Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), the world’s leading travel management company, is managing business travel in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) for BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, effective January 1, 2008. In addition, BASF has turned its internal travel booking service over to CWT. The travel management company has been servicing BASF in the Asia-Pacific region since 2005. In each of the EMEA countries where CWT will manage the chemical giant’s business travel program, a CWT business travel center will service BASF travelers. By mid-year, BASF will have a European-wide online booking tool that will enable them to drive savings and facilitate point-to-point bookings for travelers. “Over the last few years, managing corporate travel has become highly complex.

There are so many pricing models and distribution channels that BASF can no longer provide a sustainably competitive travel booking service. This is why we are turning our internal travel booking service over to Carlson Wagonlit Travel and asking them to help us manage our business travel program overall,” said Dr. Georg Wellinghoff, BASF procurement manager for Logistic Solutions.

He added that the decision of BASF to use CWT as its travel management company and to consolidate the travel program in Europe was based on the latter’s vast global network and offering, its expertise in seamlessly integrating travel management technology and procedures, and its proven ability to meet the highest service level requirements. He also said that BASF-employed travel specialists who move to CWT could potentially enjoy greater career opportunities in their field than they would with BASF.

The U.S. General Services Administration recently completed deploying its end-to-end E-Gov Travel Services program that fully integrates and automates all travel booking, reporting and reimbursement processes in one Web-enabled system. In the past year, GSA completed the migration of 82 federal agencies onto the E-Gov Travel Services platform. The program encompasses about 93,000 travelers and $6.5 billion in consolidated annual expenditure. GSA books 3 million annual transactions, 2 million of which include airplane tickets. Twenty-four of the largest federal agencies represent 93 percent of the total transactions. The GSA program does what many in business travel have only dreamed about, despite several strides in linking parts of the end-to-end process. Bob McCauley, vice president and program manager for CWT/Sato Travel’s E2 Solutions, said the GSA end-to-end process begins when the “traveler files a travel authorization that goes through a workflow approval process based on the nature of travel.

The authorization is approved, creating an obligation against the budget for that trip. The travel is performed and if any changes take place, the authorization can be amended. The traveler completes a voucher and pulls in expenses laid out in the authorization, then completes specific expenses incurred on that trip. The voucher is sent to an approval flow process where approvers look at the expenses. Once approved, the voucher is audited electronically or manually by the agency. It is then sent for payment through the financial system to the Treasury.”