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thetrainline.com and BT have been working together since 2005, recently extending our partnership for a further 3 years until 2014

Thursday, February 09, 2012
BT has more than 75,000 employees in the UK, around 9,400 of these are home workers, and the company consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

BT spends a significant amount on rail travel and had traditionally seen the majority of its employees booking at the station, usually on the day of travel.   However, after BT people started  booking on the BT/TTL tool, the buying profile improved, and now  BT has one of the lowest average ticket values across thetrainline.com’s corporate portfolio.

BT & TTL have a two tiered strategy that encompasses firstly increasing compliance to allow full visibility of the total BT spend, and secondly driving best practise initiatives to ensure all the potential savings opportunities are realised.

This has been achieved by the following:
• Appointing key Stakeholders within each of BT’s  Lines of Business (LOB)
• Identifying the travellers who were not booking on the BT/TTL tool be de-duping TTL management information reports with the overall business expense records
• Sending individual emails from the Stakeholders to non-compliant travellers making them aware they should be using the BT/TTL solution and the benefits to them, their LOB and to BT itself.
•  A marketing communications plan underpinning the compliance drive with articles featured on the employee magazine, BT Today, and an internal poster campaign across BT’s key 100 sites in the UK alongside targeted e-shots with best practise initiatives.
• Messages focusing on booking further in advance, and travelling off-peak
• Utilising TTL’s Cheapest Ticket Possibly travel policy, which asks the traveller to provide a reason why they haven’t chosen the cheapest ticket from a pre-defined list or go back and choose the cheapest ticket.
• Soft benefits for the travellers, for example a Free First Class Upgrade off peak promotion

The Results have been significant, with substantial savings made on the total rail spend.  Average ticket value completely negated last year’s average rail inflation of 6.2%.

References
“Following our recent market review BT think TTL are the strongest partner for us. TTL have a very strong proactive account management team, their online tool is easy to use with a clear fare structure. The tool provides us with the opportunity for bespoke messaging to drive our corporate travel policy which all supports our objective of reduction in rail spend. TTL are fully aligned to BT’s cost reduction drive, and incentivised to work with BT to ensure we achieve year on year reduction”.
Celia Gullen, BT Rail & Hotel Buyer

“Simply put – we are an extension of the BT Travel Team. We understand their strategic objectives because we evolved them together, engaging multiple stakeholders across BT.  The targets we have in place are challenging but realistic and achievable. It is the collaborative nature of the relationship that has already demonstrated impressive results and together we are confident we can deliver significant change management on this scale.”
Adrian Watts, Sales and Distribution Director, thetrainline.com