Company: James Fisher Marine Services Ltd.

Industry: Marine engineering

Employees: 600+

James Fisher Marine Services Ltd. (JFMS), part of the UK’s leading marine services provider James Fisher and Sons plc, provides a variety of technical and operational services to energy industries worldwide. Responsible for a vast offshore industry, the company delivers turnkey solutions for the maintenance of oil rigs, wind turbines, wind farms, vessels, and more.

JFMS employs approximately 200 people across numerous sites in the UK and more than 400 sub-contractors and required a business travel program that could meet their needs.

The challenge

Providing support for the offshore industry requires different areas of expertise, as every situation is unique. Expert divers may be called in to fix a vessel for example, while highly skilled engineers may be urgently needed on oil rigs. Like many companies in this type of service industry, JFMS doesn’t employ individuals with project-specific expertise on a full-time basis as the need for their involvement is often sporadic. Instead, sub-contractors play an essential role, with more than 400 of them working for the company at any given time.

Within JFMS, there’s a dedicated projects delivery team with multiple responsibilities, including all of the company’s logistics and business travel. This also includes 24/7 operational support to assist with active offshore projects.

The project services team faced various challenges and issues with their business travel. Lisa Murphy, who leads the business operations team at JFMS, made it her priority to find a solution to tackle ongoing business travel hurdles.

The unique requirements of JFMS meant Murphy needed to find a travel management company (TMC) that was responsive, informative, and efficient in order to cope with the business’ operational and logistical demands.

“The company we previously used for travel management was not responsive enough to meet the complex demands we face within the marine industry,” Murphy said. “One of the key selling points of Egencia was the self-booking function, meaning individuals have the ability to view their own journey planner and cancel bookings with the click of a button, which is often necessary because of the urgency and flexibility required for many of our projects.”

Picking up speed with Egencia

By using managed business travel with Egencia, the project services team was able to react to travel requests with confidence, knowing they could meet the demands within the restricted timeframes they often faced.

“Before moving to Egencia, previous business travel companies struggled to accommodate our needs,” Murphy said. “To put this into perspective, we’re frequently required to coordinate the travel of 20-plus engineers, technicians, and divers, including flights, cars, hotels, luggage, and other requirements like oversized luggage for things like diving equipment. And all of this often happens at short notice, and with location-specific restrictions.”

These problems were solved with the features of Egencia’s single digital travel platform, which added speed and efficiency to the team’s booking capabilities and removed a lot of the burden around administrating travel.

The platform features, which include bulk data management, guest profiles, lodge card, and more, have simplified the booking and managing experience for travelers and travel managers. With bulk data management, travel managers can create and update multiple traveler profiles at one time. Guest profiles made managing contractors’ travel easier — as short-term employees, travel managers weren’t required to create full profiles to book their travel.

The platform also supports the project services team with its reporting functionality. Reports on all travel activity are easy to access, and data visualization makes it easier to look at spend and travel trends to identify how their travel program is performing.

“Our Egencia account manager is great,” Murphy said. “She’s used the reporting to demonstrate compliance patterns for traveler groups and highlighted pain points, like noncompliance and late booking that we can completely eliminate.”

Reporting is also used to track down employees and contractors by their scheduled itineraries, which helps Murphy’s team log in and assist travelers as needed.

“The nature of our job means that we’re on call to assist our workforce, including our travelers,” Murphy said. “Naturally, there are immediate and unexpected situations in the industries we service, and it was important that JFMS found a company that operated 24/7 to assist with the around-the-clock requirements of our team.”

“With the Egencia platform, we can log in and find traveler information straightaway and even make amendments on the go from wherever we are.”

Simplifying finances in a multifaceted workforce

The project services team are able to set policy limits in the business travel platform and adjust accordingly based on whether the traveler is an employee or contractor.

“Sub-contractors don’t have the same privileges as normal policy allows, so it’s great that we can customize this and set limits for them in the guest profiles on the Egencia platform,” Murphy said.

“They also prefer not to give credit cards when booking or staying anywhere, so we use the lodge card to pay for everything. We prepay and invoice in one go, so there are no fiddly expenses.”

This simple and effective solution makes life easier for the project services team and promotes traveler satisfaction with employees and contractors. Travelers aren’t having to track back their expenses or wait for payments.

