Ever since working at AT Kearney, I’ve liked the concept of maturity models. You might know them by the term "Stages of Excellence" or some other label. Done well, they are good at helping you quickly get a feel for where your company stacks up against others.
Here are two maturity models for travel programs that you might like:
Travel Program Maturity Model This is the easier model, as it covers only seven key dimensions of a travel program, such as Travel Policy, Form of Booking, Form of Payment, etc. It offers checkpoints for three stages: Early, Average and Mature. I presented this framework last month in Sao Paulo at the LACCTE conference.
Way back in 2002 I developed a much more rigorous framework for evaluating a travel program. The scoring tool is in Excel – it’s a self-evaluation that results in clear scores across 14 dimensions. You may want the Powerpoint file that describes the framework: Stages of Travel Excellence Intro
Stages of Travel Mgmt Excellence Scoring Tool – use this excel model to score your program.
And while these benchmark results are nearly ten years old, I think they are still useful. They are based on about 70 companies who submitted their scores. My old team at Travel Analytics analyzed them and I presented these findings in Munich at an ACTE conference. See for yourself in this report:
Stages of Travel Mgmt Excellence in 2003
If you know of other maturity models related to travel, please mention them in a comment below. I’m pretty sure there are ones for meetings (SMMP?) and for traveler security. Perhaps there are others for areas such as self-booking, or payments?
And thanks to Bruce McIndoe at iJet for this excellent Travel Risk Management Maturity Model. Courtesy of GBTA and iJet, you can see how your program compares to others here
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