Travel and meeting managers that use preferred suppliers become frustrated when their travelers or meeting attendees bypass the policies and use non-preferreds. Case in point, when we went through our Six Sigma measure stage at PwC in 2007 to identify the rogue or maverick meeting spend that was not funneling through our meetings team, we learned that our strategic meetings management program only managed 49 percent of the total spend in the firm. Shocking to us, because we thought we had corralled most of the costs.
Travel compliance returned better percentages, yet travelers still booked outside of the policy. As a result, we developed proactive controls to stopgap rogue spenders and added numerous program enhancements. While arguments exist to reduce compliance requirements, managed travel with strong compliance is still the pot ‘o gold at the end of the rainbow in many industries. (For more information on compliance... Develop a Compliance Strategy)
w tool has reached the industry that warrants your review. ProcureApp is a proactive approach and application that alerts travelers on how and where to book travel. Indirect purchases through non-contracted channels (e.g. going directly to hotel’s website) can result in non-compliance. ProcureApp addresses maverick spend easily so that even if travelers book your preferred properties, it will always be through the method you choose and not directly with the websites.
Because I’m a visual learner, I drew this very elementary picture of where ProcureApp fits in for some of my clients. Without any financial interest in ProcureApp, I share this information with you because after seeing the product, I thought it was an excellent proactive control to help you manage your travel and meeting programs.
This blog post is excerpted with permission from Debi's T&E Plus blog.