Education Session Descriptions:

SUNDAY, APRIL 22

3:30 - 4:30pm

Full! Introduction to Travel Management for Executives New to Travel
If you are new to travel, do not miss this session! This unique program is designed especially for executives who are new to the business. A seasoned business travel professional will define the travel management process and the building blocks essential to an effective program. You'll gain invaluable insights on the key principles and best practices that will enhance your ability to manage your travel spending and improve your relationships with suppliers.

MONDAY, APRIL 23

9:15 - 10:30 am

Alphabet Soup: Making Sense of Business Travel-ese
With the advent of so many new travel technologies and purchasing processes there's an urgent need to standardize language, from acronyms to argot, not just for those of us in the corporate travel industry but for anyone (CEOs, CFOs, for example) who deals in any meaningful way with travel. Terms like "direct connects," "direct bookings," online booking," and "web booking" all have subtle differences, and each mean different things to different people, even within the same organization. Danny Hood, an industry visionary will share a dynamic look at what's on the technological horizon as well as define the essential terms of today's techno environment.

Doing Business Globally: Cultural Perspectives
For all the logic of globalizing travel programs, enormous hurdles exist. Corporate cultures aren't consistent country to country, never mind region to region. Neither is policy, and often for good reason. Laws and informal local practices prohibit standardisation of certain mandates, such as those involving the use of charge cards. Even how people respond to being "managed" varies-in some countries, employees openly flaunt guidelines; in others, they're followed to the letter. This session, presented by Tim de Nordwall, Institute for Intercultural Management, will cover cross-cultural issues affecting everything from technology usage, purchasing habits, and up, down, and horizontal communication.

Full! Strategic Sourcing and Procurement-based Travel Management: The New Model
Strategic sourcing is a purchasing technique successfully used by scores of companies to help them make intelligent selections of suppliers, and leverage their buying power with them. The first part of this session will cover sourcing basics from the corporation's perspective: setting goals for travel sourcing initiatives; applying strategic sourcing principles to the specific needs of travel, and the role of outside consultants in the sourcing effort. The second part will emphasize the procurement-based model for managing travel costs. Topics will include consortia buying, online auctions, self-reservation systems, substitutes for travel, measuring savings, and maintaining senior management support for purchasing initiatives. Attendees will receive sample sourcing workplans, a sample airline RFP, a travel policy scoring tool, proforma business cases and a strategic sourcing readiness test.

Corporate Group Travel: The Big Picture (part 1 of 2)
For many companies, group travel makes up a significant percentage of overall travel spend. Yet few organizations have the same purchasing disciplines in place for meetings as they do for individual corporate travel. Part 1 of this dual session will focus on ways companies are getting a handle on meeting costs through the consolidation of all travel purchases (transient, meetings, events, incentives, etc.) and forging sweeping deals with vendors. How to measure benefits of a meeting management program, collecting and analyzing data, and getting buy-in for these initiatives will also be discussed.

Whose Data Is It Anyway?
When Continental Airlines began insisting that corporate customers who receive discounts disclose precisely how much they spend with rival carriers, several long standing clients immediately began questioning their preferred supplier agreements with Continental. The flap reinforced just how complex, and contentious, the issue of data privacy and data ownership is. This session will be a high-level, open dialogue among representatives on all sides of issues- suppliers, travel managers, and third-party data consolidators--who will discuss their views on how data may be used and shared.

3:00 - 5:30pm

K.I.S.S. the Complicated Contract Goodbye: Corporate and Supplier Roundtable Workshop
This intensive, two and a half hour session revolves around a single theme: contract process and management. The objective is to determine an industry-wide best practice for what's typically the most costly, time-consuming, burdensome-and, by the way, absolutely critical-aspects of business travel management. The workshop format is designed to encourage networking and benchmarking with peers; by session's end, attendees will have worked out a process that allows buyers and suppliers to effectively and efficiently negotiate and implement win-win contracts. Participants will be split into corporate-only and supplier-only groups, after which a facilitator will guide the discussion along these main categories:

1 - RFP Process: Online auctions, consortium issues, level of detail necessary, role of procurement.
2 - Contract Process: legal office involvement, risk management, role of consultants, procurement, performance measurement and consequences.
3 - Contract Negotiation: performance monitoring, supplier utilization, effective rates paid, tracking, measuring and reporting.

