UK cloud and managed software and services company Advanced has appointed TripActions to manage its worldwide corporate travel programme.
Advanced, which had a pre-pandemic turnover of £254 million and was valued at £4 billion when it sold a 50 per cent stake to BC Partners in 2019, has been on a rapid growth streak, acquiring three companies in 2020, and seven in the last 18 months.
The company has used the global lull in travel to re-prioritise what it needs from a travel programme and its service providers.
“We’ve used this time to reflect on what’s important in the new world of
corporate travel,” said Hicks. “And we found that duty of care, cost
control and sustainability are ultimately the foundational pillars of
our new global travel programme,” said Andrew Hicks, CFO at Advanced.
The programme will be managed with in-house support agents along with
round-the-clock service over chat, email and phone from several offices
and in local languages. It will also focus on a consumer-oriented experience.
“Advanced has always placed a premium on user- and technology-forward solutions, and its corporate travel platform should reflect those values,” said Hicks.
Financials played a big part in Advanced’s decision; the company said that the fees charged by the company’s legacy TMC accounted for 11 per cent of their overall travel programme cost.
“At the start of our conversation, Advanced believed their legacy provider to be a low-fee programme – something we see all the time,” said Chris Vik, SVP EMEA at TripActions. “Due to opaque pricing structures and disparate systems, companies are often paying more than they thought.”