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Recorded at ACTE-CAPA Global Conference Sydney, 29-30 Nov 2017

Corporate Travel Management (CTM) Update

A few weeks ago we gave you a taste of what makes CTM founder and managing director Jamie Pherous tick when we caught up with him at the CTM offices in Sydney. Now, coming off his enlightening discussion at the 2017 ACTE-CAPA Global Conference Sydney, The Blue Swan Daily sat down with Mr Pherous to find out more.

Transcript

Jamie PherousI think we're discussing just the importance of how you've really got to be customer-facing these days. And by doing so, and using innovation feedback loops, you're really innovating for what customers need as well as people, as your people. So if you're doing that, you're going to have happy customers and happy staff, and that's really at the core of what we do.

Yeah, 2018 for technology is really interesting because we're getting a lot more now from people saying ... in the past we've been using mobile phones, really for ... to keep people informed on the run, like if you're flight delayed and getting pushed. I think we're doing a lot more now with people wanting to book in certain markets. So you're seeing a lot more mobile booking technology that we're implementing now, that still is underpinned by all the things that corporates value, which is their compliance with their process and so forth. So that's what we're doing at the moment, and we're doing that globally, as well as Australia and New Zealand, of course.

I think suppliers often think they own the relationship, but I think suppliers don't appreciate, all the time, that they could be one of 50 suppliers, and with the customer, we're talking all the time about what's best for them. I think that's a defining difference sometimes, is that we have the clients' best interest at heart, where clearly, for a supplier, they want to keep that customer and get as much as they can out of that customer, which is totally acceptable as well. I think for us, it's about being a little more wholistic about what really works for a customer, because different things do, and how we pull that together and make it very effective.

I believe it's the same everywhere, but the art is like anything else, if you are really customer-facing, not only will you own a customer, the relationship, but you become the voice of reason for that customer as well, and that's very, very important.

I think risks are always ... except for the macro risks, of course, which is global events and things like that ... it's always technology, and it's how well you embrace, you build, you innovate technology, is ... really, these days, in any business, makes or breaks you. If you're not thinking about technology and how to be disruptive, as opposed to being disrupted, you're sort of ... if you ask me, you're not going to have a sustainable business. That's what keeps me up at night. Thankfully for us, we've got huge investments in technology in all four corners of the world, but particularly in Australia, as well. We've got a great tech hub that's doing a lot of things that the market hasn't seen before, and that's what's really important.

It's really about, you know, if you listen to customers, they give you the ideas of what you want to do, as well as your other stakeholders in the business. I mean, people tend to forget that, for example, travel consultants, they see a lot of things, and they're a terribly, terribly good stakeholder to talk to about what things they think could change, that would make it easier for customers as well. It's about getting all those different stakeholders. I mean, there's things I can't say yet, till we release them, but we've got an enormous pipeline of new products, not just in Australia, but in all four corners of the world, actually. We're really excited by it, particularly the next two years. My head's already into FY '19 and what we're doing there, so it's a good place to be.

This is where I think the industry's all gone a bit bonkers. Technology's an enabler. You need very good stuff. You need the blend of both to be very, very successful. You can't have one without the other. I think, for example, we're getting a lot of stuff off the internet, and we're getting more and more off the internet, which tells me a lot about people want service control when there's exceptions that happen in their trips.

So when you come back to your question, in terms of about how important it is for people, again, it's how you engage them and how you reward them, and how they get recognition, essentially. So our whole business is built around that. In fact, even in our business, from me down, a large part of my bonus is tied to staff engagement. When you've got an aligned business that way, you tend to have everyone focus on how're we improving not just the work place, but empowering staff, developing staff, how are we inspiring staff so they can come along for the ride? It's that alignment that's very important.

I think it's business as usual. I think it's been there for a long time. I mean, people talk about it being a trend, it just is what it is. We've got tools, we built our first tool because of the tsunami, back in the early 2000s, but we're evolving those tools all the time, based on client feedback. For example, we're using those tools in totally different ways to how we thought we'd be using them for customers, because of customer feedback.

A great example is, just as I was speaking, my flight was delayed by two hours, and our system is such that our staff can see that. So the fact that my flight was delayed into America is one thing, but the fact they already moved my connecting flight so I'm first on ... I'd hate to think the other 400 people, how long they're going to wait. So it's those little tools we're using, those sort of, I guess, safety tools, to use it in other ways, that we're really proud of.

What drives me, we really want to go and make a difference to what's been in the past, so we sort of try to draw a line in the sand of how corporate travel's perceived to be managed and try to do it differently. That's our aspiration and that's fun.

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