Business Travel News CT 100 2008 Resource Guide

Pre-Trip Authorization Tech Leaves UMG #1 With A Bullet U all three pieces,” Witherspoon said. Working with its agency, BCD Travel, UMG at the end of 2007 developed a way to scrape its global niversal Music Group director of travel distribution system for data that can be populated services Pamela Witherspoon cominto the approval tool. UMG employees now can bined homegrown electronic travel make a reservation with the agency over the phone, authorization technology with global get the passenger record number locator and initidistribution data to bring savings in an ate the approval process. The data goes to a BCD industry that, because of the nature of server and can populate the air, hotel and car rental its travel programs, cannot always rely on traditionportions, leaving UMG only to validate the cost and al travel management best practices. type of ticket. “Although entertainment companies are trying to The tool also has largely automated post-travel wrap their arms around some cost-saving initiatives, payment process, she said. “We have people on we have a lot of rock stars who like to spend a lot direct billing, so we have a department that actually of money,” Witherspoon said. “Fifty percent of our pays all those bills. All they have to do is pull up the travel is non-employee travel, so it’s a huge piece.” ETA, match it when the bill comes, and it’s already Economic conditions have companies across all coded,” according to Witherspoon. “We have a industries looking at ways to reduce travel costs, but connect with all of our internal systems.” entertainment companies’ efforts come with a unique set of challenges, she said. The GDS scraping tool cost about $120,000 to UMG’s parent, Paris-based implement, and Witherspoon said UMG expects to have that Vivendi, is looking at those returned through hard costs in same cost-saving initiatives, 18 months, largely from the but implementing them is agency side, where UMG has not easy. saved 40 percent of its costs, “It’s a major change in our particularly through the reduccompany, to initiate lower tion of overtime. travel levels for the employ“We’re paying them for 12ees, but you can’t do anyhour days, because we’re a thing with the artists,” PAMELA WITHERSPOON 24-hour company and have Witherspoon said. “If they’re UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP artists who in the middle of platinum artists, they’re the night will call up and going to go first class. It change plans,” Witherspoon becomes a big challenge, said. “It’s an extreme amount of overtime.” because you have less to work with.” UMG already has recouped some of its investIn order to better handle non-employee travel, ments, as the automation allowed the company to UMG—which spends about $20 million annually in cut headcount in the bill-paying department by 50 air travel but also must foot the bill for a number of percent, and the automation saves about 30 perother luxuries, including a large budget for car servcent of the time on the front end, Witherspoon said. ices—in 2001 spent about half a million dollars to create an electronic travel authorization program for In addition, it has improved accuracy, she said. which it owned the coding. The problem, “When these arrangers had to go in and manually do something in an automated system, it didn’t Witherspoon said, was that the process remained make sense, and they were inaccurate a lot. It’s cumbersome for UMG employees and its agency. really paid for itself even before the 18 months.” Upon its creation, the approval process was elecFollowing its success, Witherspoon said UMG tronic but required manual work on both the front now is seeking to market its tool to others in the and back ends. The data had to be manually industry that may be facing the same challenges. entered at the onset, and once the approval “In the entertainment industry, a lot of people who process was complete, the agency had to manualhave some of the same systems that we do,” ly pull out all of the data and put it back in for backWitherspoon said. “We tried to sell it before the end reporting, she said. global distribution system scraping, but now it’s a lot “We were trying to link that front-end piece to be more viable of a tool.” ■ automated and the back-end piece to link up with By Michael B. Baker 20 September 8, 2008 www.BTNonline.com Business Travel News “ “ Manual changes to an automated system didn’t make sense and were often inaccurate, so it paid for itself faster. http://www.BTNonline.com

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