Follow our step-by-step guide to achieving greater volumes of bookings through your self-booking tool. Gillian Upton explains all

When implementing a self-booking tool, the industry target is 40 per cent adoption rate in the first year of implementation, then increments of ten per cent each year thereafter. Easily said, more difficult to do.

In 2005, the online adoption rates at Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank (part of National Australia Group Europe) were averaging 30 per cent. Within 18 months, however, this was increased to over 70 per cent. This improvement was achieved as part of a wider programme of initiatives to simplify and improve processes, increase efficiency and drive down costs.

The group's TMC, Portman, uses its LiveWire tool to facilitate online booking for NAG'S domestic travel. There is a robust internal process in place to manage all travel, with pre-trip approval required for all travel. Initially, NAG decided not to make it mandatory for all domestic travel to be made online due to technical shortcomings of the Portman SBT, and in order to see at what level voluntary take-up settled at.

The Group’s Relationship Manager Karen McGinnity explains: “Cost saving was our driver to introduce an SBT. However, it became clear that with the limitations of the system, people were apprehensive of change. This meant there was a relatively low level of online adoption.”

NAG therefore saw an opportunity to drive greater savings by improving the customer experience through standardising the end to end travel process.

The company decided to re-launch its travel policy and processes in January 2007, and LiveWire was an integral part of this. There were also other fundamental changes, such as the introduction of online rail ticket printers in various locations, the mandatory use of the SBT for booking all domestic travel, and the issue of improved behavioural management information to enable Senior Management to actively manage non-conformance. Another major change for NAG was its decision to move away from its preferred supplier air programme and introduce the 'lowest logical' fare policy whereby its travellers are asked for the date, location and time of their first and last meetings, and are then booked on the lowest logical route to get them there.

“The potential savings from this switch are huge,” says Portman’s National Account Manager Brian Lawler.

These changes meant that the bank had a far more compelling story to tell its travel bookers and senior management.

Read on for McGinnity’s step-by-step guide on how NAG achieved vastly improved levels of adoption: hotels up from 20 per cent in January to 63 per cent in June; air at 72 per cent in the summer months (up from 50 per cent in January), and rail at 88 per cent (up from zero per cent five months earlier).

STEP 1: Get buy-in for your project from the key stakeholders. “Getting buy-in from the top is essential to stop people claiming to have 'special reasons' for not using the correct processes,” explains McGinnity.

STEP 2: Have a clear strategy. “We wanted to optimise savings, as a background to making the decision to mandate the SBT’s use,” explains McGinnity. “Mandatory is key.”

STEP 3: Know and understand the limitations and scope of the online system you’re using. Employing LiveWire since 2004, NAG was an early adopter of the system and McGinnity remembers the experience as being challenging, but with great future potential. McGinnity knows that she couldn’t have introduced mandatory use of the SBT in 2004 as the shortcomings of SBT systems – chiefly speed issues – were causing teething problems across the industry. NAG launched the SBT across all their locations simultaneously. Portman National Account Manager Brian Lawler says: “One of the lessons we learnt was to only launch in one location. Alternatively, you can test in multi locations and spend more time in ensuring technical performance and capability.”

STEP 4: Filter that strategy down into the company travel policy. “Our previous travel policy was too general and allowed too many exceptions,” says McGinnity. “It has since been re-written far more concisely, embraces best practice from other businesses, and is now overviewed on an ongoing basis by senior management.”

STEP 5: Effective communication of changes to the travel policy is essential to ensure no-one has an excuse to be non-compliant. In particular, educating bookers on the new options open to them was an essential condition to capturing the benefits offered by the new system.

NAG and Portman therefore ran roadshows in its three main UK offices, in London, Leeds and Glasgow, to catch the bulk of the 220 bookers, plus it held live conference calls for those that couldn’t attend. In addition, an assistance pack, written in plain English, went out to each of them, explaining what lowest logical fare meant, says McGinnity. “It explained where Stansted is and how to get from there to London, for example. It was a big job but it was needed,” says McGinnity.

“The packs had all the information they would need so that they would use it”.

Says Portman’s Lawler, “We made it clear to them that they had a role to play, and we reassured them that they would get the support they might need.

“We had a dedicated resource at Portman, for example, to make sure things ran smoothly and to ensure optimum adoption levels postimplementation. This gives bookers the encouragement they need.”

STEP 6: Keep a handle on non-compliant bookers and travellers. NAG has inaugurated monthly behavioural reports across its business which show which trips were booked, who took them, where to, and what other travel options were available at the time. This highlights missed opportunities. Noncompliant bookers need to be treated gently, at first. “We get a manager to call them and explain that they have made however many bookings during the previous month but that none of them had been on LiveWire,” explains Lawler. “It identifies a training need which is quickly addressed.”

STEP 7: Training is crucial for new and advanced users and to attain stakeholder buyin. It must also be ongoing so you catch all new employees. Booker ‘churn’ within a constituency of more than 200 bookers means that there is always a need for training courses. In addition, there are those bookers who still require support and encouragement on an ongoing basis. “This year alone we’ve trained or re-trained all NAG's bookers on LiveWire.” Recalls Portman’s Lawler: “There were people who stood up at these sessions and said, ‘I’ve been a booker for five years and I’ve never used LiveWire’.” There are also advance courses too. Adoption rates have soared in the five months since the relaunch. “You’ll never get 100 per cent but it’s all going in the right direction,” says Lawler.

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