International SOS is preparing to take another symbolic step forward in a few months' time...
Dr Arnaud Derossi - Indeed, International SOS will be thirty years old in 2015. For the record, the company was founded in South-East Asia by two childhood friends, a French doctor and a French businessman, who are still at the helm, in response to two challenges: to set up world-class healthcare infrastructures, and to develop logistical resources and assistance platforms. The model is still the same today.
How can you sum up the global dimension of International SOS in a few figures?
Dr A. D. - We have almost 10,000 corporate customers, with a total of 60 million employees and 175,000 bookings a day covered by our TravelTracker tool. International SOS employs 12,000 people worldwide, nearly half of whom are healthcare professionals. We rely on 27 assistance centres operating 24 hours a day, which are highly medicalised: in Paris, we have between two and five doctors on the centre, depending on the day, in addition to nurses. This is a good reflection of our business, which is essentially medical. We are also developing local healthcare infrastructures, with 36 clinics in our name, staffed by expatriate doctors and local teams, in areas where the level of medical quality does not satisfy our customers. We also dedicate healthcare infrastructures to a given customer, for whom we set up a medical team, equipment and procedures, and generally set up an entire healthcare environment at our customer's site, whether it's an isolated site in the desert or a car manufacturing plant in China. There are around 750 sites of this type. We handle around 1,400,000 assistance cases a year, including 100,000 repatriations, 2,000 of which are carried out by medical aircraft. We also rely on various tools, such as our own in-house travel agency, a fleet of ten medical aircraft, and four air coordination centres to optimise the use of resources.
How can we ensure a local presence on a global scale?
Dr A. D. - We also rely on a network of service providers numbering almost 90,000 - clinics, hospitals, ambulances, doctors' surgeries, security and logistics providers - who are used on a daily basis to provide assistance on the ground. Even though we are present in 89 countries, this requires local partners to be able to assist travellers in the most unlikely places. We don't just list service providers, we meet with them, audit them and accredit them, and we do this on a regular basis, because in some parts of the world information changes very quickly.
Photos: Source International SOS (DR)
How did you come to add a dedicated safety offering to this medical component?
Dr A. D. - A number of events have occurred since the end of the 1990s that have prompted our customers to ask us to extend the range of services we offer. It started somewhat informally in 1998 with the fall of Soeharto in Indonesia and the riots in Jakarta. We evacuated over 2,000 people in three or four days, thanks to an airlift with Singapore. And then, of course, there was 11 September 2001, when our customers realised that they had no way of knowing whether they had employees in New York. It was a painful double awakening: our customers realised that it was not enough to know whether their employees were travelling in the United States, but they had to know in which cities, in which neighbourhoods and, beyond that, whether they were really on the spot. To better assist our customers, we had to help them locate their travellers. Hence this information and localisation approach, integrated into the assistance offer. The integration of the security aspect into our platforms has been a gradual process: we've built up our capacity, and our offering has become more structured as each crisis has unfolded. The operation is now fully integrated: customers don't have to ask themselves whether it's a medical or a safety issue. Especially as there are many grey areas: a business traveller who sprains his ankle is seen as a 'small case' in medical terms, easily manageable, but if he is in possession of confidential documents presenting a risk in economic terms, there are security issues involved. We realise that there is no medical situation without a security component, and vice versa. For example, the medical repatriation of a patient from Nigeria will require an armed escort for the ambulance if it is a night flight...
Business travel is no exception to the adage that "prevention is better than cure"...
Dr A. D. - Of course we do. In fact, we have evolved from the traditional "reactive" model of assistance to a proactive approach. To such an extent that we are no longer really an "assistance provider" in the traditional sense of the term, we define ourselves more as a manager of risks linked to mobility or expatriation. We intervene at a very early stage in terms of prevention and information. We set up health check-ups for our customers, and we have developed a whole range of services that also include e-learning tools, email alerts, etc. And if all these measures are not enough, the deployment of teams on the ground and mass evacuation are the final safety net.
How do you assess a risk?
Dr A. D. - Our perspective is that of the business traveller. We talk about risk when business travellers run the risk of having their journey interrupted or disrupted by an event. That's why we proactively put in place information about their destination before they leave. As we know the chronology and geography of their trip, in the event of an event such as a strike or weather hazard, we send them the information. We create a risk management bubble around the traveller, and ensure operational continuity for our corporate customers.
DR
How do companies use your tools in crisis situations?
Dr A. D. - During the Boston Marathon bombing, a French customer identified 22 people present in the city, and in less than an hour was able to identify these employees and retrieve the 'OK' of twenty of them using our tools. This enabled the security director to contact just two people. In the event of a crisis, time is short, and it's important for our contacts to be able to rely on our decision-making tools, which provide them with the information they need from their perspective, namely operational continuity and passenger safety.
