Case Study Creative Dock

Creative Dock

40+International offices
Software Development
500+
Zurich

How Creative Dock simplified and saved on travel management with TravelPerk

Juggling hundreds of last-minute trips with no centralized tool

In 12 years, the Creative Dock has grown from a disruptive startup into the largest independent corporate venture builder in Europe and the MENA region.
Since 2012 — and with four key acquisitions under its belt — the company has grown in size to over 500 professionals across four key offices in Berlin, Zurich, Prague, and Riyadh and has successfully built over 120 ventures in more than 40 countries to date.
With Creative Dock's international team and client portfolio expanding rapidly, the company’s business travel needs grew significantly. The company prides itself on their fast-paced, AI-driven venture building approach and places a high value on extending a personalized, individual approach to working with clients. This means that organizing regular, in-person meetings, no matter where they take place, is key to business growth.
Senior management and sales teams also frequently travel for workshops, presentations, and industry events, while on-site team-building events are instrumental in cultivating collaboration and strengthening internal relationships across the company’s dispersed offices.
But, without a centralized platform for booking and managing trips, Creative Dock found that the increased demand for business travel quickly led to uncontrolled, disjointed, and time-consuming processes, and a lack of unified visibility into costs, processes, and insights.
  • Travel logistics dominated the reception team's workload
    “Around 70% of the reception team’s time was taken up by booking and managing travel for around 200 employees,” says Tereza Duroňová, Workplace Manager at Creative Dock.This translated into substantial costs, both in terms of the use of personnel resources and time dedicated to just one administrative function.
  • A lack of automation fuelled disjointed and complex travel processes
    The team juggled multiple platforms and providers — each with unique booking processes — to manage business travel. And, since most trips are booked on a last-minute basis, this added an extra layer of complexity to the booking and approval processes.Without any automation to support the management of these short-notice trips, the team grappled with even more manual tasks and out-of-policy bookings.
  • Tracking travel costs and traveler behavior was extremely challenging
    The team’s increasing reliance on business travel to meet clients and execute successful ventures meant that business travel costs quickly racked up.Without a managed travel program, they couldn't set budgets aligned with cost centers, monitor out-of-policy bookings, or access corporate rates. Plus, no unified data reporting meant they missed out on insights to optimize travel spending and processes.

Centralized trip management, approvals, and budgets with TravelPerk

With the reception team stretched thin, costs mounting, and a non-stop stream of business travel requests, it was abundantly clear that Creative Dock needed a better answer to business travel.
After some research, the team identified TravelPerk’s self-booking platform — packed with intelligent automations, reports on travel insights, finances, and carbon emissions, and budget management for cost centers — as the answer to their travel management issues.
They also recognized that the platform’s simplified approval processes and automated travel policies could help them quickly reduce travel expenses and free up valuable time for the reception team.
With proactive support and guidance from the TravelPerk team, Creative Dock also set up the Open API to help them sync their business processes with the platform.
“Before we started using TravelPerk, around 70% of the reception team’s time was spent managing travel. And now, everyone can book what they want or what’s good for them. It's much better and much easier.”
Tereza Duroňová, Workplace Manager at Creative Dock
“We have the cost under control. We can set the budgets for the projects in the OPEX cost centers. We can also analyze the data easily and identify any weak points in the approval process.”Ondřej Hlosta – Group Financial Controller at Creative Dock
Ondřej Hlosta – Group Financial Controller at Creative Dock

With traveler self-booking and advanced budgeting tools, Creative Dock’s full focus is on serving clients

  • Quicker, cheaper, and easier bookings
    TravelPerk’s self-booking platform has freed the reception team from the continuous loop of booking and managing travel, allowing them to focus on more critical tasks. “It's much easier having one platform where you can analyze and see all travel plans in one place,” says Tereza.Employees also regularly use the 24/7 concierge feature to request a range of accommodation and travel bookings.Plus, whereas their previous provider limited them to a local inventory, Creative Dock now enjoys exclusive corporate rates and access to an extensive local and international travel inventory. This ensures cost-effective and convenient travel arrangements for every trip — last minute or otherwise!
  • The business has a tight grip on travel costs
    With simplified budget setting to help them group, track, and manage expenses for specific cost centers, Creative Dock now has the financial oversight needed to optimize their travel spend. Plus, they can analyze data more efficiently to help them pinpoint any weak points in the approval process.
  • Seamless synchronization of business processes
    After breezing through the Open API interface set up, they can now access invoices, user accounts, trip details, and travel information in one place. This seamless also setup enables efficient data and flow integrations with external accounting companies.Integrating TravelPerk with Factorial HR also means they no longer need to manually set up new users; new employees can start traveling immediately, ensuring Creative Dock can serve clients without delays.

TravelPerk features that empower Creative Dock to manage business travel with confidence

  • Automated approvals and processes
  • A self-booking platform for traveler autonomy
  • Cost center budgets to track different projects
  • Seamless integrations with internal systems
  • Factorial HR integration for automated user management
  • Advanced reporting for real-time insights
  • GreenPerk for carbon footprint monitoring

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