How scalable is your mining organisations current approach to travel?

As mining organisations now look to the future, how can they ensure that their travel programme will grow with them? That it will remain flexible to accommodate the new processes that come with mergers and acquisitions, while also delivering the efficiency, security and spend reductions that are so important in the mining sector?

Our mining experts have compiled a list of questions to ask when reviewing your current travel solution in order to guarantee that it remains scalable as your organisation grows:

Safety and Security

Fulfilling duty of care obligations is a necessity for mining organisations of any size but the processes that ensure safe and secure travel are often overlooked or neglected during periods of growth, meaning it is well worth considering how these can be improved ahead of time.

• How often do we gather feedback on our duty of care programme? Do our travellers feel sufficiently supported on every trip?
• Is there a scheduled process to gather travellers’ feedback on their trips or travel schedules?
• Do we implement any technology to support our duty of care efforts?
• How do we track crew as they complete rotations? Is there a way to ensure that they landed safely or checked in to their accommodation?
• What are our pre- and post-trip reporting procedures? Do we receive real-time information regarding security risks, particularly in high-risk countries?
• Can travellers access 24/7 support from our TMC when travelling?
• How do we mitigate risk prior to travel to ensure the traveller has the required information, medications etc?
• Can we track historical traveller locations to ensure epidemic break outs are managed?
• How do we grade and manage banned suppliers, carriers and high-risk locations pre- and post-travel?

Policy and Approvals

Most global organisations have many crew coordinators around the world and so it’s easy for processes to vary from location to location, particularly in the eventuality of two organisations merging. However, it’s important that all offices follow a uniform procedure for booking, managing and reporting on travel to ensure efficiency and reporting capabilities.

• How is our travel policy communicated across our organisation? How often is it reviewed?
• How has your travel policy been communicated to our TMC? Is this implemented by all agents, no matter where the booking is made?
• Is there a consistent approvals process implemented across our organisation?
• How easily can we access data on out-of-policy bookings?
• Do we regularly ask for feedback on our travel policy? When was our policy last reviewed?
• Do our employees understand the travel policy?
• How does our policy compare to other clients operating in our sector?

Data & Reporting

There is an immense amount of data involved in crew changes and personnel travel – all of which needs to be reported on if it’s to be used strategically as part of cost and time-saving initiatives. Being able to run your own reports on everything from duty of care and tracking, to lead times and delays and even the cost of meals and ground transport provides you with greater control of both your time and spend.

• Do we currently have total visibility of how our organisation is travelling?
• How often do we report on our organisation’s travel?
• Do we have a standard dashboard that features key data on our organisation’s travel?
• Are we aware of current trends within our organisation’s travel?
• Is our reporting process manual? Can this be automated? Is this provided by our TMC?
• Are our travel budgets informed by our travel data?
• Do we currently use any data analysis tools to manage our travel data?
• In the event of a merger or acquisition, how would we combine two sets of data?
• Have we discussed the possibility of using predictive analytics tools with our TMC?
• Are we aware of the benefits of using predictive analytics tools?

Efficiency & Integration

Whether your organisation is growing or undergoing an acquisition or merger, it’s important that your booking systems can integrate with your existing finance, HR and management tools so that you can manage the entire travel life cycle and all information can be found in one place, rather than by logging in and out of various systems.

• Do we integrate our travel booking process with HR data?
• Do we integrate our travel booking process with our finance and expenses systems?
• Have we explored the possibilities of integration when it comes to our travel programme before? If so, was this successful?
• Do we store traveller profile information, such as passport numbers, visa details etc? If so, how do we do this?
• Are there points in our travel booking process where we think an automated element would be beneficial?
• How do we currently ensure that all of our travellers’ passport and visa information is up to date?
• How would we integrate new traveller information in the event of a merger or acquisition?
• Can we improve the planning and scheduling of our crew and employee movements?

Check out how ATPI’s Mining experts can help your organisation here.