Podcast: Cisco’s Carlos Almendros on smarter business travel

Providing a better traveler experience, along with a wider variety of content options, is important for global travel programs.

For the eighth episode of The Travel Is a Human Emotion Podcast, Spotnana VP of Business Development for Content Distribution Johnny Thorsen spoke with Carlos Almendros, Global Procurement Service Leader (Travel) at Cisco, about the evolution of Cisco’s global travel management efforts.

Almendros discussed the importance of company culture to travel program success, improving outcomes based on business travel metrics, and travelers’ need for comprehensive global content.

A culture of collaboration

Almendros emphasized that Cisco’s collaborative culture extends to its travel program, ensuring the program remains aligned with employee needs and company goals.

At Cisco, the travel department reports into the procurement team. This has led to an organized, data-driven approach to improving its travel program.

“The major goal is to continue to look at ways to innovate and transform this travel category,” said Almendros. “We’ve focused a lot and we’ll continue to focus as part of procurement, which is part of the finance organization, to look at optimizing our spend. As you rightly highlighted, Cisco is a technology company.

“We have some phenomenal collaboration capabilities. So when it comes to travel, we’ve driven a culture for many years now, where we ask our employees to be smart and to use business travel for the right reasons. That’s been really a driver within our culture for some time.”

This approach has led to a more thoughtful use of travel resources, with employees carefully considering the necessity and value of each trip. The focus on smart travel decisions aligns with Cisco’s overall commitment to efficiency and innovation across all aspects of its operations.

“The key priorities are innovation, sustainability, and really looking at how we strengthen our partnerships with our key strategic partners, because ultimately they’re the ones that will help us get through our journey, which is to drive an experience that is optimal,” said Almendros.

Smarter business travel

Almendros noted that Cisco is exploring ways to quantify the return on investment for trips, such as assessing the impact on sales, customer relationships, and employee productivity.

By analyzing these metrics, the company aims to make more informed decisions about when and how to deploy travel resources.

“We’ve driven a smarter way of conducting business travel,” said Almendros. “One-day business trips are generally not recommended, and we’ve seen less than 3% of our business travel is one-day business trips. We’re looking at ways to encourage rail travel more where it’s feasible, probably more in Europe than it is in the U.S., although we do look at the side of the U.S. where Amtrak can be a better option.”

This focus on smarter travel extends to promoting sustainable options whenever possible.

“We spent the last two years creating [a foundation for sustainability] reporting, making sure we were measuring those key categories,” said Almendros. “In Cisco, scope three business travel emissions are really a quite small percentage unlike many of my peers, where it may be a bigger challenge for them.”

Global content strategy

By offering a diverse array of travel choices, Cisco aims to cater to the preferences and needs of its global workforce while maintaining cost-effectiveness and compliance with company policies. The focus on content availability also aligns with Cisco’s commitment to providing a user-friendly travel experience for its employees.

“[Our approach] means enabling all content at the front for our travelers,” said Almendros. “Not just air content, hotel content, and rail content; it really means any content that is out there. How do we bring that to the forefront for our travelers?”

Almendros is always surveying the travel technology landscape for solutions that will provide wider choice and better experiences to Cisco travelers.

“Nirvana would be to have [comprehensive global content] at the front as our travelers are booking,” said Almendros. “…  We don’t care where the content comes from. That’s what is really important for all of our strategic partners to understand: we absolutely want to give the traveler the best experience, the best content. How that gets done should not be dependent on one channel.”

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