How Fortune 500 financial company leveraged HQ’s global supplier network to expand ground transportation

Industry:

Financial, Software, Data, and Media

Client Size:

20,000+ Employees

Location:

New York

Company Background:

Our client is a financial, software, data, and media company. The Company provides financial software tools such as an analytics and equity trading platform, data services, and news to financial companies and organizations worldwide.

The Business Need:

As a leading Fortune 500 company, our client has an active corporate travel program.  This includes existing, long-lasting relationships with preferred suppliers in the financial centers of New York and London.  However, providing ground transportation services for their additional international offices has presented a number of financial, logistic, and administrative challenges.

Until this point, the process involved working with an affiliate supplier network to bridge the gap between local and global ground transportation.  This presented a number of disadvantages related to cost, and quality of service.

Firstly, affiliate supplier networks resulted in a higher cost of service and ride rates due to the affiliate mark-up of approximately 20-30%.

Secondly, without access to preferred suppliers, or integration into a global network like HQ Connect, made it difficult to vett and hold suppliers to the highest standards.  In particular, there was a lack of transparency and control regarding driver background checks, vehicle quality, duty of health and wellness, and licensing information.

In addition, our client has strict requirements regarding IT, risk management, and compliance, which made the process of individually onboarding new suppliers challenging, and time-consuming.

The Solution​​:

We integrated our client’s existing ground transportation program into HQ SummitGround’s global network of highly, and continuously vetted suppliers.   Overnight this enabled our client to provide ground transportation services to their employees internationally with speed and scale.

With HQ Summitground, our client was able to roll out ground transportation services across additional office locations globally.

The Results:

• As the relationship with suppliers was via HQ Connect, part of HQ Summitground, the client was relieved of handling the vendor management.

 

• This saved a significant amount of time and administration, removing the lengthy vendor onboarding process.

 

• We were able to guarantee all client requirements and needs were met, and consistently maintained without the client having to communicate with the supplier directly.  This included strict client guidelines and business requirements related to driver background checks, insurance, vehicle vetting, and duty of care.

 

• All correspondence related to service, driver, and vehicle issues was also handled by HQ and visible within the HQ SummitGround Platform as part of the HQ Connect. This saved additional time and resources for our client’s corporate travel department.

 

• HQ SummitGround validated and verified all supplier charges prior to payment as part of our central payment technology.  This helped simplify the billing and expense process across all suppliers for greater efficiency and cost-saving opportunities.

 

• From a cost perspective, our client saved an average of 15% on international ground transportation in comparison to working with an affiliate supplier network.   This was central to cutting overall ground transportation spend.