Nominee for Global Youth Travel Award for Notable Innovation
Innovation: Foresight
Guest: Wayne Britton, Co-Founder and Director, Peregrine Risk Management
Peregrine Risk Management is a security & risk management company established in July 2019 by Wayne Britton and James Lawrence. Since founding, the company has grown its team to 10 and launched a unique, innovative, web-based pre-travel risk management platform called Foresight, which launched in 2021. Foresight is a pre-travel risk assessment platform, providing a centralised solution to enhance safety and security for organisations and their travellers.
What is the most innovative thing about Foresight?
Foresight saves organisations and individuals time and money. The platform enhances the personal safety of travellers and improves an organisation’s safety culture. This in turn builds resilience, meets duty of care obligations and empowers travellers through trip ownership.
Do you have an idea as to when you might need to re-think the product?
As Foresight only launched last year there are no current aspirations to re-think the product as it has already been extremely well received and is being used by a number of universities. In November 2021 it won the CIR Risk Management award for Product of the Year.
How did the Foresight evolve and how is it suited to its target market?
Having conducted many travel safety programme Gap Analyses on various universities, we recognised a need for a robust pre-travel and trip solution. We decided to develop Foresight as there was nothing on the market like it.
Using a fantastic web developer, our vision of Foresight became a reality and has made a significant impact in the education sector since its launch. The web-based platform pre-defines risk criteria tailored to the school or university’s needs. This allows numerous, multi-factored decisions to be made with diligence, speed, consistency and confidence and replaces old-style and bureaucratic paper-based assessments. The innovative platform also enables advanced visibility of travel risk, oversight of travellers and automation of tasks. This is all brought seamlessly together, for an organisation’s convenience, on a tech-friendly dashboard branded for the organisation. The development from idea to live testing took around 18 months. We accelerated the development during the pandemic as we recognised organisations would be looking for such a solution once travel returned. We hand-picked clients to assist in testing.
What mistakes did you learn from?
Thanks to the amazing team that worked on Foresight we have been very fortunate and not encountered any mistakes. However, we did learn that there will always be teething problems when it comes to technology! The platform was vigorously tested and we ironed out issues prior to the launch for clients.
What else did you need to adapt in order for Foresight to be successful?
With any new product going to market, it is key to fully research the market and the demand. We were fortunate to have contacts that we conducted market research with before the launch. As a result of Foresight’s success, we have had to expand our team and recruit a Web Developer, Technical Security Manager and expand our marketing department, which have all been great additions to the business. One key adaption is the ability for our education clients to have single sign on. This has been a simple fix.
How have your relationships with trade partners changed during the pandemic?
Relationships have improved, the pandemic was a very challenging time for the majority of businesses and we could all empathise with one another; we are all facing similar challenges.
What value does an international association like WYSE Travel confederation have to risk management companies likes yours?
Synergy in our values in empowering student travellers and instilling industry confidence. We have benefited through working to instill confidence in the youth, student and educational travel industry.