Overview

Multinational banking and financial services company operating in 14 African countries. The company faced long-standing problems obtaining quality data and support services for its travel program in the region. The company sought increased automation, standardised technology and processes to support its business strategy.

Some of the frustrations were:

• Time-intensive manual booking processes
• Inconsistent data quality and agency standards across markets
• Unsatisfactory duty of care compliance
• Inconsistent regional after-hours services
• Difficulty tracking service level agreements (SLAs)

The client was seeking a TMC that could deliver data automation, standardised technology and consistent levels of service, regardless of location. The goal was to drive efficiency, lower costs and enhance traveller experiences and productivity across all African markets.

BCD Travel pledged to tap its well-established African Partner Network to deliver service configurations, tools, and solutions that met the client’s immediate needs and could also be adapted to the company’s evolving regionwide strategy.

Client Stats

• Head office: Johannesburg
• 5 million customers
• 41 000+ employees
• 10,299 ATMs
• 1,238 branches

The Solution

BCD supplied the infrastructure and agency experience the client needed to achieve its various data quality and service-level goals.

1.  Improved traveler assistance

Prior to BCD, agents routinely relied on mobile phones and laptops to provide after-hours traveller support. But mobile coverage was spotty, and travellers received inconsistent service quality.

BCD worked with third-party company Aero24 to provide the client with standardised, automated after-hours support. The service included a dedicated local phone number that travellers could dial for assistance from anywhere in Africa. This meant travellers only had to remember one number for all services (day, emergency, or after-hours).

To ensure that the number of the client’s travellers aboard any single flight remained within the duty of care limits outlined in its travel policy, BCD implemented DecisionSource. It allows agents to automate the process and review traveller information via on-screen pop-ups. The tool alerts travel agents at the point of sale about no-go countries/areas, banned airlines, and more. The change was a major improvement on a manual, spreadsheet-based process— boosting speed and accuracy of duty of care compliance.

2.  Automated solutions for end-to-end processes

The client wanted standardised service levels and technology, as well as more accurate pre- and post-trip data, so its travellers had the same quality experience regardless of their location in Africa. The company needed the right tools and solutions, and BCD found them, including:

• An automated end-to-end booking process—from pre-populating request forms to tracking traveller communications.
• TripSource: Portal Management, a proprietary BCD platform that allows the client to automatically map data fields, as well as track and manage workflow across countries.
• PI Benchmark, a leading multi-source data consolidator, streamlined data collection and enables weekly data delivery.

The Results

By changing to BCD and tapping its Partner Network across Africa, the client gained a seamless booking process, as well as uniform service and experiences for travellers in the region. It also reduced time and money spent on travel processes—reducing waste and boosting employee productivity.

Now, travel documents look and feel the same, no matter the country of origin of booking. A new electronic invoice repository allows the client to pull invoices by individual traveller. The finance department can print travel information on demand, reducing administrative functions and paper

use. Traveller profiles are created and maintained automatically by tapping into an existing human resources feed—an idea BCD brought to the table. What’s more, the right information is captured for each booking because BCD agents have been trained to make data collection a priority.

By partnering with BCD, the client was able to:

• Reduce time spent on booking trips—cutting two full minutes, on average, from each booking
• Standardise service to improve traveller experiences and meet duty of care requirements across 14 countries
• Realise significant savings through a new online booking tool with greater functionality; for example, the tool cuts costs by enabling split ticketing on multi-leg trips

BCD Travel standardised the client’ processes across all 14 markets, resulting in:

• Consistent bookings
• Delivery of clean, accurate data at the point of sale
• Automated end-to-end travel processes, including an effective, proprietary profile management tool that lets agents book trips for the client’s employees, no matter their location
• Reduced paperwork and increased productivity
• Active trip-authorisation process and improved Duty of Care