The lodge card means that Murphy’s team doesn’t have to collect expense reports from contractors and can instead manage all expenses in the platform through the lodge card. By keeping costs under one umbrella in the platform, the project team has been able to ensure a vast, complex travel spend is centralized, which simplifies tracking.

Finding savings

By using Egencia Analytics Studio, the project services team has visibility into their travel spend for the first time. This has helped the business identify savings opportunities, as well as demonstrate its cost management to key stakeholders.

“Spend is changeable as it depends on projects,” Murphy said. “The fact that everything goes through one route and is not fragmented simplifies reporting and cost-saving initiatives.”

The business controls costs by giving booking control to a select number of people on the project team. These team members oversee the management of travel for employees and sub-contractors on the road.

Travelers can log in to the platform and choose their options before a member of the project services team approves and completes the booking. And while this process is relatively unique to JFMS, the functionality of our platform means that any business can implement the platform’s features to fit their specific processes and needs.

The extensive content available on the platform also helps to play a role in controlling costs.

“We have made savings on travel by booking hotels with Egencia’s [preferred] rates,” Murphy said. This is a massive benefit for a company like JFMS, who has a large number of staff and contractors traveling often, at the same time, and often with little advance notice. They can benefit from potentially lower room rates without worrying about booking in advance.

Customer service that’s always there to help

Customer service is a big deal to JFMS’ travelers. The needs and requirements involved in their trips can be unique and demanding, and it’s crucial that expert help can be secured quickly, easily, and often urgently.

“Customer service are very helpful with extra baggage. We need to take large equipment on some trips, so it’s really helpful to have customer service there on the phone to help sort it all out,” Murphy said.

The project services team have been able to fully support employees since moving to managed business travel with Egencia. We provide support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year in multiple local languages, with more than 80 percent of calls being picked up in the first 20 seconds.

The Egencia solution

The JFMS team has found numerous advantages in moving from their previous TMC to Egencia.

“The team found the implementation process to be easy and well-supported,” Murphy said. Highlighting the comprehensive account management support and regular technology updates that consistently improve the business travel experience at JFMS. By partnering with Egencia, JFMS has also been able to focus on cutting costs and promoting agility by taking advantage of our travel technology and always-on customer service.

Traveler satisfaction and ease-of-use have been key to promoting the travel program and encouraging compliance; the company has achieved a 95 percent online adoption rate.

“The visibility into travel options is good, and it’s easy to use. The fact that we can book hotels and transport in one booking is important to us too — it makes sense, so people want to use it,” Murphy explained. “I only hear about something if there’s a problem, so for me, no news is good news.”

We know that everyone makes promises, and that’s great — as long as they deliver on them. And we’re pretty sure you’ve heard a lot of promises from a lot of travel management companies (TMCs) about how they can make business travel better for you.

We know that these days meeting the needs of travelers, travel managers, and procurement is always evolving, not unlike your business. Small businesses may need to scale up quickly and efficiently while making sure to keep an eye on their travel spend and bottom line. Large international organizations may be looking at acquiring or merging with other businesses or trying to determine how to create local policies within their global travel programs. And everyone needs data to keep track of their travel costs, look for savings opportunities, and deliver reports on their travel program to the c-suite.

No matter what you’ve heard, there’s only one ultimate goal — better business travel. When you have conversations around the best way to manage your travel, we’d like to remind you that you should expect more. Expect more from your TMC. Expect more when it comes to realizing savings. Expect more when it comes to delivering a first-class experience for your travel arrangers and travelers. We say this because you should expect more when it comes to better business travel.

Why should you expect more? Because you deserve it. Your business deserves it. Here are some things to consider when working with a TMC to get what you need.

Empower travelers with mobile technology

Mobile is the name of the game these days. Whether you’re booking travel, searching for in-policy options or trying to locate your travelers, none of this should be hard and that’s why we built our mobile app to make corporate travel easier. You should expect more from your TMC when it comes to arranging business travel and that starts with an easy-to-use mobile booking experience.

It’s no secret that every business traveler has their mobile device in hand wherever they go. Business travelers need to stay connected and get the support they deserve. Our app is localized for 17 different languages, our agents speak more than 30 languages, and travelers can easily access help by tapping on AssistMe, a feature we built to connect travelers to what they need when they need it.

