Chubb Corporation

The problem

• Low online booking adoption rates
• High percentage of complex travel
• Unmanaged meetings spend
• Incumbent booking tool inadequate for organisation's needs

The solution

• Deploy new online booking tool capable of more "touchless" trips
• Integrate travel booking with meetings management
• Conduct more transactions – even complex ones – online
• Use lower cost electronic fulfilment process

The benefits

• Average ticket cost reductions were 19%
• Fixed travel expenses dropped 136%
• Total transactions were up 26%, yet average transaction cost decreased 15%
• First pass yield increased to 95%
• Overall travel department savings of 42% year-over-year
• 95% of trips are now processed without agent assistance

With more than $13 billion in underwriting revenues, a large chunk of The Chubb Corporation's business is insuring jet-setters – high-net-worth individuals and senior business executives. Chubb employees spend a great deal of time travelling to serve those customers around the world, and the company is aggressive about managing those costs. In the U.S., Chubb was already using online booking tools to streamline travel arrangement processes and ensure preferred supplier compliance by 2002. Yet its adoption rates lagged because its employees still had to pick up the phone to book more complex itineraries, including multiple city flights and international trips that its incumbent tools could not handle adequately.

Solution Selection and Deployment

To push more of its trip volume online, a Chubb team re-evaluated its tool selection, led by Sheri Bonsall, assistant vice president, administrative services, with responsibilities for the company's U.S. travel programme. In 2003, Chubb chose the Concur Cliqbook Travel to replace its existing solution. Calling Concur Cliqbook Travel a "very accessible tool", Bonsall noted that her team selected this solution for its ease of use and its ability to address more complex bookings like "open jaw" itineraries (arriving in one location and departing from another) and off-site rental car bookings without an agent's assistance. By transitioning more of these types of transactions online, Chubb was able to close its own on-site travel office and use the lower cost electronic fulfilment.

Starting in September 2003, Chubb extensively trained over 1,400 travellers and travel arrangers to ensure the system was fully functional across the U.S. by the end of December 2003. It continued to do a lot of follow up with its internal employee "customers", and Bonsall has empowered a key member on her team, Lisa Adams, manager of travel administration and technology, to be the "resident expert" on the system. Adams is available to employees as a constant resource for them on Concur Cliqbook Travel.

Results

A comparison of Chubb's U.S. travel spend the year after implementing Concur Cliqbook Travel showed that fixed travel expenses dropped 136% and the average transaction fee was down 15%, while air volume increased 3% and total transactions were up 26%. First pass yield (known in the industry as "touchless" travel, which qualifies for the lowest transaction fee from the ticket finishing agency of record) for 2004 was an astonishing 95%.

Overall travel department savings for 2004 on fixed costs translated into 42% year over year. Also of note, the average ticket price dropped by 19%. Today Chubb employees are consistently at a 87% to 93% adoption rate for overall trip transactions and 100% for eligible trips of which 95% are processed without agent assistance. Bonsall noted, "We are very much a self-service enterprise." Bonsall expects total adoption rate to reach 95% of trips once Concur Cliqbook Travel adds direct connects to Amtrak to allow train reservations and bookings.

Lessons Learned

Bonsall noted that getting senior executive support is critical to online booking success, but travel teams can't expect leadership to rubber stamp their suggestions for improvement and compliance.

"We had to prove that we needed it and it would benefit the company financially," said Bonsall. She notes the system was invaluable in supporting the documentation of spend data as well as quantifying savings analysis.

Future Outlook

Chubb recently selected an online meetings management solution to help manage the events the insurance giant holds each year. Integrated with Concur Cliqbook Travel to fulfil air bookings, this solution also lets Chubb coordinate attendee invitations and registration. In the past, Bonsall's team would often come in on the back end of meeting planning when contracts were already in play. While her team had compiled a database of potential properties and costs to help meeting organisers benchmark rates, now the travel management office can be more of a centralised resource throughout the meetings planning process.

Bonsall is also working with her Chubb peers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe to consider using Concur Cliqbook Travel, with the U.K. already committed. Furthermore, by leveraging both tools together, Chubb hopes to be able to use its meetings spend in its transient travel negotiations. The travel group previously did not have a good mechanism to understand the details of that spend, nor a method to serve internal customers that organise its events.

Conclusions

A seasoned user of online booking tools, Chubb would not settle for low adoption rates when the available technology could not keep up with the sophisticated travel experience of its users. Chubb’s perseverance was rewarded with a widely accepted tool that has enabled the company not only to reduce fixed fees, but to also gain greater control over meetings spend, the next frontier for savings in travel cost management.