The implementation process is key to a successful business travel program. We’ve found that gathering key details about your current travel program in advance will help you get your travel program up and running quickly.

We want to provide you with information to help you understand the onboarding process so that you’re prepared when you meet with your implementation manager. The implementation manager will need the information below to configure your travel program.

Getting started

To get started, you’ll want to get an accurate picture of your current travel program. The pre-implementation checklist below identifies some of these key requirements to kick off the onboarding process.

Pre-implementation checklist:

• Update your travel policy – Does your company have a travel policy? Have you compared it to the capabilities of the corporate travel booking tools you’re evaluating? Now is the time to review and confirm that your existing written travel policy can be supported. Your implementation manager can help identify any capability gaps, but you’ll want to make sure your travel policy is up to date and that these are policies you’ll want configured into the platform. Please provide your written travel policy to your Egencia Sales or Implementation representative. Read more about travel policies.
  
  
• Legal entity details – For each company that requires billing separation or needs to be designated separately, we’ll need a legal entity name, address, and federal tax number (e.g., VAT). Please add this information in the “Legal Entity Details” tab of the Master Requirements Template Excel.
  
  
• Vendor agreements – If you’ve negotiated rates with any hotel, airline, car rental, or rail providers, you’ll want to compile a list of all these vendors. The list should include vendor name, contact name, phone number, and email. You’ll also need to confirm that each vendor can offer your negotiated rates through a major global distribution system (GDS) such as Sabre, Amadeus, or Worldspan.
  
  You’ll want to make sure the contacts you negotiated your discounts with are still with your vendor. If they aren’t, you’ll need to find out who the new contact is. This contact will work with your corporate travel provider to make sure your discounted rates appear for your travelers.
  
  Please add this information in the corresponding Contracts (Air, Hotel, Rail, Rental Car) tabs of the Master Requirements Template Excel.
  
  
• Form of payment – Will all your travelers have access to a credit card — personal or company-issued — for their bookings? If so, these details can be added by the traveler at launch. If your preferred form of payment is not a credit card, such as AMEX BTA or On Account, be sure to have these accounts set up and be ready to provide the details to your implementation manager. Please discuss your preferred form of payment with your Egencia Sales representative.
  
  
• Assemble the right team – It’s important to have an integrated team at your company to handle various responsibilities. This team should include the person responsible for the day-to-day management of your travel program, technical resources to support set up of single sign-on or an employee profile data feed, and support from your finance and/or risk management teams. If we’ll be implementing a business travel solution across multiple locations, it’s imperative that any local decision makers will be available to support the implementation or that they’re aligned with a central program’s directives.
  
  
• Traveler profiles – Each employee who books their own travel, will have a unique profile on our platform. In addition to personal details such as reward program numbers and contact information, we’ll need to know their role. For example: Traveler (can only book their own travel), arranger (can book travel for themselves and others), or travel director (full access to book travel for any traveler and can define and configure system settings).
  
  Information required to create a basic profile for each traveler: First name, last name, traveler group, department, phone number and email address.
  
  We’ll load basic traveler profile data and any other related reporting data during the implementation process. You can also change how you want to manage profiles after launch. Read more about profile management options.
  
  Note the Master Requirements Template does not include a tab to include your travelers’ data (due to data privacy compliance regulations). Your Egencia Implementation representative will discuss with you traveler’s data collection upon kick off call.
  
  
• Reporting information – We can support the collection of data you might need for reporting. Additional details can include cost centers, reason for travel, and business unit. We recommend you consider the additional data you want set up for each traveler and/or what information you’d like to collect about each traveler’s booking. Note the Master Requirements Template does not include a tab to include reporting data fields. This will be discussed during kick off call and all options explained by your Egencia Implementation representative.
  
  
• Approvers and arrangers – If you want to have an approval process configured, you’ll want to identify who the approver will be for each traveler’s booking. You can designate one or more users to be approvers for all travel purchases requiring approval or you can designate approvers for specific groups of travelers. Read more about approval.
  
  If you want specific users to be designated as arrangers, we’ll need to know who they are and what travel they can arrange. Read more about arranging travel.
  
  Note the Master Requirements Template does not include a tab to include your approvers and arrangers (due to data privacy compliance regulations). Your Egencia Implementation representative will discuss with you approvers and arrangers data collection upon kick off call.
  
  
• Custom Hotel Locations –  Do you have multiple offices, customer locations or other frequently traveled to locations? If this is the case, we can help make sure your travelers search nearby hotels, for example. To configure this feature, we’ll need the various location names and street addresses of the locations. Please add this information in the “Custom Hotel Locations” tab of the Master Requirements Template Excel.
  
  

These are our recommendations to help you prepare for implementation. We hope to have the opportunity to partner with you to make your new travel program a success!