those hotels already receiving substantial business from RMG on the programme. In some instances this meant accepting non-LRA (Last Room Availability) rates and securing allocation to ensure availability.

Where hotels were offering rates well above the then-average achieved rates in a location BSI replaced them with similar properties offering lower prices within a 1 – 1.5 mile radius of the existing hotel. Finally, BSI consolidated the number of preferred hotels in each location to drive more volume and thereby improve future RMG’s leverage and negotiation position.

RMG now had an improved hotel programme with a reduced number of preferred properties in key locations, wider geographical covering and reduced costs. With the new hotel programme in place, the focus could turn to implementing an online booking tool.

Vanessa continues, “At the start, we were planning to go online gradually (10% in year one, 20% in year two etc), but after going live in November the savings being generated from online bookings persuaded us to take the whole business online more quickly. We then made the decision to mandate online booking within just two months.”

Before approaching senior management, Vanessa and her team worked closely with BSI to analyse the management information to build the business case for online mandation. As well as the initial cost savings, the other benefits came from process change efficiencies (travel pre-authorisation was also online) and duty of care (knowing where RMG staff are when away on business).

The next stage in the process was to hold implementation discussions with suppliers and then to overcome what is, in many organisations, the toughest hurdle of all – stakeholder buy in. It is remarkable that, not only was this test successfully negotiated, but that approval from RMG’s senior management was forthcoming within such a short period.

“We were very successful in getting this live, mainly due to stakeholders’ buying in” says Vanessa.

“Thankfully, Royal Mail Group has a culture of embracing cost saving initiatives. There’s a good relationship between Procurement and HR, the owning stakeholder for travel, and our Senior Supplier Relations and Communications Manager (Liz Crawshaw), so this initiative was seen as bringing substantial savings. It was not all plain sailing though; we still had to put in a lot of hard work on the proposal, the figures and the way we presented them.”

For RMG, bringing about behavioural change on the part of bookers and travellers has been the biggest challenge of all, ultimately achieved by enforcing corporate discipline, supported by an effective communications campaign (led by Liz) to the RMG booker community.

“Our messaging was aimed initially at individual business unit directors who then cascaded the information down to their line managers” Vanessa explains. “Communications were issued in the name of the CFO and HR director responsible for travel policy, so they carried senior clout.”

Vanessa’s team had to overcome resistance to the changeover from a telephone-based to automated service. “Staff didn’t understand why we put an approvals process in place. Previously the only approvals process in place was for international travel, and was a manual one. The principal objection to doing things online has been that it’s easier to pick up the phone.”

“Staff have to feel comfortable using the system and the approval process which they think takes a lot of time. We have explained that we need to know why staff are travelling so we can make sure the travel is necessary, thus ensuring that people are thinking twice before travelling because they have to get approval to do so.”

Despite an 85% online adoption of transient accommodation bookings in itself being compelling proof of the success of the initiative, RMG regularly seeks feedback from travellers. Vanessa says, “At the moment we have a business travel inbox so any feedback comes to me via BSI. We then either respond directly or send out new messaging to everyone.”

Vanessa is surprised how quickly and effectively adoption has happened. She recognises the support provided by BSI’s account management team, led by Account Manager Nikki Hockey. Nikki points out that, although RMG have mandated online booking, the BSI call centre teams have also had a role to play in the migration by advising RMG bookers on how to use the BSIDirectTM tool and how to approach compliance issues.

“There haven’t been any major challenges from BSI’s point of view” says Nikki “and we’ve worked closely with Royal Mail Group’s appointed TMC, Capita Business Travel, to ensure that the process has been as smooth as possible for all involved”.

With relatively little headroom remaining for increasing online adoption for transient bookings and with online meetings requests already hitting 100%, Vanessa and the BSI team are now looking at further cost savings opportunities for Royal Mail Group. “We will continue to push transient closer to 100% by looking at increasing amendments and cancellations online. I’m not saying we will achieve 100%, but we’ll have a go. In addition to this we are working on further process efficiencies in order to support the business with its continuing cost reduction initiatives. ”