Mobile can make or break travel programs and advances in 5G will impact business travel, but you can successfully integrate a mobile strategy to empower your travelers. How do we know this? Because we focus on the millions of customers that use our technology to build, and consistently update, the app to help everyone involved in your travel program — bookers, arrangers, travel managers. The result? Increased usage, traveler satisfaction, in-app bookings and approvals and features like Traveler Tracker to find travelers wherever they are.

Money matters — how you can find savings for your travel program

Our global business travel platform can meet your specific business needs when it comes to travel spend, expenses, and compliance.

From our extensive supply of exclusive, preferred hotel, air, car and rail rates — available to any of our customers across the globe — the Egencia Smart Mix technology surfaces the most relevant content so that you and your travelers can save time. Since we introduced Smart Mix in July 2019, we’ve seen the number of flights selected in the top 10 North American results increase 13 percent. And the Egencia Savings Finder for air gives you access to a dedicated team that monitors flight costs to help you save money. Over a six-month period in 2019, our customers have saved between an average of $145 and €595 per ticket.

Read more about how our platform offers up-to-date reports, helps you streamline expense processing, and lets you and your travelers easily book business travel from any device to help you save time and money.

A leader in corporate travel technology

The Egencia data science team is working with artificial intelligence (AI) teams across Expedia Group to build AI into our platform. We’re doing this to create a travel experience that’s more personalized and predictive of your travelers’ needs and preferences.

We developed a global business travel platform and we own all the technology across the entire business travel experience. This ensures comprehensive data capture which is a key step in helping us deliver preferred travel options for mobile and web users. And we know what we’re doing is working because we’ve seen a rise in bookings from the top travel options we deliver to travelers and travel arrangers. That’s the power of data science, AI, and machine learning: We can give you what you want as your first choice.

We also update our business travel platform more than 150 times every month and we’ve updated our app at least 24 times in the last year. We’re constantly working with our customers to develop technology solutions for their business travel needs.

Our customers drive our innovation, which is why we’ve created features like the Egencia Analytics Studio, a data visualization tool created specifically for business travel, an upgraded app that manages all travel functions, an industry first, and an online air exchange that simplifies flight rebooking.

These are just a few reasons why you should expect more from your TMC. Fill out the form to speak with someone on our team to find out how you can get more from your TMC.

By Vickie Gilmer/Star Tribune
At his Paisley Park studio, Prince is a gracious tour guide. He escorts a visitor through his wardrobe room, his rehearsal space, his studio, making introductions to his musicians and wife, Mayte, and pausing to pet bassist Larry Graham’s Maltese dog, who nips at his heels. But when it comes to talking about his music, he pauses. He talks about records he likes — James Brown and the old-school sound of certain hip-hop recordings — and his desire to sell software of samples of his music. But it seems he’d rather just shut up and play.

“It’s been a great year for me,” he says. He has a new record, “Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic,” to be released in November on Arista Records. And he’s preparing to take the stage Monday at the Mill City Music Festival — his first-ever outdoor performance in his hometown.

“There will be special guests — very interesting people — and a lot of surprises,” he promised Wednesday. “We’ll play one song from the new album and we’ll probably do a Sheryl Crow cover. ‘Pretty Man’ is the new song that I originally wrote for the Time [who also are playing Monday], but it was so good I kept it. In fact, I wish I had kept some other songs I gave them. I wish I had kept ‘Cool’ or at least still had one like it,” he adds, laughing.

The new album features Crow — with whom Prince jammed recently in Toronto — Chuck D of Public Enemy, saxophonist Maceo Parker, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, and indie singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco. Prince long has been an admirer of DiFranco, a pioneer in setting up her own record company.

“I wanted to meet Ani DiFranco and, lo and behold, she’s everything I expected,” he says. “We jammed for four hours and she danced the whole time. We had to quit because she wore us out. After being with her, it dawned on me why she’s like that — she’s never had a ceiling over her. People want to put ceilings on you or people think they have ceilings over them. We don’t come here [Paisley] to be put in a box.”

Querying him about the motives behind his art seems to demean the funky, butt-shaking synergy inherent in it. It’s all about sound and feeling, not definitions of why or how. And as the Artist — a name he says he adopted out of necessity to distance himself from the media hype that depersonalized his given name — he wants to talk of “the Truth.”

