Case Study: FCM Travel

Conferma Hotel Tracker delivers an easier and more streamlined billback process, increased data and increased productivity

FCm Travel Solutions, the global corporate travel brand of Flight Centre plc, offers a comprehensive range of products and services on a global basis designed to meet the needs of today's corporate travel buyer. In the UK 650 staff work in 30 business travel centres in locations including Bristol, Crawley, Exeter, London, Slough, Milton Keynes, Woking, Wimbledon, New Malden, Ipswich, Peterborough, Birmingham, Loughborough, Hull, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dunfermline and Belfast and 15 dedicated implants/outplants. In 2008 FCm did 1.46 million business travel transactions and had a turnover of £370 million.

Keen cost control and efficiency has always been important both to FCm as well as its corporate clients but the need for this became even more vital after the market downturn in 2008. As business improvement manager it is Helen Mardle's responsibility to assess FCm's internal processes and look for ways to increase efficiency and productivity.

In the summer of 2008 Helen began to investigate an online hotel-booking tool. She was very keen to identify one whose content also encompassed the low-cost hotels to give maximum benefit to FCm's clients, many of whom are increasingly using properties such as Premier Inn and Travelodge. Helen was eager to find a product which facilitated the billback process. "We needed a product that allowed us to do billback as we have many clients who require it," says Helen.

In 2007 FCm radically re-structured its business travel centres into 82 smaller team-based business units. Each team consists of no more than seven consultants, unless dictated otherwise by customer contracts, and is responsible for the well-being of its client base as well as bottom-line profitability. Every one of FCm's business units has a company Barclaycard. For these teams, says Helen, "hotel payment reconciliation had always been a difficult process to manage. Credit card statements provide only the name of the hotel and the amount so the FCm reconciliation process was quite lengthy."

To meet the requirement for an online booking tool with appropriate content complete with a payment and reconciliation facility, FCm opted to try Barclaycard Hotel Tracker powered by Conferma. It was tested as an agency booking tool for three months. Helen Mardle says that there were marked process improvements. "As an agency tool it makes processes easier. You get all the availability you get with a GDS plus non-GDS content such as Premier Inn and Travelodge; the data flows straight through so it cuts the workload in half. The reconciliation is so much easier. You can tie it up because with Conferma you get the traveller's name, the date of travel, the property name, the rate that was booked and the amount that was charged. When the bill comes in, we can reconcile and then recharge the clients.

"Quicker and better data is provided via Tracker. The data provided by the Tracker Card is much more detailed than what we had previously."

But for FCm Tracker is not only an agency tool. After the agency implementation was fully tested, Tracker was given to the sales team to offer clients and potential clients as a self-booking tool along with air tools. "For clients that want billback we can now offer a choice - either we can do it or the client can take on the credit agreement with Barclaycard and then pay us a lower transaction fee. The client chooses the option which will work best for them. We believe that Conferma played a part in our winning three big accounts last year," says Helen.

Many of FCm's clients use billback. Conferma is already being used by eight of its business units and it will be implemented in three more teams this month. FCm plans to steadily introduce Tracker into more and more of its UK business units. Helen says, "A four-week training programme is in place to implement Conferma and the Tracker tool, but the returns are there for TMCs. We have markedly increased productivity on the billback and reconciliation process since adopting Tracker."

Helen concludes, "The Conferma solution has increased productivity and the increased data we receive back is of immense benefit and it all helps to make the billback process easier and more streamlined."

About Hotel Tracker

Conferma's Hotel Tracker uses a virtual credit card to automate the hotel booking, payment and reconciliation process. Hotel Tracker gives hotels immediate payment on guest departure while agencies benefit from extended payment terms. The booked and billed data is then automatically matched to provide a detailed statement in conjunction with Barclaycard Commercial. Automatic matching removes time-consuming manual processes and so increases productivity and accuracy and significantly reduces admin time.

Conferma's Hotel Tracker is part of an integrated suite of hotel booking and payment products.

For further information call 0844 815 3601 or email enquiries@conferma.com

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