Case StudyHavas harnesses power of AI to reduce travel emissions
A lesson in balancing travel and sustainability Company : Havas Industry : Global Communications HQ : Paris, France Challenge : Managing travel demands and sustainability commitments Solution: Give employees the tools to make more informed, sustainable travel decisions. Havas is one of the world’s largest global communications groups, headquartered in Paris, France with more than 20,000 employees spread out across 100 countries. As a global communications agency, there is naturally a lot of travel that takes place between offices, including pitching for new business, as well as continued check ins with clients and support to launch some of the world's biggest campaigns. In 2020, Havas launched Havas Impact+ to outline their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) commitments, which are structured around three key pillars: Environment, People and Meaningful Communication. Goodwings worked with Havas Denmark to create a strategy for their Environmental pillar, by transforming how they book and manage their travel, as well as how they reduce their travel emissions in line with their global goals. Challenge: Managing travel demands and sustainability commitments In 2020, Havas launched their Impact+ sustainability commitment, which focused on reducing their impact across their business. To help achieve those goals, specifically in relation to business travel, they set out an approach to "reduce non-essential business travel and prioritize rail over air whenever possible". Because employees were responsible for booking their own travel, they needed a smart tool to centralize the booking process, while also helping them follow through with these targets. Solution: Give employees the tools to make more informed, sustainable travel decisions If employees could see the environmental impact of each trip at the point of booking, they could adjust their itinerary accordingly and prevent emissions before they happened. For example, taking the train instead of a plane for domestic trips. With Goodwings' suite of AI-powered tools, Havas employees got access to the largest selection of travel options at the lowest rates, but also had the option to sort their search results by CO2 emissions. Added to that, they were able to see how each decision would affect their emissions totals. How Goodwings has helped Havas - A more intuitive way to book travel and track emissions With employees responsible for booking their own travel, and little visibility on emissions amounts, employees were "in the dark" about the impact of their travel choices. Goodwings' intuitive booking tool not only provided them with the widest selection of flights, hotels, cars and trains, but provided more front and back-end visibility on the impact of each trip, helping them avoid unnecessary travel emissions. - More data for increased impact, reduced emissions and cost control With a central mandate from Havas HQ to reduce emissions according to the Impact+ goals, Havas Denmark needed a way to consolidate their data, both in terms of cost and emissions. By having all the information readily available in Goodwings' AI-driven travel emission management tool, it helped streamline financial and non-financial reporting.