A summary of highlights will be collected and reported at the end of the session and will appear in subsequent ACTE publications.

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TUESDAY, APRIL 24

11:00am - 12:15pm

Full! Online Travel Procurement: On the Road to e-Commerce Success
With a few notable exceptions, B-to-B e-Commerce has been more bust than boom. The absence of short-term ROI for many e-Commerce technologies and the inability of most e-Markets to achieve substantial liquidity is causing backlash among businesses that are beginning to demand results from their investments. Internet-based procurement automation (e-Procurement) -- including the online procurement and management of travel services -- is one area of e-Commerce than is positioned to deliver such an immediate payoff. Tim Minahan, Managing Director, e-Business at the Aberdeen Group, sorts through the e-Commerce hype, details the benefits and pitfalls of e-Procurement, and maps a strategy for effectively deploying online travel management as part of a larger e-Procurement initiative.

Doing Business Globally: Cultural Perspectives
For all the logic of globalizing travel programs, enormous hurdles exist. Corporate cultures aren't consistent country to country, never mind region to region. Neither is policy, and often for good reason. Laws and informal local practices prohibit standardisation of certain mandates, such as those involving the use of charge cards. Even how people respond to being "managed" varies-in some countries, employees openly flaunt guidelines; in others, they're followed to the letter. This session, presented by Tim de Nordwall, Institute for Intercultural Management, will cover cross-cultural issues affecting everything from technology usage, purchasing habits, and up, down, and horizontal communication.

Supplier Survival: Selling Effectively into the Strategic Sourcing Environment
Many travel suppliers view the success of strategic sourcing projects as a threat to their survival. This session will cover the basics of strategic sourcing and the critical selling implications for travel suppliers. Key topics are the new decision makers and what they need to know about travel suppliers, understanding and reframing the value proposition, working under and over the RFP, and tying travel policies to pricing. Attendees will receive a worksheet for assessing an account's travel policy and likely ability to move market share, tips for anticipating a strategic sourcing initiative at large accounts, and a checklist of key success factors for selling into a strategic sourcing project.

Corporate Group Travel: Effective Management of Meeting & Event Expenses (part 2 of 2)
Effective Management of Meeting & Event Expenses will be a case study of Accenture's meeting management program, focusing on its use of a payment system designed specifically for meetings and group events. (Working with its corporate card supplier, Accenture developed an electronic solution that provides paperless statements, customized expense coding, and a means to sort and filter transactions for management reporting purposes.) This session will also illustrate other best practices in meeting management, from leveraging suppliers to using new booking technologies.

Realities of Direct Connections: Perspectives from the Top (part 1 of 2)
The ability to book an airline ticket, a hotel room, or a car rental directly from supplier inventory sounds great in theory. But what's it like in practice? Is GDS bypass worth the effort? How much money can be saved--and are these savings at the expense of service? This session, presented in two parts, will begin with Part 1. Realities of Direct Connections: Perspectives from the Top. Here, a panel of CIOs representing various industry segments (GDS, car, hotel, agency, air) will discuss the capabilities, advantages and disadvantages of this controversial method of booking.

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2:45 - 4:00pm

Dispelling the Hype of the Digital Age
Does technology make you apprehensive? You're not alone. Most people fall prey to what digital-age expert Evan Solomon calls the "circle of anxiety"-the constant, and nerve-wracking, need to keep up with the latest high-tech hardware and software, gadgets and gizmos. Solomon, co-founder and executive editor of Shift Magazine, an award-winning publication about media, entertainment and technology, will explain how and why people should only adapt new technology that allows them to focus on their core competencies…and why they should ignore the hype.

Analysts Take On the Travel Industry
Airlines are on a merger spree; hotel companies are hell-bent on expanding even as economies slow and room inventory soars; car rental companies are reporting disappointing earnings. A leading financial analyst covering these segments will describe the micro- and macroeconomic trends affecting these three industries, then offer predictions on how the relative health or weakness in each segment will affect service and price.

