American Express Global Business Travel Case Study
American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is a multinational travel and meetings program management company headquartered in the United States. The company has approximately 12,000 employees and operations in nearly 120 countries. The company has three divisions, the largest Travel Care runs over 100 different projects each year.
The Challenge
Prior to the Praxis Framework, there was no standardized Project and Programme framework. There were some basic expectations of project managers, but each individual or team was free to choose the most appropriate framework or methodology for a given project. As a result, there was often fundamental differences in project outputs (for example the documentation) and expectations.
Other key issues included:
- Planning: was not sufficiently thorough and often failed to account for future resource requirements and stakeholder support
- Sponsors: were not fully aware of their role and accountabilities
- Stakeholders: key stakeholders were not engaged effectively or engaged too late
- Requirements: were not captured formally or in sufficient detail and were misaligned with key stakeholders
- Benefits management: lacked the necessary rigour
- Change management: effort was underestimated and not fully understood or supported by stakeholders.
Why was the Praxis Framework Chosen?
Given the challenges highlighted above, the transformation team was seeking to establish a more formal, standardized approach to projects and programmes.
There are four key features that attracted the team to the Praxis Framework:
- It’s simple, tailorable approach: the Praxis Framework offers a body of knowledge and methodology that are straightforward to understand and apply. The framework can be tailored effectively to suit an organisation, often a weakness of other frameworks and methodologies
- That less investment was needed: due to the free guidance available
- The Praxis Framework website: is a great support resource to reference. Resources and tools for all key aspects of project and programme management are just a few clicks away and it’s all available online, for free, 24/7
- Praxis Local: a tailorable pdf file that summarises all the main functions and processes of project and programme management. It provides links to the Praxis Framework website to access all the extensive supporting detail that is available including competencies, checklists, tools and techniques from the encyclopaedia.
The Top Three Results
American Express GBT adopted the Praxis Framework in 2020. Three key results have been reported so far:
- Well understood guidance: The team are delighted with the quality and ease of which the framework and supporting resources are understood
- Easy access to content on the website and through Praxis Local: The fact that the framework and supporting tools and resources are available online is a welcome added benefit of Praxis and users are impressed at how easily the framework can be tailored to individual project requirements
- A common language and consistent approach have been adopted: An immediate benefit was the creation of a common language for project and programme management which everyone understood. This has been a challenge in the past given the use of multiple frameworks.
Recommending the Praxis Framework
Brijender Singh Rathore, Director Transformation, American Express GBT would have no hesitation in recommending the Praxis Framework to other Project and Programme professionals and organizations. You can listen to Brijinder Rathore openly and honestly explore how they adopted, with Training Bytesize’s assistance, the Praxis Framework and what they have learned from this experience in this webinar.
If you would like to learn more about the Praxis Framework guidance it is available in its entirety for free on the Praxis Framework website.
You can find details about the Praxis Framework training courses and certification here.