How are you adapting to the increased autonomy granted to business travellers in the wake of best buy and open booking, in terms of data collection?
Dr A. D. - Statistically, 80% of our customers' bookings go through travel agencies. The problem concerns the remaining 20%. We offer travellers the opportunity to provide us with this information manually, or simply to geolocate themselves via their smartphone so that we know where they are. This "check in" option has also been developed at the request of our customers. More and more companies are introducing policies requiring travellers to check in if they deviate from their initial destination, particularly in medium-risk countries.
Has this approach become part of people's mindsets nowadays, or do business travellers only check in when there is imminent danger, and therefore only as a last resort?
Dr A. D. - It's becoming increasingly integrated. Travellers are now geolocating preventively. They've realised that it's not a panic button. In an emergency, it's better to call directly. Travellers are very accepting of geolocation tools as long as they understand that they are dedicated to their safety, and that they are based on a voluntary approach on their part. The company cannot retrieve this information without the passenger's knowledge. This notion goes well beyond the regulatory framework, in that we are really talking about empowering the traveller: companies are realising that their employees need to be involved and made accountable, because they are an integral part of the security system in which they operate. They cannot passively wait for the company or the assistance provider to take care of them. We also have an advantage in the rise of these 2.0 travellers, who book independently because they are used to managing themselves and are therefore also used to managing their own health and safety.
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Another recent trend is "bleisure", travellers who extend a business trip into a personal weekend: how do you manage these cases?
Dr A. D. - Whatever the reason for your presence on site, we can provide assistance. It's mainly a question of cover and insurance. Companies have not always extended cover to leisure activities. This is a legal challenge for our customers: they realise that the employee remains under the company's responsibility during the weekend that he or she has decided to extend on site. So there are two scenarios: some companies simply prohibit leisure travel during business trips, while others include it as a component of their travel policy, asking to be informed of this approach. The grey areas are getting smaller and smaller, as prevention takes precedence over laissez-faire. Overall, companies are becoming more aware of their duty to protect. In practice, however, they need time to put in place the structures and policies needed to tackle these issues properly. This is already the case for the pioneers. For others, it's a work in progress.
Who are your customers, and do you offer the same services to a large group as you do to an SME?
Dr A. D. - We focus on the business world, initially very large international groups, and increasingly small businesses, as well as government organisations and NGOs. We have some very good references in this field. We sometimes operate slightly differently depending on the case, but the product and its level of quality remain the same. We adapt to different ways of working: a small company doesn't usually have a medical director, for example. In the case of a large group, we have to fit in with processes that are already in place, whereas SMEs are more demanding in terms of recommendations on setting up procedures.
Who are your contacts? Have they changed?
Dr A. D. - Traditionally, we were in contact with the security team. But over the last twelve months, we've seen a fairly significant change, involving human resources, travel management, purchasing, the security director, etc. Companies are becoming more aware that business travel is not just a departmental affair.
Since International SOS was founded thirty years ago, technological tools have obviously evolved considerably. What role does the human element now play in your management of crisis situations?
Dr A. D. - Yes, there has been an incredible evolution in terms of technology. We don't provide assistance the way we used to: we used to phone Africa from soundproof booths so that we could shout without disturbing the rest of the set! Those were the days of telex and holey tapes. That's all changed now... Communication circuits, information and file management have all changed. The human element remains fundamental. They have not changed, but they have had to learn to use these new tools. We still need teams who understand our business, which is to invent solutions to the health and safety problems our customers face. The solution is different every time. So we need creative teams who know how to take initiative and resist pressure, while remaining within a given framework of procedures and protocols, to channel the assistance. Our doctors are on the front line, analysing situations on the set, giving instructions and talking to passengers. The doctor is the conductor of the orchestra, and the technologies are the instruments used to bring people together more quickly and more effectively. The evolution of technology has enabled these tools to become transparent, to blend intuitively into processes.
Is it more dangerous to travel today than it was ten years ago?
Dr A. D. - It's no more dangerous, or safer for that matter. Travelling is always risky, whether it's Paris-Rennes or Singapore-Tokyo. But the way in which risk is approached has changed considerably. We've gone from the backpacker to business travel, which is an integral part of every employee's job, not just executives. It is therefore a risk that has become more important for the company, which has to manage more travellers and more journeys. Awareness of the danger has changed, as has the profile of expatriates, who stay in the country for much shorter periods than before. They are now just passing through, for a very short time, and therefore with less experience of the country. Expatriates expect to find the same level of infrastructure abroad as they do in France, both for themselves and for their families. So we have a role to play in helping them prepare for their arrival. We've also been able to break some deadlocks with expatriate families who refused to leave for fear of the conditions there. This is also the role of the health check-ups that we set up for many companies, to detect any risk situations before they go on expatriation.
Interview by Florian Guillemin
