Travel Management in a recovery year - more challenging than during a downturn?
The second quarter of 2011 shows that business travel volumes are in a recovery and growth phase. After the tight discipline evident during the last two years’ downturn, this recovery can present procurement managers with a challenge equal to or greater than that presented during the bottom of the economic downturn, Jim Weighell, Corporate Manager at Sure Travel tells SmartProcurement.
Posted by Editor at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
Is travel a commodity?
A commodity is "equivalent no matter who produces it".The challenge though is that travel exhibits non-commodity behavior that makes it trickier to deal with than conventional procurement commodities, Dr. Roderick Ross, CEO of online travel management platform TravelLinck tells SmartProcurement.
Posted by Editor at 8:40 AM | Comments (0)
Effective requistioning in a managed travel commodity
As with all procurement operations, the requisition stage in the travel category is vital to the process, Dr. Roderick Ross, CEO of online travel management platform TravelLinck, tells SmartProcurement. This is the second article in a series of seven discussing the fundamentals of the corporate travel commodity.
Posted by Editor at 2:30 PM | Comments (0)
The fundamentals of the corporate travel commodity
A corporate travel manager has to understand a travel market place that involves travel suppliers, agencies and technology providers. This all the while managing a controllable expenditure that ranks the 2nd largest for organisations globally.In a bid to assist travel managers, whether new to the commodity or with experience under their belts, Dr. Roderick Ross, CEO of online travel management platform TravelLinck, will pen a series of articles for SmartProcurement analysing the various aspects of the end-to-end travel procurement process.
Posted by Editor at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
Procuring domestic air travel: strategies offer savings
Most organisations agree that there are savings to be had in domestic travel. The big questions are:how significant are these savings?
and
how do we realise these prospects?
Does a saving of up to 40% on air ticket prices or a 100% additional discount on your ticket price versus your corporate fare discount sound unrealistic? There is evidence to support that this is possible and that there are organisations achieving these discounts on a regular basis, Karen van Staden of benchmarking organisation Purchasing Index tells SmartProcurement.
Posted by Editor at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
The economies of distance
The distance your bed linen treks to be laundered is part and parcel of bushveld logistics. Glynn O’Leary, CEO of Transfrontier Parks Destinations (TFPD), tells SmartProcurement about the peculiarities of a bushveld supply chain.
Posted by StaffWriter at 1:00 AM | Comments (0)
Is global warming good for the travel business?
A simple starting point is to determine the sustainability of your organisation’s present travel habits, Roderick Ross, head of TravelLinck International, a travel e-sourcing support service, suggested to delegates at this year’s annual conference of the Institute of Travel Management and Meetings Southern Africa (ITMSA). SmartProcurement was in attendance.
Posted by Editor at 1:40 AM | Comments (0)
Expenditure management - prevention is better than cure
This old adage seems to be more appropriate now than ever before with the focus on various State-owned enterprises (SOEs) regarding alleged or apparent mismanagement of funds. With failing to adhere to financial budgets, financial limits being exceeded, wasteful expenditure in the area of Expense Management, one has to question the processes in place to prevent this from re-occurring, Tracey Shaw, Sales Director at Tra velUxion, tells SmartProcurement.
Posted by Editor at 5:50 AM | Comments (0)
Demand management and outsourcing of travel
Organisations that have travel driven by Procurement professionals have a much better ability to do demand management than other functions, most notably when travel is overseen by human resources, who are pretty weak in terms of demand management, says Christa Manning, director of Expert Insights research for American Express Business Travel Global Advisory Services.
Posted by Editor at 6:50 AM | Comments (0)
Do CPOs have a Duty of Care?
Buying and Procurement personnel comprise a significant chunk of annual international business commuters, which begs the question: are their respective organisations ensuring that they enjoy the same level of safety during their journeys as they do at the office?
Posted by Editor at 5:20 AM | Comments (0)
Cost vs. responsibility in travel management
Very few travel buyers or procurement specialists consider themselves to be ‘Risk Managers’. However, in the increasingly dangerous world of travel spend, this is exactly what they must become.
Posted by StaffWriter at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)
The 'silver bullet' in managing travel and entertainment expenses
Organisations that do not use an automated travel and entertainment (T&E) expense management service are falling behind in almost every measure of financial management.These organisations as ‘laggards’ and presents figures showing that they pay 37% more to process their expense reports; they take three times longer to reimburse employees; and they are essentially working in the dark when it comes to controlling travel expenditures accoring to a a 2008 report by researcher Aberdeen.
Posted by Editor at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
Savings for Corporate Domestic Air Travel vs published prices on downward slide
Are travel management companies causing increased travel costs? One of the measures used for benchmarking Corporate Air travel is the average savings achieved against the published fares and, while organisations recognise that this savings methodology is not necessarily the best, it has been applied consistently and is useful to track savings over time.
Posted by StaffWriter at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)
Taming travel expenses? Boost your compliance!
Although travel expenses account for a significant - and rising - portion of a business’ s operating expenses, it remains one of the most difficult to manage or control.
This results in unnecessary costs, says Warren Tanner-Ellis, general manager, Travel Management Solutions at MWEB CommerceZone, a provider of hosted e-Procurement solutions and services. "These costs can amount to as much as 8% to 10% of total overhead expenses according to recent research undertaken by the Aberdeen Group*"
Posted by bernievn at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
Air travel prices continuing down... But isn't the total cost going up?
This graph shows the index for the average SAA, BA Comair & Nationwide net economy return ticket prices (excluding taxes and VAT) for the Johannesburg – Cape Town route across a number of organizations from September 2002 to 2005. This index shows that net prices have been moving down despite the price of aviation fuel increasing dramatically (particularly in 2005). According to Alan Low, MD of Purchasing Index, new data from their research to be released within the next few weeks should confirm the trend. But...
Posted by bernievn at 7:52 PM | Comments (0)
