Guide
The signs it's time to switch, what to look for in a new TMC, an honest boutique-vs-enterprise comparison, and exactly how the transition works — step by step.
The warning signs
Response time
When something goes wrong at 8pm before an early flight, your TMC should pick up the phone. Voicemails and next-business-day replies on urgent issues are a call-center problem, not a service model.
No ownership
If every call starts with re-explaining your company, your travelers, and your policy — and you're handed a different agent each time — you don't have dedicated support. You have a shared queue.
Leakage
A proactive TMC surfaces unused credits before they expire and applies them automatically. If you only hear about expired credits after the fact, nobody is watching your program.
No visibility
Finance shouldn't go statement by statement to reconstruct what travel cost. A proper TMC delivers quarterly reviews with spend breakdowns, flagged savings, and adoption rates — not raw exports.
Non-compliance
When employees regularly bypass the booking platform for consumer sites, the problem usually isn't the travelers — it's that the approved system is too painful to use. That's a configuration and support failure.
Unknown cost
If you can't answer “what did we spend on travel last month, by category?” without significant manual effort, your program has a visibility problem that compounds every quarter.
The honest question to ask yourself
If your account manager left tomorrow and was replaced by someone new, how quickly would that person understand your program? If the answer is “weeks” or “I'm not sure,” your program exists in someone's head rather than in a properly managed account structure. That's both a service risk and a continuity risk.
Who's most at risk
Not every company is equally at risk. The companies most likely to be receiving inadequate service share a common profile: they're mid-size, with $100K to $2M in annual travel spend. Large enough to need real travel management, but not large enough to be a priority account at an enterprise TMC.
Enterprise providers like Navan, BCD Travel, Egencia, and American Express Global Business Travel are optimized for accounts spending $5M or more annually. Below that threshold, you're typically assigned to a shared service model — a pool of agents handling dozens of accounts, no named contact, limited customization. The technology platform may be excellent, but the human service layer is effectively absent.
This isn't a criticism of those platforms — it's the economic reality of how enterprise software is structured. A $500K account at BCD Travel represents a fraction of a percent of their business. At a boutique TMC, it's a significant, named account that gets dedicated attention.
The evaluation
Most important
Ask for the name of the person who will own your account — not a team name or a service tier. Then ask what happens if they're on vacation, sick, or leave. A good TMC has a clear backup protocol; a call-center model doesn't.
In writing
“We have 24/7 support” is not an answer. Ask for the average actual email response time and how after-hours calls are handled. Telios averages 23 minutes for email and answers calls within 3 rings.
Depth, not just access
Ask specifically: have they built Concur from scratch? Have they transferred and cleaned up existing setups? Many TMCs process bookings through Concur without deeply understanding what the platform can do.
In-house
If you have Spanish-speaking travelers or operate across the US and Latin America, verify bilingual support is in-house — not routed to a separate team. The same agents should handle English and Spanish requests.
De-risked rollout
Any TMC worth switching to can walk you through their onboarding timeline step by step. Critically, ask whether they include a pilot period. If they don't, they're not accounting for the inevitable configuration adjustments real use surfaces.
Cut through the pitch
| Enterprise TMC (Navan, BCD, Egencia) |
Boutique TMC (Telios)
Best fit
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Account management | Shared queue or rotating agents | One dedicated account manager — direct line, always available |
| Email response time | 4–8 hours typical for mid-size accounts | 23 minutes average |
| After-hours support | Available, often third-party call center | Five named in-house agents — never a call center — 24/7/365 |
| Bilingual support | Varies — may be routed externally | In-house English & Spanish, same team |
| Sweet spot | $5M+ annual travel spend | $100K–$2M annual travel spend |
| Concur expertise | Strong platform — limited implementation depth for small accounts | Full implementation, repair & optimization |
| Unused ticket management | Client-managed in most cases | Proactively tracked by account team |
| Vendor negotiations | Volume-dependent — limited leverage for smaller accounts | Proactively negotiated from day one — you don't have to ask |
| Group travel & events | Available at enterprise tier | Available for all clients |
The transition
Day 1–3. Sign the MSA and your new TMC moves immediately. A kickoff call is scheduled within 48 hours — you meet your dedicated account manager and agent team and align on the onboarding timeline.
