Up in the air
18 July 2008 | Steve Bagshaw
Since procurement departments have assumed responsibility for
buying travel in the past few years the negatives have “outweighed the
positives” according to Mike Platt.
Platt, who has been the public face of travel management
company HRG for the past 20 years, divulged his views to SM as he retired from
the job to take up a past-time position as an independent counsellor to buyers
and suppliers.
He said poor buy-in and failure to comply were particular
problems with “decisions taken by purchasing questioned or in many cases
ignored”.
Do you agree that purchasing has done more harm than good in
this area of buying?
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It should be clear that travel is a discipline in its own right, however without structure it is doomed to fail.
The most common problem is failure by staff to follow the travel policy, with the right TMC in place/ buy-in from top down on the concept of a travel “programme” it has every chance of adding value.
So long as the travel policy is robust and is formed in an easy to understand manor it will succeed.
This is a classic case of an area of “benefit” to staff which shall be over protected because of the fear by staff of loosing their benefits.
The key is to have a travel manager (with a solid background in travel) having some purchasing experience (not the other way round) in a well established procurement department.
I’ve no doubt however people looking to sell consultancy will look to shatter existing arrangements making them look worse than they actually are.