7 Steps to a Successful Travel Risk Management Onboarding

One of the simplest ways to keep an implementation moving is to identify your core project team early.

You’ll typically need:

It’s also worth deciding who will own the relationship internally once the platform is live.

Why it matters: when stakeholders change throughout implementation, decisions often need to be revisited and information reconfirmed.

Traveller itinerary data is at the heart of most travel risk management platforms. Any delays to integrate your travel data, will delay how quickly the platform can be tested.

You don’t necessarily need to know the technical answer yourself, but knowing who does and bringing them in early, can save a surprising amount of time.

Before implementation begins, understand:

Your travel risk management provider can work directly with your TMC’s technical team, but ultimately, you own the relationship with your TMC. One of the best pieces of advice is to start the conversation once you are nearing completion of the procurement process to set expectations early.

Let them know that you’re implementing a new travel risk management platform and ask them to nominate someone who can support the integration.

Ideally, ask them to:

If your organisation requires Single Sign-On (SSO), HR integration, user provisioning or another technical integration, get the relevant IT team involved during the initial scoping phase. Waiting until the platform itself has already been configured can cause delays of 4-6 weeks to integrate at a later date.

It also helps to establish early whether your organisation has internal security reviews, vendor assessments or approval processes that need to happen before an integration can go live.

Before you launch, consider what should happen when a traveller needs help, particularly outside of office hours or during a surge event. These conversations are much easier to have during implementation than during an incident.

This is a key factor, especially when using a provider like Solace Global, that serves as both travel risk technology and your security assistance provider.

Multinational organisations will likely have existing processes in place, but integrating a new provider can be the perfect time to review your current SOPs.

Mid-size organisations building a travel risk management programme for the first time, without a dedicated security function, may benefit from a partner that can help shape the foundations of their strategy, aligned with ISO 31030 guidance. Solace Global can help develop your call cascade process and share a free travel risk policy template to get the first steps underway.

Consider:

Testing serves two purposes. Firstly, to confirm if the data is appearing in the platform as expected, and, secondly, to answer a more important question: Will this work when we actually need it?

Depending on your solution, testing might include:

Most implementations run between four and sixteen weeks from contract to launch. The variation comes from dependencies outside the provider’s control rather than from the platform itself. The stages below run partly in parallel, so the total is shorter than the sum of its parts.

Most travel risk management implementations involve dependencies outside the provider’s direct control. TMC integrations, internal IT teams, HR systems, security approvals and stakeholder decisions can all affect the timeline.

Getting those conversations moving early doesn’t just help you launch faster. It also gives everyone the opportunity to properly test the service, understand their role and create a much smoother experience for travellers once you’re live.

At Solace Global, our Customer Success team supports clients through each stage of implementing Solace Secure, from initial scoping and travel-data integration through to operational testing, training and launch.