Week 1–2. A session to define or refine your travel policy — limits, approvals, preferred vendors. If you don't have Concur, we build it from scratch; if you do, we transfer your existing instance — profiles, policies, and history intact — and fix anything that isn't working.
Week 2–3. Before opening the program to everyone, 3–5 travelers test the setup in real conditions. This is where workflow issues get caught — a spending limit that's off, an approval step that doesn't match how your team works. Much easier to fix with a small group.
Week 3–4. All travelers and admins are trained on Concur and how to reach their dedicated agents. The old configuration is deactivated on cutover day — typically a Friday — with roughly half a day of downtime.
Ongoing. Your account manager monitors the program proactively — tracking unused credits, renegotiating vendor rates as your volume grows — and delivers quarterly business reviews with air/hotel breakdowns, savings opportunities, and SLA data. You stop managing travel. They do.
The first 30 days
Every call goes to your five named dedicated agents who know your account — not a queue. Response times drop from hours to minutes.
When the booking tool works and help is available, travelers use the approved channel. Policy compliance starts improving in the first month.
Your account manager audits outstanding ticket credits on day one and tracks expiry dates ongoing. Credits start being recovered instead of expiring silently.
Quarterly business reviews cover spend trends, airline and hotel breakdowns, unused ticket tracking, Concur adoption, and flagged savings — no manual cleanup required.
For the EA, office coordinator, or finance director managing travel manually — this is the biggest change. Bookings, changes, disruptions, and vendor questions become the TMC's problem, not yours.
Handled correctly, the switch is invisible except that the experience gets better — which is exactly the point.
Common questions
Most companies complete the switch in 3 to 4 weeks from contract signing to full go-live. Companies already using SAP Concur can complete the technical transfer in a single day — surrounding updates wrap up in just a few days. Companies new to Concur typically take 3 to 4 weeks for the full setup. The most time-consuming part is usually the travel policy review; once policy is locked in, the technical configuration moves quickly.
We transfer your existing Concur instance to Telios while your current setup stays active. The cutover is scheduled on a low-travel day with minimal downtime. Traveler profiles, travel policies, and booking history transfer directly. If your current setup is broken or underutilized, the switch is actually an opportunity to fix it properly.
If managed correctly, disruption is minimal. Your new TMC runs the new setup in parallel with the old one and schedules the cutover on a low-traffic day — typically a Friday. A pilot period with a small group before full rollout catches configuration issues before they affect everyone. Travelers typically notice the switch only because things start working better.
Unused airline credits belong to the traveler or company — not the TMC — so they travel with you when you switch. Your new TMC should conduct a full unused ticket audit at the start of the relationship and put a tracking system in place. This is one of the first things a proactive TMC does, and it often generates immediate recoverable value.
Most TMCs charge a one-time implementation or onboarding fee, typically $500 to $2,000, though many will waive this if your travel spend reaches a certain threshold within the first few months. Ongoing costs are per-transaction: a standard online booking fee and a higher agent-assisted fee. If pricing isn't clearly explained before you sign, treat that as a red flag.
The most useful thing is your approximate annual travel spend — even a rough figure. If you can break it down by category (air, hotel, car rental) that's even better. This lets the TMC show you projected savings, quote pricing accurately, and identify where the biggest opportunities are. A rough annual number is enough to start a meaningful conversation.
Enterprise TMCs like Navan, BCD Travel, and Egencia are optimized for accounts spending $5M or more annually. For mid-size companies spending $100K to $2M, these providers typically offer shared service models — no dedicated account manager, call-center-style support, and limited customization. A boutique TMC assigns named account managers and dedicated agents to each client, resulting in faster response times, better policy compliance, and more proactive cost management.
What to do next
If two or three of the warning signs describe your situation, the next step is simple: a conversation. Share your approximate travel spend and we'll show you projected savings, a proposed policy structure, and a clear onboarding plan.
No RFP required · No commitment · ~4-week switch
Trusted by finance and travel teams across the US & LATAM
