Wine Plan Category Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Business Travel Accommodation and its sub-segments such as Wine Plan are at an interesting intersection. As costs rise, companies will be pushed towards finding better cost efficiencies in their travel and entertainment programs. Buyers are leveraging new management tools to analyze the costs using a Total cost of trip/event approach as against cost of an individual trip/event cost item. It is now also expected of suppliers to assess the cost effectiveness of any service they provide from a more holistic point of view.

The availability of advanced technologies has prompted travel and event service suppliers to heavily invest in them to improve efficiencies and customer experience. However, most have learnt that technology alone is not a replacement for the human touch when it comes to customer service. As a result, suppliers are spending on both counts - technology and customer service staff. Till the time a formula for perfect balance between the two is discovered, buyers should expect to bear some of this increased OPEX of suppliers.

To simplify the corporate travel and events process and enhance the end-to-end experience of users, suppliers are innovating with tools that aggregate the multiple fragments of this process such as booking, management of disruptions, customer service and spend within a single interface.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Wine Plan is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

Wine Plan procurement best practices are moving towards a level of sophistication which is typically seen in traditional procurement categories. Category managers now have an attractive opportunity to adapt the best practices seen within this category as well as those being leveraged in other non-related categories. This report summarizes the best practices picked from across multiple categories that could work well for category managers involved with Wine Plan procurement strategy.

For example, Buyers should seek collaboration with suppliers to identify demand patterns within the organization. This includes data sets for the time of booking, duration, and preference for time and days. Using such analysis, buyers can build a comprehensive corporate guideline and ensure that a specific set of service providers are used for services. Moreover, these data sets can be used to identify cost-saving opportunities.

It is important for category managers to track and measure the performance of suppliers against a set of defined KPIs that are agreed upon during the contract negotiation phase. The performance of suppliers can also be linked to a portion of their fee that can be paid upon rendering of services in a satisfactory manner. For instance, category buyers should assess supplier performance for adherence to allocated travel budgets.

Buyers prefer to engage with service providers that provide one-stop solutions such as multi-modal travel bookings, accommodation assistance, events listings, ticketing and event promotions.

Wine Plan procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Wine Plan procurement. Some examples include: