Corporate Travel Complete Guide April 2025 15 min read

The Complete Guide to Switching Your Corporate Travel Management Company

Switching travel management companies sounds like a project. In reality, if it's managed properly, it takes less than a month and your travelers barely notice. This guide covers everything — how to know it's time, what to look for, how the transition works, and what changes on day one with a new TMC.

When to switch

How to know it's time to switch your TMC

Most companies don't reach a single breaking point. They accumulate a slow buildup of friction — slower response times, travelers booking outside the system, credits expiring unnoticed — until the cost of staying outweighs the hassle of switching. Here are the clearest signs you've reached that point.

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Response times are measured in hours, not minutes. When something goes wrong at 8pm before an early flight, your TMC should pick up the phone. If you're getting voicemails and next-business-day responses on urgent issues, that's not a service model — that's a call center problem.
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No one knows your account. Every call starts with re-explaining your company, your travelers, your policy. If you're handed to a different agent every time and starting from scratch every call, you don't have dedicated support — you have a shared queue.
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Unused ticket credits are expiring. A proactive TMC surfaces unused credits before they expire and applies them to future bookings automatically. If you're only hearing about expired credits after the fact, nobody is watching your program.
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Reporting requires manual cleanup — or doesn't exist at all. Finance shouldn't have to go statement by statement to piece together what travel actually cost. A proper TMC delivers quarterly business reviews with spend breakdowns, flagged savings opportunities, and Concur adoption rates — not raw data exports.
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Travelers are booking outside the system. When employees regularly bypass your booking platform and book directly on 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.
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You have no idea what your travel is actually costing. If you can't answer "what did we spend on travel last month, broken down by category?" without a 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 affected

Why mid-size companies are most likely to be underserved

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. But if your company spends $500K on travel annually and you feel like an afterthought, that feeling reflects how you're actually being resourced. 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.

Evaluating alternatives

What to look for in a new TMC — and what questions to ask

Once you've decided to evaluate alternatives, here's what actually matters for a mid-size company — and the specific questions to ask during an evaluation call to get past the sales pitch.

Dedicated account management

The single most important factor. Ask for the name of the person who will own your account — not a team name or a service tier, a specific person. Then ask: what happens to your account if that person goes on vacation, gets sick, or leaves the company? A good TMC has a clear backup protocol. A call center model doesn't, because account ownership doesn't actually exist.

Response time commitments — in writing

Ask for their SLA on email response during business hours and their after-hours model. "We have 24/7 support" is not an answer — ask what the average actual response time is and how after-hours calls are handled. A boutique TMC should be able to give you a specific number. Telios averages 23 minutes for email and answers calls within 3 rings.

SAP Concur implementation expertise

Whether you're setting up Concur for the first time or transferring an existing instance, verify the TMC's depth of implementation expertise — not just their ability to process bookings through it. Ask specifically: have they built Concur from scratch before? Have they transferred and cleaned up existing setups? Many TMCs facilitate bookings through Concur without deeply understanding what the platform can actually do.

Bilingual support

If your company has Spanish-speaking travelers or operates across the US and Latin America, verify that bilingual support is in-house — not routed to a separate team or a third-party service. The same agents who handle your English-language requests should handle Spanish-language ones.

A structured onboarding process with a pilot period

Any TMC worth switching to should be able to walk you through their onboarding timeline step by step. Critically, ask whether they include a pilot period — a phase where a small group of travelers tests the system before full rollout. If they don't do a pilot, they're not accounting for the inevitable configuration adjustments that come up in real use.

1
Who specifically will manage my account — and what's the backup if they're unavailable?

You want a name, not a team. And you want to know that someone else knows your program if your primary contact is out.
2
What is your average email response time, and how does after-hours support actually work?

Push for a number, not a policy statement. "Within 24 hours" is not acceptable for urgent travel issues.
3
Can you walk me through how you handle SAP Concur implementation or migration?

Good answer: a specific step-by-step process. Red flag: vague references to "platform support."
4
Do you include a pilot period before full rollout?

This is how configuration issues get caught before they affect everyone. Any experienced TMC builds this in.
5
How do you handle unused ticket credits — proactively or reactively?

You want proactive: they audit existing credits at onboarding and track expiry dates ongoing. Reactive means you only hear about it when a credit expires.

