We will live in a changed and mixed world,
where virtual meetings are common
and business trips and events are not necessarily required.
The Business Travel Competence Team
Mike Bassmann, Ralf Tellmann, Michael Zwickl
Travel Management
We’re your first point of contact when it comes to your business mobility, i.e., travel management, for your company.
In addition to the planning and booking of business trips, travel management refers to the complete course of the travel booking and accounting process. Travel management is therefore the analysis, control and optimisation of processes and services required in connection with 1. Planning, 2. Booking, 3. Travel expense accounting and 4. Controlling of business trips. The processes are differentiated into pre-trip, on-trip and post-trip.
Also known as Corporate Travel Management, the aim of travel management is to ensure an effective and efficient business travel process. Purchasing must be involved at an early stage in order to achieve optimal purchasing success.
Due to the complexity of travel management, all national and international project and purchasing activities need to be set up and controlled centrally. Travel management activities are often also handled by the finance, purchasing or human resources departments.
Tellmann Consulting works out the right answers together with the client. Our services range from analysis and strategy development to implementation management. This results in immediately effective and sustainable solutions for our clients:
- Strategies for the optimisation of travel management services
- Global sourcing, tendering, negotiations and volume bundling
- Purchasing efficiency and cost reductions of travel services (total cost of travel)
- Commercial, functional and technical process optimisation
- Organisation of structures and processes
- End-to-end transformation and implementation
- Optimisation of payment systems, such as credit cards
We provide these services nationally and internationally.
We identify strengths and weaknesses in the business travel industry.
The travel policy is an action regulation with binding character for all travellers. The travel policy is the ‘platform’ for travel management, as all rules and regulations agreed with service providers must be taken into account in the systems. We support you in the design and implementation of national and international travel policies.
The use of credit cards has become indispensable in the business travel industry. For you as a company, the benefits include the elimination of advances or the transparency of travel expenses, which become traceable with credit card details.
We specialise in finding the right credit card provider for you and navigate you through a variety of credit card types (>30 pieces), such as virtual credit cards, BTA cards or ePayables. We take into account national and international framework and payment conditions in a transparent tender process in order to achieve the best result for you. In addition to traditional credit cards, we can also develop an ePayable or a Supply Chain Finance Programme for your company’s expenses.
Our negotiation results are very often game-changers, as we can reduce costs for our clients and receive rebates on the transaction volume made. Tellmann Consulting not only negotiates on an equal footing with the banks, but also implements the credit card programme in your company.
The online booking engine and the travel agency, also known as TMC (Travel Management Company), are of significant importance in the procurement of your travel services. This is especially true when booking complex trips (e.g., open-jaw flights). Especially in times of pandemics, travel agents have to consider a multitude of influencing factors, such as quarantine regulations or flight corridors. We support you in negotiations and in the selection of domestic or international transaction (TAF), management (MAF), subscription or network access fees.
The approach for negotiating with airlines largely depends on your past and forecasted volume. Very often there are oligopolies with monopolistic tendencies, capacity bottlenecks or restrictions such as night flight bans. Tellmann Consulting negotiates airline routes, transaction fees or loyalty programmes for you.
In the global hotel market, there are numerous accommodations for business travellers. The majority of beds are in the properties of the larger hotel chains. We analyse your accommodation needs together with you and develop an optimal hotel programme. We take into account different booking channels, such as hotel portals, online booking engines or travel agencies.
As part of your mobility concept, we examine the use of carsharing, carpooling or rental cars. We follow your specifications, such as vehicle types or booking volumes, in order to optimise and implement them internationally.
We also support you in optimising your vehicle fleet, in implementing e-charging stations or in introducing an internal employee scheme for e-bikes, where you as an employer can support e-bike leasing either partially or completely tax-free.
The health and safety of your employees is paramount and forms the basis for your company’s success. Tellmann Consulting supports you sustainably and in line with your global duty of care for your employees. We show you preventive solutions for possible medical emergencies or safety incidents, so that your employees can start their journey stress-free and well prepared.
As MICE activities are often planned and executed in a decentralised manner, it’s usually very challenging to determine business figures and establish centralised control. In the highly fragmented travel agency market, there are many opportunities for consolidation. The MICE process is ideally supported by travel management systems. Here, there are also smart approaches to optimising processes and costs. Standardised and proven processes are important, such as for product launches or corporate meetings and events.
Not only disasters, such as tsunamis or earthquakes, but also everyday incidents, such as illness or necessary treatment, need to be addressed by the company, prepared for the travellers and implemented in emergency plans. As the duty of care lies with the employer, the provision should also be insured with regard to foreign countries. We analyse and jointly select the most suitable insurance solution for you.
In the age of digitisation, travel booked by customers online is advantageous because it provides you with process optimisation, transparent and comparable prices, transaction savings at travel agencies, and greater convenience for travellers.
Online booking systems are also called Online Booking Tools (OBT), Online Booking Engines (OBE), Self-Booking Tools (SBT) or Internet Booking Engines (IBE). Travel booking is done in the ‘Travel’ module and travel accounting is done in the ‘Expenses’ module, making entry (booking and accounting), approval and review in both modules quick and easy. Online platforms are offered by SAP Concur, Amadeus Cytric, Chrome River or MobileXpense, for example.
Tellmann Consulting supports you in selecting the travel management technologies tailored to your needs. We attach great importance to standardised processes and agile extensions to enhance your competitiveness. Do you need a corporate licence or is there the possibility of using certain technologies of your travel agency? We have experience in the selection and implementation of various travel management IT systems:
- Online Booking Engines
- Online Expense Engines
- Credit Card Portals
- Airline, Hotel and Car Rental Portals
- Meeting Place Finder
- Traveller Security
- Reporting
- Awards Programmes (e.g., Miles & More)
- ERP Integration
- CO2 Calculator
- End-to-End Digitisation
- Travel Management Cockpit / KPIs
By Change Management, we mean the coordination of a planned transition phase from the current to the target state. We combine top-down and bottom-up communication by actively involving stakeholders. The more employees are engaged, the more likely the changes will be accepted and supported. Tellmann Consulting implements an engagement and communication plan coordinated with the stakeholders with the support of roadshows or telephone/video conferences, for example.
We capture the multitude of travel management information in a structured way within a database (‘master data’), where all national and international information is combined. This includes cluster OBEs, TMCs, hotels or credit card providers. Together with our clients, we coordinate the implementation plan, which includes the phases, countries and clusters, and is presented in a deployment map (DIN A0).
.
Not only do we advise you on a purchasing-specific basis, but we also show you all the options for action and optimisation as part of an end-to-end strategy. In the implementation of travel management programmes, we work in line with the ‘think global, act local’ strategy.