Interview: Wood PLC, Travel Team of the Year 2024

Wood PLC, together with its TMC partner American Express Global Business Travel took home the coveted Travel Team of the Year trophy at this year’s Business Travel Awards Europe, with the company recognised for the complete transformation of its travel programme – and for achieving it in a remarkably short space of time.

The travel team, headed by vice president of global travel services, Danny Cockton, consolidated a swathe of local and regional TMCs, forged closer ties with Amex GBT, engaged with stakeholders, and rolled-out a series of new initiatives in what was a large-scale, complex and challenging global project. The upshot was the provision of a consistent offering, significantly reduced leakage and the elevation of travel management’s role within the company.

THE BACKGROUND

Consulting and engineering company Wood has some 35,000 employees across 60 countries and diverse travel needs that include regular corporate travel, rotational offshore travel, and an abundance of meeting and events.

“That’s the difference between us and some other large programmes – the complexity,” says Cockton. “We’ve got people getting on and off vessels in Equatorial Guinea, for example. We travel to some high-risk places.”

When Cockton joined Wood in 2023, he took over a travel programme that was “in urgent need of attention, not through anybody’s fault, but because of a series of acquisitions and divestments.” The company’s executive leadership set Cockton’s team a straightforward goal: “Fix and simplify travel”.

At the time, there was much “noise” from dissatisfied travellers and bookers, while many processes were slow or convoluted. There was no global HR feed in place, travel profiles were manually managed, online adoption was low, and fragmented reporting “did not enable sensible decision making,” explains Cockton, all of which led to a scenario in which travellers were frustrated with the service provided.

But change was afoot across the company, with Wood transforming processes and targeting new efficiencies in all areas. “The timing for us in travel was perfect as there was a lot of appetite for change. That was a big driving force, but we also had the right team in place to deliver and execute on what we wanted to do,” says Cockton.

He describes Wood’s travel department as a “small but mighty team of six,” comprising himself, outsourced Amex GBT travel managers Ella Fine and Juliette Jackman – who has recently left the business – together with global operations manager lead Gillian Russell, travel operations lead Stephanie Saluja, and category manager Jonathon Archer, whose roles and responsibilities have also been transformed as part of the overhaul. “We’re a small team with a big output and we work fast,” says Cockton.

At Amex GBT, there is support from Emma Jones, Robin Moncur and Jo Smart, plus Kelvin Ofori who assists with data analysis and keeps things flowing operationally. “He’s young and hungry, asks us questions and challenges us,” says Cockton.

Some members of the Wood team already had a background in supplier sales, something that was “critical” to its plans. “I wanted people who were going to challenge us and that could win people over,” says Cockton. “I wanted salespeople who could go into a room and present to senior leaders, who could present to bookers, and could sell them our new travel programme and to win them over.”

The team’s transformation process began with it engaging with regular travellers and “inviting the noise”, which helped build trust and credibility. “The first two weeks I was at Wood, we didn't speak to anybody other than travellers and travel bookers to help understand what their problems and frustrations were because if we didn't get them on board, we weren't going to get anywhere,” Cockton explains.

“Doing that right from the start helped us when we went into a country and said ‘we need to make such and such a change’. They trusted us that it was in theirs and the company’s best interests.”

What the travel team found were not necessarily deep-rooted problems with the travel programme, but “travellers that had nowhere to vent when things go wrong and no one to help them out and get something resolved.” Cockton also insisted on “getting 30 minutes with the CEO because you have to have the support from the top.”

TAKING ACTION

A central part of Wood’s travel overhaul was the consolidation of more than 120 travel management companies around the globe – a legacy of M&As and divestments – down to 50 initially, and then to 22, many of which are local partners of Amex GBT. “They’re there to plug the gaps that aren’t easy – marine travel in Africa, for example,” says Cockton.

Online adoption was a key target area, having historically languished below 15 per cent of all bookings. Wood took the decision to implement Amex GBT’s Neo platform across the business which Cockton, as a former employee of Amex GBT, was familiar with. Previously, no single booking tool had been used in more than three countries in which Wood operates.

“That familiarity with Neo helped, but we also wanted something where we could bring in additional content through APIs and get it in travellers’ hands quickly,” he says. “And above all, we wanted a consistent experience globally.”

The team made only minor tweaks to its policy. Premium economy used to only be bookable for flights of more than six hours but is now available for trips of that duration, meaning a traveller taking two connecting five-hour flights can also now enjoy an upgrade. “Policy changes were mostly simple things where we could win hearts and minds; it was just applying some common sense,” comments Cockton.

Approvals processes were also streamlined, with compliant bookings for internal travel no longer requiring active approval. “If your line manager's in Canada and you're based in Brisbane, you know there's none of that waiting time to get your trip approved now. It’s about treating people like adults and empowering and trusting them.”

Wood has also centralised ground transport payments and visas – the latter to help mitigate commercial and reputational risk – and streamlined a lot of previously “paper-heavy processes”. Cockton estimates that 60 per cent of paperwork has now been eliminated.

The travel team has also “thrown open its doors to suppliers” and secured bigger discounts with airlines where the company has been able to shift spend. And Wood’s relationship with Amex GBT was also elevated, with the TMC closely supporting its customer’s comprehensive plans both practically and strategically.

Cross-collaboration was fundamental to Wood’s successful travel overhaul, with marketing and communications instrumental in the process. “As well as technically onboarding 36,000 people, we had to win 36,000 hearts and minds,” says Cockton, “so communication was fundamental to the successful delivery of change.”

Their combined efforts included monthly town halls with travellers, FAQs and information decks made available on internal comms channels, promotional banners featuring messages from the CEO supporting the overhaul, and traveller surveys to help assess the impact of Wood’s revised travel standards.

THE OUTCOME

In April this year, Wood went live with a new HR feed, with Neo as its new global online booking tool, and a single sign-on process. Since then, online booking has leapt from 13 per cent to 72 per cent globally, even in markets where it had not expected such success. “We’ve got huge adoption in Norway, which is a lot of offshore rotational travel, where we thought we’d get barely 10 per cent, yet we’re in the 80s and touching the 90s.”

Meanwhile, leakage has been cut from 30 per cent to 3 per cent and Wood has achieved around £2 million’s worth of savings on its air spend. The travel team has also seen significant improvements in its traveller satisfaction scores, while leadership have declared that “no noise is good news”. Its ‘top two box’ score ('very good' or 'good') hit 91 per cent and its net promoter score jumped from 16.7 in 2022 to 100 in 2024.

As a result of its elevated status, the travel team is also now involved with Wood’s bid kick-offs. “We’re there from the start to advise on costs, alongside mobility and security. It’s a much more proactive approach,” says Cockton.

How did the team achieve it all?  “It was a combination of the right technology, the comms, and empowering people to self-book which has been key… treating them like adults,” says Cockton. “We were also fortunate with the timing, having the backing of leadership, and the momentum of the business at that particular time. But you still have to put the effort in and it was the make-up of our team that enabled us to do that.

“We’ve gone from travel being a pain in the rear for everyone and a lot of moaning, to it not being talked about, which is a good thing! We’ve repositioned travel from this unloved thing and really elevated it so it’s seen as being as important as IT or ESG. It’s no longer in the depths of the supply chain,” says Cockton, who now reports directly into the executive as the result of travel’s elevated status.

“We are moving people around the world to fix problems for our customers, so travel underpins the whole customer strategy. We’ve completely changed the perception of travel.” Winning the award was “brilliant recognition for our people,” adds Cockton. “As much as it was about the transformation of our programme, it’s also been about the evolution and growth within our team which has been a joy to see.”