Are crew travel costs leaving you high and dry? asks Dynama

5 Benefits of using technology to navigate the choppy waters of travel management from Lee Clarke at Dynama

The cruise and maritime industries are very demanding by nature. Frequent last-minute changes to vessel schedules, emergencies and the everyday challenge of deploying a large, moving workforce at short notice to remote locations can play havoc with even the most carefully organised travel plans.

Travel costs can be huge in the cruise industry, however, organizations are able to realise significant savings in travel budgets by implementing automated travel management to even out uncertainty. The realities of operating in such an unpredictable industry are expensive tickets and costly cancellations. It’s a vicious circle – you need flexibility to execute successful crew schedules but the pressures associated with agility eat into profits.

Surely, there’s another way?
If the prospect of exceeding travel budgets fills you with dread, then read on. It’s time to discover how workforce and resource optimization solutions can navigate the choppy waters of budget management and help you and your organization, manage costs. Just make sure you choose technology with automated travel administration functionality built into its DNA.

Then, sit back, relax and reap the following five benefits:

1.Save time, effort and costs – modern automated travel generation is based on various criteria including personnel and vessel schedules. The system then uses this information to recommend the best options for joining or leaving vessels in line with your organisation’s travel policy or business rules. This saves time, effort and achieves tangible economic efficiencies from the very beginning

2.Maximize the power of integration – the latest systems are purposely designed to integrate with the world’s leading travel booking systems to simplify travel planning, find the right class of travel in a timely manner and shave those all-important dollars from the overall travel costs.
With integrated systems, travel fulfilment data can be forwarded to crew automatically and notifications can alert management to any travel booked outside of policy and therefore at a higher cost

3.No more silos – the beauty of automated travel administration, when built into a workforce and resource optimization platform, is its ability to provide a transparent, birds-eye view of travel planning across different departments and enforce company policy across the group. So, if the travel and crewing teams work separately, which they frequently do in many organizations, having information all in one place makes booking flights and hotels effortless. It also helps to minimize re-booked, cancelled and unused travel.

4.Bird’s eye view – a centralised, context sensitive repository of data including everything from travel documents, crewing schedules and rotations, company travel policies and individual travel preferences to travel plans (local flight departure and arrival times, details of onward travel such as car hire and hotel stays), are readily accessible at the click of a key. This birds-eye view ensures crew members join the right vessel at the right time. It also helps to maximize budgets by ensuring individuals are booked on business or economy flights depending on their grade or the length of each flight

5.Improved communication - what is more, centralized and automated technology records and displays fulfilment information, and then notifies staff of any changes to travel plans. This improves crew satisfaction and retention as optimal travel is booked, as opposed to last minute reservations which frequently involve multiple changes and different routes at a higher price. Likewise, all changes to personnel information, itineraries and crew rotations are instantaneously flagged up to travel administrators ensuring a quick turnaround if travel does need to be re-booked. This saves valuable time that can be better spent on sourcing the best travel deals to keep costs down.

And the moral of the story is - using automated travel generation technology ensures travel-ready crew, time and cost savings, compliant vessels and personnel - and happy passengers.

Lee Clarke is Regional Director – Northern Hemisphere at Dynama www.dynama.global

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About Dynama

Dynama, an Allocate Software company, builds on 25 years’ heritage and is a leading provider of maritime and defence workforce deployment software. Headquartered in London, Dynama has a fully fledged new office in Canberra (Australia) with sales and support in the USA.

Its flagship product, Dynama OneView, is designed to underpin complex workforce optimization in safety critical and highly skilled environments, delivering both safe staffing and productivity savings.

For more information, visit DYNAMA GLOBAL

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