THE COOPERATOR
Formalizing a TMC co-opetition structure for EY's massive global travel program, Hutchings is raising the service bar for her travelers, optimizing her program and tweaking configuration concepts for the industry at large.
EY’s global travel program includes 150 countries and more than $600 million in air spend alone. To manage the size and scope more efficiently, global head of travel, meetings and events Karen Hutchings anchored the program in three travel management companies in 2015. In essence, she drove three competitors to collaborate in order to get her business.
Not finding a single firm that could handle all regions equally well, Hutchings awarded Latin America and Asia/Pacific to Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the United States and Canada to American Express Global Business Travel and Europe, the Middle East and Africa to HRG. But she didn’t stop with regional carveouts. Hutchings further configured the program along category lines. HRG manages the global airline program, CWT handles the hotel and meetings programs and Amex GBT consolidates data across all TMCs. The strategic redundancies create a collaborative and competitive landscape that forces the TMCs to play nice with each other and keep service levels high for the client.
Hutchings is pushing this “co-opetition” arrangement as far as she can—by identifying initiatives that require her agencies to work together to succeed. One example: As part of a drive to promote virtual meetings via Telepresence, she asked the TMCs to guide travelers toward the virtual meeting option when it is more appropriate for business goals. One TMC pushed back, saying discouraging travel was against its financial interests. But eventually, it fell in line when Hutchings confirmed that she would pay for the service because she stood to save more in travel costs than she would spend in TMC fees.
Granted, EY’s enormous corporate travel coffers held a lot of sway when Hutchings brought the integrated deal to the table.