TAKING OFF

Not every small or midsized enterprise stays small or midsized in perpetuity. Some do, charting a steady course as they serve a reliable base of clients with aggressive expansion not on the list of priorities. Some wither, eventually finding themselves unable to continue as a going concern. But a third category of SME, through some unique combination of skill, timing and luck, finds itself on an expressway to rapid growth, expanding geographically and watching their employee count soar.

In that third category, as revenue sharply grows, so can the attention paid by senior management to business travel. Perhaps a review of expenses makes clear to the growing company's executives just how much they're spending on travel, or perhaps an incident or disruption to a high-profile traveller on the road raises the salience of the category to managers and stakeholders. One way or another, rapidly growing SMEs often come to the realisation that as their business scales up, so should their travel programme.

The ways in which rapidly growing SMEs try to tackle business travel management vary widely, borne of the fact that many such managers don't know precisely where to turn. Some look to dump that responsibility on an executive assistant or office manager, only to realise their operations are becoming big enough to warrant a more dedicated approach. Some look for a third-party partner and are cowed – or inspired – at the variety of options they find. Some try to put together a formal travel policy but aren't sure what to include or why to include it.

It's a complex issue but, even as growing SMEs find similar tales in other aspects of their businesses, it's one that requires attention due the size of the spending involved and the duty of care required to travelling employees.

"What actually happens is, travel becomes quickly overwhelming and it kind of takes them by storm in that that's not an expense they're thinking about or worrying about," said Craig Fichtelberg, president and co-founder of travel management company AmTrav, of growing SMEs. "And all of a sudden it's a big chunk of their budget, and they're starting to realise that they have no control over that whatsoever."

Finding the why before the how

Before considering the travel management nitty-gritty of policy stipulations and preferred vendors, SMEs scaling up their programmes would do well to consider the objectives they want it to accomplish. SMEs that are rapidly growing often have broader sales goals or acquisition targets, and it's perhaps more valuable to consider how a travel programme could support those goals instead of serving solely as a vehicle to keep spending in check.

Florida-based classroom design firm Meteor Education, whose revenue and travel spending in recent years have increased by annual double-digit percentages, looked for a more comprehensive travel management strategy when it hired travel veteran Rebecca Kelley last year as a travel and expense analyst, its first full-time travel role.

"We want to balance compliance with traveller satisfaction," said Kelley of Meteor, whose annual travel spending is less than $5 million. "That's always front of mind, especially given the culture of our company. We want better reporting and better metrics. We've got monthly meetings to sit down with our managing directors and go through the numbers and kind of, you know, balance those against their budget."

Sean Parham is currently senior manager of travel and meeting services at San Francisco-based tech firm Discord, but until October was head of global travel, meetings and card services at Snap Inc., the parent company of tech applications Snapchat and Bitmoji. Snap, Parham said, grew rapidly via international acquisition, and the goal of the travel management programme was to include and account for the new operations and employees.

Meteor Education had a TMC in place when Kelley joined the company, she said, but since has replaced it. "The original plan was to possibly do an RFP," she said. "We were using virtual card payments for hotel, and I got wind that one of the TMCs had created their own virtual card programme. It was an agency I already had a pretty high opinion of, and so when we started looking at everything that they could offer, we said just go ahead and send us a proposal."

After a review of the TMC's service offerings and pricing structure, Meteor made the decision to switch. "I wasn't sure that a full RFP was really kind of the way to go because we are so small," said Kelley. "It was pretty straightforward."

Snap also had a TMC when it began growing internationally, Parham said, but wrapping in each country – with different cultures, currencies and sometimes policies – into the travel programme proved challenging and left him with the impression that, for SMEs, perhaps there is a better way.

"I've been doing this a long time, and I've always thought that, hey, we should always try to consolidate. We should try to keep everything under one TMC and one online booking tool, and that's the way it goes," said Parham. "After what I went through at Snap, the one takeaway was that there doesn't necessarily have to be one TMC. You can set up regionals. With today's technology… the reporting capabilities are out there."

One solution for growing SMEs, Fichtelberg suggested, is to limit the focus of a new policy to booking channel compliance.

"If you can get everyone booking in one place, you can establish centralisation without having to put a whole bunch of bells and whistles in, like trying to restrict them to do this, or do that," said Fichtelberg. "Then you can make decisions from there in terms of [how] to firm up this programme or meet the goals that align with the company culture."

Kelley said Meteor Education does have a policy that travellers should book through the designated TMC or online booking tool but noted that "we're not really a hard mandate kind of company."

Still, she said, the company recently swapped out a policy that designated price caps for travel spending in favor of a lowest-logical airfare policy. "I have never in my experience found a price cap to be very logical," she said.

Meteor's changes have generated "a bit of pushback," said Kelley, "but everybody understands the need for it. It's just getting used to it."

To that end, SMEs in rapid growth cycles often exist in exciting, tumultuous times. While some employees likely will appreciate the security and consistency afforded by a scaled-up travel management programme, others may find it restrictive, and Kelley counseled that communication must be a clear aspect of any effort.

"The only advice I would give anyone is just to be very clear about why these changes are happening," Kelley said. "If you just throw out a bunch of changes without explaining the reason behind it, you will get push back. But when you approach it as how [the changes] will not only benefit the company but benefit you as a traveller – this is how this is going to save you time and improve your experience – it's just going to make your travellers a whole lot happier."