Whichever country in the world you or your executives are
travelling to, there will be a myriad of local ground transportation options
available to them – from taxis to executive cars to vehicle rentals. So, why
should you use a managed car booking company like GroundScope?
In this article, our team detail the main reasons why clients tell us that they
collectively book transportation over 300,000 times a year and they are:
- An enhanced duty of care provision to staff
- Improved management information on tail end spending
- Access to a worldwide network
- Full integration with clients’ managed travel programmes
Duty of Care
Of growing concern is the safety and security of female travellers as the number of women achieving board, C-level, and senior management positions increase.
CT Business Travel’s “The World of Female Business Travel” report, as covered in Business Destinations, surveyed female professionals from the United Kingdom who had been abroad on business at least once in the last year as political instability grew around the world.
Of concern to female professional travellers were safety, difficulties with visa requirements, poor accessibility, language barriers, and local gender inequality. Nearly two-thirds of respondents told CT Business Travel that they would avoid “hotspots for dangerous activity” while half said that they would not want to travel to areas undergoing political upheaval and unrest. Slightly under half were wary and would actively try to avoid areas with high crime rates.
While 50% of respondents reported that their employers had an active duty of care policy, of the remainder, 35% were unsure whether their employer had one in existence and 15% said that their employer had no duty of care provisions in place at all.
This is not just a safety issue – it’s a recruitment issue. Competition for the very best professionals to occupy board, C-level, and senior management positions is fierce and, for positions requiring international travel, the most talented female executives may choose an employer with a defined duty of care policy over one whose duty of care policy is opaque or non-existent.
Of course, male professionals will share many of the same concerns as female professionals meaning that the commercial logic for instituting and maintaining of a robust duty of care policy is becoming increasingly persuasive for many companies and organisations.
GroundScope’s fully managed service provides a duty of care to its clients by ensuring that we do all we can to make sure your trip is on time and that it is safe and secure. We do this by vetting all our Service Partners to ensure that they are licensed and insured, we hold our data securely and we provide information on the trip directly to the traveller as well as having 24/ 7 high quality Customer Service support for any service or billing query. We also have a new secure service for those travellers visiting dangerous cities who require added protection.
Tail spend and other management information
Tail spend is becoming an issue of increasing importance for many companies and organisations. Tail end spending is that part of your company expenditure which is not actively managed. And this lack of management has an ongoing, negative effect on the financial performance of your organisation as well as creating unnecessary work for procurement teams, finance teams, and ERP planning.
Companies and organisations which have undertaken a root-and-branch reform of expenditure management (both managed spend and tail spend) often report a 10% increase in net profits for every 5% saved on tail spend. Business travel expenditure has always been difficult to manage, particularly the expenditure of your executives on company credit and charge cards when abroad.
When using GroundScope to book business taxis, chauffeur-driven cars, MPVs, minibuses, and coaches, ground transportation management information is collected and reported using just one tool, with data including:
- Spend by cost centre, division and country
- Spend by service provider
- Service levels (by service provider and service level agreement)
- Summary of customer service issues
- Environmental data, including carbon emissions
Transparent charging underpins GroundScope’s world-class provision of services to our clients – there is one fixed trip rate per Service Partner, and we don’t permit partners to engage in surge pricing. We also don’t any fees or kickbacks from our Service Partners – we work for our corporate clients to provide then with a safe – reliable and cost effective service.
GroundScope has also heavily invested in training for its service users. Even though the management tool via the app and supporting software is designed to provide an intuitive user experience, some clients do appreciate being walked through what the app and the supporting software can do and how to do it. GroundScope offers training via WebEx for both travellers and clients.
Worldwide network
GroundScope is the global ground transportation booking tool providing online booking for 150,000 business taxis, chauffeur-driven cars, MPVs, minibuses, and coaches from 500 rigorously vetted service providers in over 500 cities worldwide.
With our service, you can book taxis (better for journeys of five miles or less), executive cars (better for journeys of five miles or more) and people-carriers. Each of our Service Partners are fully vetted before we allow them onto the network and are checked for licensing and insurance – we also seek further assurance on each partner by checking their identity and permissions with their local licensing authorities after seeing original versions of their governmental paperwork.
We understand that many of our clients are committed to environmental targets for their companies and we view our participation in these schemes as very important. To that end, we choose partners whose vehicles are hybrid or electric where possible – we also encourage partners to take part in carbon emission offset programs to minimise the impact of their activities on the environment.
Fully integrated
For the ease and convenience of our customers, we believe in integration and we take every step we can to integrate our booking tool into companies’ managed travel programmes. Clients need to be able to analyse generated data in just the way which provides the required insight into risk management, cost reduction, and efficiency.
We understand that one of the biggest challenges facing business travel managers is the fragmentation of booking channels and suppliers which makes gathering important management information very difficult. Our tool makes the booking of ground transport part of the standard travel management process for the first time.
Corporate online booking tools with which GroundScope is fully integrated includes Concur, Amadeus Cytric , Atriis , HRG Online, SABS and Portman One.
Register for GroundScope
If you would like to experience our award winning service for yourself, contact us. We offer a comprehensive ground transportation platform that is entirely unique and customisable to you. Cut costs, increase safety. Contact us today to set up an account .
