I would consider our policy at UNC-Chapel Hill to be a soft mandate. We require the use of our TMC unless the employee qualifies for a documented exception as outlined in our Travel Policy. We had a hard mandate when we first launched which was not well received. We rolled it back to the soft mandate and but compliance is still an uphill battle two years later.

Hi, we don't mandate currently, but am also interested in learning more from those who have mandated. Rebecca, I'd love to hear more about what happened when you first launched the hard mandate and it not going so well.

HI Dave, When we stood up Concur in 2013 our program became mandated. It was extremely challenging change management process for the first six months. Do we still market and sell the merits of the policy all these years later? Yes - but the benefits are well worth it. These bullets may answer some of the whys ...

Convenience:
 “Soft” policy checks help users stay within guidelines when booking.
 Intuitive user interface (tool) and high‐quality in‐person assistance (agency) enhance booking
experience.
 Proven, in-person agency support in emergencies on the road.
Duty of Care
 Enhanced ability to identify and assist travelers in the event of an emergency.
Intelligence:
 Central data repository of Vanderbilt community travel utilization to better inform management and
central travel office.
 Increased negotiating power with travel vendors (airlines, hotels, rental car companies, etc.) as all
bookings are captured and recognized as VU spend by vendors.
 Substantially decreases administrative effort and improves internal controls.
 Enhanced fairness among travel community across campus, as non-compliant usage can be easily
identified and resolved.
Speed:
 Substantial reduction of pre‐travel bureaucracy by eliminating layers of approvals and paperwork.
 Faster, on‐the‐spot assistance in emergency situations or for special requests while traveling.

I appreciate all of the information shared on this topic, thank you.

We just instituted a mandate to use our contracted agencies for all transportation needs (air, car, train). We do not mandate hotel bookings but encourage it. We are in the early stages of implementation (3rd month) and there has been some pushback, but it has gone smoother than expected. As part of the rollout, we also made it easier to use egencia (our online solution) by removing booking fees to the departments and also offering central billing of flights (much easier for infrequent travellers to book their flights).

David Jay
RISD

We do not mandate, BUT we do not allow pre-trip reimbursement of air/rail if it was booked outside of the managed travel program. This is a perennial struggle in higher ed. We've been at this a long time, 10years, and we do currently have about 85% of our air spend in the program.

Best,
Amy Page
Johns Hopkins

We do mandate and have been like this since we implemented Concur alongside a TMC back in early 2020. It was a massive restructuring of the program at the time, that was complicated by COVID. Five years on I can report that we have less than 1% of bookings that are outside of our mandated program and therefore nearly all of our bookings fall within booking guidelines. We do not have a pre-trip approval built out so our procedures have to be followed to book. Booking fess are also centralized. Biggest thing we struggle with at the moment is NDC fares which in certain circumstances we allow limited exceptions.