Comparing your options

Boutique TMC vs. enterprise platform — an honest comparison

Here's what mid-size companies ($100K–$2M in travel spend) typically experience across the two models:

Factor	Enterprise TMC (Navan, BCD, Egencia)	Boutique TMC (Telios)
Account management	Shared queue or rotating agents	One dedicated account manager — your single point of contact, 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 — real travel 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 — we go out and get the rates, you don't have to ask
Group travel & events	Available at enterprise tier	Available for all clients

The transition process

How switching TMCs actually works — step by step

The biggest hesitation most companies have about switching is the transition itself. Here's what the process actually looks like when it's managed properly.

Day 1–3

Sign the MSA and schedule your kickoff

Once you sign the Master Service Agreement, 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

Travel policy review and Concur setup

A dedicated session to define or refine your travel policy — spending limits, approval workflows, preferred airlines and hotels. If you don't have Concur yet, we build it from scratch and configure it to enforce your policy automatically. If you already have Concur, we transfer your existing instance to Telios — profiles, policies, and history intact — and clean up anything that isn't working correctly.

Week 2–3

Pilot period with a small traveler group

Before opening the program to everyone, 3–5 travelers test the new 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 actually works, a traveler preference that wasn't captured. Much easier to fix with a small group than after full rollout.

Week 3–4

Full team training and go-live

All travelers and admins are trained on Concur and on how to reach their dedicated agents. If you're switching from another TMC, the old Concur configuration is deactivated on cutover day — typically a Friday — with roughly half a day of downtime. If you're new to managed travel, your fresh Concur setup goes live and your team starts booking through it from day one.

Ongoing

Dedicated team takes over from here

Your account manager monitors the program proactively — tracking unused credits, proactively renegotiating vendor rates as your volume grows — and delivering quarterly business reviews with air and hotel breakdowns, savings opportunities, and SLA data. You stop managing travel. They do.

On Concur continuity

Switching TMCs means we simply transfer your existing instance to us. Your new TMC works on the new configuration while your old one remains active. The cutover is scheduled for a low-traffic moment — typically a Friday morning. Traveler profiles, travel policies, preferred vendors, and booking history are preserved through the transfer. Your travelers log in the following Monday and the system works.

After the switch

What changes in the first 30 days with a new TMC

Here's what actually shifts once you're live with a boutique TMC — the concrete differences you and your travelers should feel immediately.

✓
Someone picks up the phone. Every call goes to your five named dedicated agents — real travel agents who know your account, not a call center — not a queue. Response times drop from hours to minutes.
✓
Bookings outside the system drop. When the booking tool works and help is available, travelers use the approved channel. Policy compliance starts improving in the first month.
✓
Unused credits get surfaced. Your account manager audits outstanding ticket credits on day one and tracks expiry dates ongoing. Credits start being recovered instead of expiring silently.
✓
Finance gets real program data. Quarterly business reviews cover spend trends, airline and hotel breakdowns, unused ticket tracking, Concur adoption rates, and proactively flagged cost savings opportunities — no manual cleanup required.
✓
The admin burden drops significantly. For the EA, office coordinator, or finance director who's been managing travel manually — this is the biggest change. Bookings, changes, disruptions, and vendor questions become the TMC's problem, not yours.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions about switching TMCs

Common questions

Frequently asked 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 Concur 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 typically the travel policy review — defining spending limits, approval workflows, and preferred vendor rules. Once policy is locked in, the technical configuration moves quickly.

Switching TMCs means we simply transfer your existing instance to us. 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 to your new setup. If your current Concur 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 of travelers 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 for new clients, 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. There should be no hidden fees beyond these — 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. If you don't have clean data, 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.

Getting started

What to do next

If more than two or three of the warning signs in section one describe your current situation, the next step is straightforward: have a conversation with an alternative provider. You don't need a formal RFP process. A good TMC should be able to look at your travel spend, show you what savings are available, and walk you through their onboarding process — all before you sign anything.

The real cost of staying with a TMC that isn't working is often invisible: unused credits, wasted admin time, non-compliant bookings, and missed vendor negotiations. It compounds every month. The switching process, on the other hand, takes about four weeks and results in a program that largely runs itself.

Ready to see what a better travel program looks like?

Share your approximate travel spend with us and we'll show you exactly what a Telios program would look like for your company — projected savings, proposed travel policy structure, and a clear onboarding plan. No commitment required.

Contact Telios Travel

Telios Travel

Telios Travel is a boutique corporate travel management company headquartered in Miami, FL, serving companies with $100K–$2M in annual travel spend. SAP Concur Travel Partner with 40+ years of industry heritage through Forest Travel. Bilingual English and Spanish support.