How LivaNova prioritized traveler well-being in the new world of corporate travel

LivaNova is a global healthcare company that creates breakthrough treatments and medical services for health issues that affect both the head and the heart. Their products and therapies are used all over the world and they look after 3,000 employees.

With such a big team and a presence in over 100 countries, it’s important that they work with a travel management provider that can provide initiatives for the specific needs of a large global healthcare business.

We caught up with Elisabetta Gibertoni, their Global Travel and Events Manager, to talk about how Egencia has supported their specific business travel needs.

The main challenges

As a global healthcare business, it was vital for LivaNova to partner with a travel management company that could provide tools that are relevant to their professionals who are based in various locations across the globe. Egencia was able to deliver a travel program that was easy to access regardless of role or location. ‘The kind of travel that we book for them is worldwide. We serve over 100 countries, so it depends on where the healthcare professional and opinion leader is based.’

Like a lot of businesses, LivaNova was also impacted by the pandemic. Although essential travel was still required, there were other challenges they looked to Egencia to help them with. ‘The main constraints were that we had people who needed to return home and Egencia was super, super helpful.' So, did Egencia succeed?  ‘We got everyone home and it was perfect!’

Travel tools for everyone

In addition to this, traveler well-being for every traveler was really important. Egencia was able to streamline and deliver a one-size-fits-all policy. ‘We have a travel policy and duty of care that’s valid for everyone who is booking through Egencia—both for healthcare professionals and for LivaNova travelers.’

And this shows when you look at how much the company uses Egencia to book their travel. ‘We have one unique travel policy and one unique travel management company. So, everybody uses Egencia—we have an online booking rate of around 85%. We just use Egencia as our [only] TMC.’

Keeping track of cost was another important factor, so it was vital they had sophisticated reporting that kept them up to date with spend and bookings. This also made it easier for them to provide the relevant teams with real-time data. ‘Reporting is very important This allows us to monitor expenses that are out of policy and share those numbers with the Finance team, the Auditing team and HR.’

And the winner is…?

Of course, a specific travel experience, streamlined reporting of travel spend and duty of care have been a major help—but what’s their favourite thing about working with Egencia? ‘We’ve been working with Egencia since 2018. The self-booking tool on the platform is super easy and super helpful, so to me it’s number one.’

Thanks, Elisabetta, we’ll never tire of hearing that!