It’s a Truth with a capital “T” because it’s tied to his spirituality; it’s what he lives day in and day out. It’s also a Truth that he doesn’t think a lot of people understand, and he tried to explain why he wants to look forward rather than back.

“I know that people want to talk about the past,” he says. “But we’re not at ‘Purple Rain’ anymore. We don’t look like that, we don’t dress like that, we’re different people now. If you talk about that, the next thing you know, people start writing things like the Revolution is going to reunite!

“I can’t really tell you why I decided to do things or play Mill City, because they’re decisions in the past and to go back and try to remember why I agreed to things before is difficult. I am living in today and looking forward,” he says. 

A degree of separation

He’s not ready to let outsiders listen to the new record, but the Artist talked about his decision to enlist an outside producer: someone by the name of Prince. Making that distinction was a way to draw a line between the performer standing in front of the control booth and the person sitting inside it.

“You do have to mentally divorce yourself. And when you do allow yourself to have a ‘different’ producer on an album, I allowed him to have the final say. As strange as that may sound, it’s really not strange. Look at it this way: Malcolm X thinks differently than Malcolm Little [Malcolm’s birth name]. When you’re trying to change, you have to divorce yourself from the past.”

Because Arista will distribute “Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic,” it’s been trumpeted as his return to a major label after his much-publicized departure from Warner Bros. Records and his recent effort to sell CDs via the Internet. But Prince makes it clear that this is not the kind of traditional relationship between musicians and labels with a lengthy contract that sets boundaries as to what each party will or won’t do.

“People are looking for drama in it. It’s for one album. There could be a second. The contract is [only] this thick,” he said, holding his forefinger and thumb millimeters apart. “When I was at Warner Bros., I always heard from a third party,” he says. But Prince met directly with Arista’s president, Clive Davis.

“Record companies want to own our creations, but no one owns the creation but the creator. It’s an actual ideology and Clive agrees you should own your masters. He also told me, ‘I have free will, too.’ Which was good that he said that to me.”

Prince’s belabored battles with Warner Bros. have made him a staunch advocate for artists’ rights. And he holds the same ideal for all artists. He’s helped release albums by Chaka Khan and Graham — best known as bassist for Sly and the Family Stone — allowing them use of his studios and distribution through his NPG Records without all the restrictions involved in most recording contracts.

He says all artists should have the same right to own their master recordings that he now does. He laments the “mental and emotional” abuse that musicians such as Phoebe Snow have suffered at the hands of an industry that’s made them captives by not releasing their work. He applauds the work of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and gripes about the low “points” (percentage of record sales) that most musicians receive. He and Mayte have founded a charitable organization that has donated money to various organizations, including the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which provides help to musicians, and he’s donated instruments through Mill City’s Music Cares program to the Minneapolis school district. He’s also gotten inspiration from some of his new collaborators.

“Chuck D. and I talked about hip-hop and how we have to knock down what they value, and the dollar bill is nothing to put a value on. . . . What I would like to see is the spiritual aspect come back in to the inner city. It’s very important that people realize that we’re in a situation that only God can fix at this point.”

His beliefs — spiritually, musically and professionally — make him animated. He jumps up to make a point, cites biblical references that drive home his spiritual beliefs and exalts the positive influence of those around him. Clearly, there’s a lot of Truth to be told, and he wants to know that you “feel” what he’s saying, because it’s not just words, he says — it’s a way of life.

“I implore you to realize that I’m perfectly healthy and happy. My wife and I, you can see nobody’s kicked her out. We decided to do this whole thing together. The main course is spiritual well-being. My protection comes from my faith in God. I know I’m going to be all right.”

He stands and offers an invitation to sit in on his rehearsal. In the room, it’s obvious he’s happy, as are those around him. He smiles as the group runs through “Let’s Go Crazy,” breaks out laughing when one of his back-up singers comes in too early on the chorus for “Kiss” and drills home the groovy rhythm of “U Got the Look” and other songs he’ll play in concert. After a quick 20-minute drill, he walks his guest to the door. As Mayte showed him a magazine article on their new home in Spain that she’s working on, you don’t need to be persuaded that Prince is healthy, happy and, above all, all right.