Airswiftprovide international workforce solutions to the energy, process and infrastructure industries. With a history dating back to 1979, Airswift is the product of Air Energi and Swift Worldwide Resources merging in 2016.
A global leader in their industry, Airswift employ over 800 employees and 6,000 contractors who operate in over 60 countries. Their staff are supported by three super hubs in Houston, Manchester and Singapore.
The nature of Airswift’s travel is global and around 60% of their workforce travel for business. Travellers include contractors as well as their own staff, the majority of whom book their own travel, with travel bookers managing the travel of c-level employees.
The Challenge
ATPI has serviced both Air Energi and Swift Worldwide Resources for a number of years across various locations, including the UK, Dubai, Canada and Asia. After the companies merged to form Airswift, a new Head of Procurement was appointed in 2017, who identified travel and expenses as a key area of focus in 2018.
Airswift decided to go ahead with a global consolidation all of their travel through one travel management company (TMC).
The primary motivation was greater global visibility, control and compliance, with additional drivers including increased productivity and online adoption, as well as more robust safety and security processes to fulfil duty of care obligations.
As ATPI Energy Travel already managed Airswift’s travel in multiple locations, they were selected to manage the travel globally. The global nature of the project meant that it was not without complexities.
Travel in a number of Airswift’s locations had historically been unmanaged, therefore educating bookers and travellers on the new processes was paramount.
The Solution
A global project plan was agreed between Airswift and ATPI Marine & Energy. Due to the size and global nature of the project, it was agreed that the account would be re-implemented or implemented depending on location, taking a ‘hubbed’ and phased approach. Dependent on the country and the local requirements the course of action differed; in some locations online servicing went first, however in other countries offline service was the initial route. The phasing of contractors and Airswift staff also differed between locations.
The implementation of offline servicing was extremely quick, especially in the United States and Singapore, where the process took under four weeks. This efficient implementation was enabled by a winning combination of Airswift’s global mandate to consolidate all travel and ATPI Marine & Energy’s flexibility.
Furthermore, the wealth of experience brought to the project by ATPI Marine & Energy’s global implementation team and its local support teams meant the project met its strict deadlines.
Online servicing followed in the United States and Singapore, with the deployment of an online booking tool (OBT) for air, hotel and rail bookings. The OBT is accessible via ATPI TravelHubTM, an all-in-one travel dashboard which also links to ATPI Traveller Tracking SystemTM, via single sign on. The traveller tracking tool ensures Airswift complies with its duty of care obligations and has visibility of their travellers globally.
An additional focus for Airswift in 2018 was productivity, therefore improving the processes surrounding travel and traveller experience was crucial. One way in which this was achieved was through the online booking tool being configured with pre-trip approval and the capture of key information, such as cost centres.
This enabled Airswift to implement a card payment solution, utilising lodge and virtual cards. This now means that all travel is centrally settled upfront and employees no longer need to submit expense reports or settle a hotel bill on departure.
Productivity was boosted even further by the adoption of the OBT, as the tool simplified the process of booking travel for employees travelling to any of Airswift’s global offices. For example, before working with ATPI Marine & Energy an Airswift employee would contact the office in their chosen location and ask them to book and manage their accommodation.
Now, the traveller logs into the OBT and selects the chosen Airswift office from a dropdown list, which then provides a list of relevant hotels that offer pre-negotiated rates.
The Result
The global consolidation has been successful, with Europe & Africa, APAC, Middle East, and North America all implemented within 6 months. The relationship is managed from the UK by a Global Account Manager and supported with an ATPI Marine & Energy representative in each country. Airswift now has greater visibility of spend, increased control over global travel and enhanced compliance in regard to duty of care. Future developments in the partnership will only strengthen the results, with the next step being the roll out of offline servicing in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region.
As with any project of this size there were teething issues and local technology challenges along the way. However, proactive account management and hands on global mandate from Airswift has led to the establishment of a supportive partnership between Airswift and ATPI Marine & Energy, achieving global consolidation.
ATPI has enabled us to align Airswift’s values to the travel programme on a global scale – providing transparency of travel transactions, driving innovation through technology solutions and above all ensuring the safety of our employees and contractors. Alongside this has been the constant support of the ATPI Account Management Team from across the globe every step of the way.
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