FINMAN 101: The Travel Office
Leading the Way

by Alice Rose

Leadership. It’s an emotive word and something that everyone probably defines differently. However, we can all agree that it is something every organization must have in abundance in order to function, succeed and grow. Leadership is something the UW Travel Office, managed by Cindy Gregovich, is striving to demonstrate. The Travel Office not only provides efficient and cost-effective management to the University’s 36 million dollar yearly travel budget, but also is leading the way in helping our University in its quest to be recognized as one of the best teaching and research institutes in the nation.

The recent history of the Travel Office dates back to 1999, when, due to a specialized review process, it was agreed to move the Travel Office to Financial Management from Purchasing. As one of seven departments within Financial Management, its main function continues to be the payment of travel related expenses from both individuals and suppliers. On average, 3,000 Travel Expense Vouchers (TEVs) are processed per month. It is also responsible for the administration of Corporate Travel Accounts (CTA), a charge card system used by departments for the purchase of air tickets, and individual UW corporate VISA accounts.

Increasingly, however, Travel’s major interest is shifting away from these traditional functions as it seeks to move from being a transaction based organization to a more knowledge driven one. With this change, training and educating University travelers is becoming its primary function. To this end, Travel regularly conducts training programs for all levels of staff across the campus and it expects to increase the number of these in the near future.

The plan includes continued outreach to departments along with looking at ways to streamline the travel process. Travel is considering the development and implementation of a fully automated travel reimbursement system, but this is still some way in the future. As an interim measure, a new automated TEV form was developed and has already had a major impact on the quality of the traveler’s reimbursement experience. A year ago, the Travel Office completed reimbursements to travelers in five days or less 55% of the time. With the implementation of the new form, we have increased our reimbursement to travelers to 95% within 5 days or less. Great effort is also being exerted to continue to develop an effective dialog with the campus to ensure that our customers can communicate what their needs are.