2011 WINNER - National Travel Buyer of the Year

Ville Svens,

Group Travel Manager
Metso Corporation

Ville Svens strategy stood out for its extensive and effective use of communication

Ville Svens used travel policy to reinforce company philosophy as well as to achieve commercial objectives. His strategy stood out for its extensive and effective use of communications to inform, engage and gain the support of both internal and external stakeholders.

Global travel manager was a new position when Ville Svens took on the role in 2007. This reflected the changes that were going on in Metso itself. Metso, a company which supplies technology for heavy industry such as the pulp and paper and mining sectors, had begun to move its production to developing countries to be closer to its customers. The consequence was even more overseas travel.

Ville began to look at adapting Metso’s travel programme to stay in line with changes in its strategy. He now had to face the challenges of incorporating countries with no tradition of managed travel into a consolidated programme.
“With operations in more than 50 countries and customers in more than 100, it’s safe to say that we are global,” he says.

He began by incorporating Sweden to join home country Finland before encompassing the rest of Europe and North America into the consolidated travel programme.

Ville has not chosen to make use of a single global travel management company solution but has instead opted for different TMCs in different regions. He believes that the most important factor in a global programme is amalgamated data. He collects detailed information through a unified travel process based on a strong and robust travel policy combined with a payment and expense management solution. He says that agency and expenses data are the most important sources, but he also takes account of supplier data.

Ville believes his excellent financial results, which have come from both direct and indirect savings as well as process efficiencies, can be attributed to a patient and coordinated approach.

He wrote the global policy first in 2008 but has worked in tandem with other internal departments such as HR, which owns the policy, IT, which is involved in systems and the service centres model, and finance, which is responsible for the expense management systems.

“The biggest challenge is getting to know your organisation and gaining the contacts – the right people – and that gets things underway,” he says.

Ville is very conscious of the importance of communications in driving policy adoption. “Internal organisation and communications are essential,” he says. “I am always trying to involve other departments so I find myself speaking on subjects such as risk management and environmental issues.

“I produce six regular newsletters and manage our intranet site. I also have a contact network of people for travel-related issues in every site I manage.”

Ville also does external communications which he believes to be equally as important. “The Metso philosophy is to support long-term relationships with our suppliers and local networks of colleagues.

“For example, I am making use of this Award in our communications. It is a good story and our travel management company is using this too in its communications.”

For Ville, however, communications is not the end in itself. He says, “The most important thing in policy is to take care of employees and give them a sense that we are looking after them. After that comes spending. Controlling spend is an important issue for us but first we must make sure that everyone is safe and sound.”

Ville grasped that the key to any successful travel management programme is a comprehensive understanding of the organisation and the role of travel in helping it achieve its goals.