Realities of Direct Connections: A Case Study (part 2 of 2)
The ability to book an airline ticket, a hotel room, or a car rental directly from supplier inventory sounds great in theory. But what's it like in practice? Is GDS bypass worth the effort? How much money can be saved--and are these savings at the expense of service? Part 2. Realities of Direct Connections: A Case Study will illustrate how Accenture and its travel agency, airline, and booking product worked together to make direct connects happen. The focus will be on how they did it, how it worked, and how they measured its effectiveness, followed by a discussion on whether this concept may be right for your company.

Canadian Business Travel Issues: Roundtable Workshop
For all the talk about consolidation of the US airlines, Canada has been quietly facing the real conditions of an airline monopoly ever since the merger of Air Canada and Canadian Airways, which now holds a powerful 80% market share. But there's promising news: two smaller carriers, Roots Air and WestJet, are expanding service and lowering fares as they do. (Roots is even paying 8% commissions.) In this roundtable session, a facilitator will prompt discussions on three major issues facing Canadian companies: how to optimize airline agreements in this dynamic marketplace; facing rising hotel costs while the Canadian dollar remains weak; and the business case for adopting new efficiencies, such as automated expense reporting, self-booking products and meeting management tools.

www.The Trip Not Taken.com
Ask travel managers how to bring costs down, and the first thing they will say is, "don't go anywhere." One way to reduce group travel and still meet corporate objectives is to use Web conferencing for virtual meetings and training sessions. The technology allows presenters to upload text, visuals and other enhancements (annotation tools, software demonstrations, streaming audio and video) before making live presentations. This session will focus on how companies can benefit from virtual meetings, and how to calculate the ROI for this type of implementation.

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4:15 - 5:30pm

Online Business Travel Fulfillment Solutions
One of the biggest fallacies about online bookings is that they're totally do-it-yourself. Many companies are finding, to their relief, that behind the scenes (and screens) is a variety of customer support services, both automated and human-powered, to help travelers with everything from destination queries to driving directions to help with complicated or multi-leg itineraries. Besides covering the ways to drive traveler usage of online booking systems, a panel will review and discuss B2B portals, how to compare transaction costs using different booking methods, and how to better evaluate different fulfillment products.

Strategic Sourcing and Procurement-based Travel Management: The New Model
(identical to 4/23 9:15 - 10:30 session)
Strategic sourcing is a purchasing technique successfully used by scores of companies to help them make intelligent selections of suppliers, and leverage their buying power with them. The first part of this session will cover sourcing basics from the corporation's perspective: setting goals for travel sourcing initiatives; applying strategic sourcing principles to the specific needs of travel, and the role of outside consultants in the sourcing effort. The second part will emphasize the procurement-based model for managing travel costs. Topics will include consortia buying, online auctions, self-reservation systems, substitutes for travel, measuring savings, and maintaining senior management support for purchasing initiatives. Attendees will receive sample sourcing workplans, a sample airline RFP, a travel policy scoring tool, proforma business cases and a strategic sourcing readiness test.

Does Your Travel Management Program Measure Up? -- Roundtable Workshop
How well is your travel management program performing? Are you saving money, getting reasonable service for your travelers, building beneficial relationships with suppliers? How often should you measure, review and consequently modify your travel program? This session, which will combine the presentation of examples of successful measurement efforts with roundtable discussions involving corporates and suppliers, will help participants exchange ideas before determining a solid list of measurement best practices.

Full! Travel Agencies - Will They Be Around In 2005?
Have commission caps, direct connects and online booking products made travel agents obsolete? The answer is a resounding no. Many agencies are thriving, having successfully made the transition from intermediary to provider of direct services, and from commissions to fees. This session will focus on new pricing models for agency services and which suit various business objectives; and service evaluation, including measuring agent productivity and determining the value of account managers. Case studies of agency best practices will round out the session.

CRM: The New Wave in Customer Care
In this era of consolidation and competition in the travel industry, the suppliers who succeed are the ones who are able to stay close to their customers. That's where customer relationship marketing comes in. Rather than focusing primarily on gaining market share, savvy suppliers are now using novel CRM techniques to enhance current relationships with corporate travel customers and to maximize the lifetime value of accounts. This session will help suppliers learn about the latest trends in CRM including, how to gather, evaluate and apply all available information about travelers, their purchasing patterns and their preferences, to help develop effective service strategies and targeted offerings.