Most of these topics can be delivered as one-day workshops or 1-2 hour presentations. One-day workshops are great for association chapter Education Days – chapters keep all sponsorship money; we split the registration fees. Otherwise, my speaking fees depend on travel and prep time. Training courses can be customized for buyers or suppliers. Here’s my Free/Busy calendar – I’m happy to hold dates without obligation whenever I can.
Modern Travel Procurement
- Strategic sourcing – why CEOs love procurement, why the travel category is a big target, and how travel sourcing teams are organized
- Key plays from procurement’s playbook
- Why Travel is different – Understanding travel policy’s impact on travel procurement
- Advanced airline sourcing techniques and common problems
- Advanced hotel sourcing via hotel clusters
Advanced Airline Sourcing
- Four unique complicating factors when sourcing airlines, key mistakes to avoid during the RFP process
- Understanding Fair Market Share, scenarios and savings – and their limiting assumptions. How to calibrate with your airlines – and your consultants
- The magic formula for setting airline discounts; understanding revenue management in one slide; obtaining the right data for maximum leverage
- Developing a viable sourcing strategy; why benchmarking is worthless – and what’s better
- Evaluating the non-price elements; presenting the final options to senior management in one clever slide
Selling Into Procurement (tailored for the airline category; served as the basis for GBTA’s CTE designation at Continental, Delta and United Airlines)
- What airline salespeople need to know about strategic sourcing in general, and travel procurement in detail
- Recognizing standard procurement techniques
- How travel sourcing projects are organized; key steps and decision points
- Key analytical components of an airline sourcing project, avoiding major mistakes and how to align with the buyer’s consultants
- Developing and extending a fair offer; how to agree to disagree
- Re-framing the value proposition – getting beyond discounts
Innovation In Travel Management
- Innovation – art, science or dumb luck?
- Looking backwards – major travel innovations and their inspirations
- Fresh thinking from the lean startup movement
- Leisure versus managed travel – the key innovative differences
- Four barriers to innovation in managed travel
- Big opportunities and emerging solutions
- How to be an innovative buyer
Analytical Insights – Getting the Most from Travel Data
- Majors sources of travel data, and their strengths and weaknesses
- Getting the right data into useful form
- The travel data value pyramid
- Why so many travel reports are so low-value
- Making context the key ingredient
- Focus, simplify, visualize – transformational must-do’s
- Examples of rich, actionable travel data insights
- Stages of Travel Data Excellence and Travel KPIs
