Consulting, a tool for diversity

By Jerry Limone

While leisure travel is clearly the most popular way for corporate agencies to diversify their businesses, it's not the only way. Some large agencies, like Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Northwestern Travel Management, have diversified by expanding their corporate travel services into the field of consulting, to help clients deal with broader cost-management issues.

Steve Shook, who heads CWT's solutions group, said the company has offered consulting since the early 1990s, but until about a year ago, the service was supplier-centric -- CWT identified travel patterns and corporations took that information to the negotiating table.

"Now we're spending time on the demand side, managing traveler behavior -- helping travelers make better choices," Shook said.

Shook said the company's solutions group has "turned the corner" in the past year, developing automation that tracks ever-changing airline fares and services.

Within the solutions group there are seven consultants dedicated to interpreting that data and offering a plan of action to companies, some of whom only do business with CWT's solutions group.

"In the past month, the solutions group has taken on seven new customers," Shook said. "Some are CWT transaction clients and some aren't."

Consulting appears to be a logical way for corporate agencies to diversify their businesses, but agencies must prove that any cost savings outweigh the expense.

In 1999, Belinda Muehlbauer, director of consulting for Minneapolis-based Northwestern Travel Management, asked clients if Northwestern could demonstrate the value of an ongoing consulting program by offering the service at a reduced fee.

"We did those case studies and showed them that a consulting program really does work," Muehlbauer said. "We're now working with 15 customers on a continual basis. It's a profitable venture."

Northwestern now is looking to expand its consulting business into meetings, which Muehlbauer says is an "untapped market" because most corporations don't have as good control of meeting spending as they do of transient business travel. -- J.L.