Unlike digital marketing strategies, corporate travel enables executives to build, foster, and strengthen customer relationships by meeting them in person. Enterprises these days generate incremental revenue by making executives travel to various business travel destinations.
However, enterprises can only increase the ROI of business travel by streamlining the corporate travel management process and controlling business travel costs. Travel management solutions make it easier for companies to simplify this crucial process through automation.
End-to-end process automation helps employees avoid needing to work with a corporate travel consultant or agent. Employees can use the software to make business travel arrangements, mitigate risks, and get emergency assistance.
At the same time, travel management software helps companies reduce the average business costs in several ways. Hence, a company or startup can implement travel management solutions to make business trips successful while reducing business travel costs.
9 Ways Travel Management Solutions Make Business Trips Successful while Reducing Costs
- Ensuring Policy Compliance
The software enables travel managers to configure granular travel and expense (T&E) policies. The manager can make each employee access relevant business travel guidelines by dividing the policy into small sections. Employees can use the software to access organizational T&E policy seamlessly.
Based on preset policies, the software shows and recommends essential travel products like flights, accommodations, and car rentals. Hence, it becomes easier for them to book the desired travel products without violating preset policies.
Likewise, they can access the policies during the business trip to incur only in-policy travel expenses. The software further flags out-of-policy expenses when employees generate expense reports. The T&E policy compliance helps enterprises control business travel costs while allowing employees to choose.
- Enforcing Pre-Trip Approvals
Employees often cancel and reschedule bookings when the appropriate authority does not approve the business trip. Hence, enterprises control costs by making pre-trip approvals mandatory. The software enables travel managers to define a multilevel approval hierarchy.
Employees can use the software to determine which authority can approve a business trip or expense. Also, they can send business travel approval requests directly to the approver using the software. In addition, travel management solutions allow employees to book business trips only after getting the required approvals.
- Simplifying Business Travel Booking
Business travel solutions support self-booking by featuring corporate booking tools. Employees can use the software to access an extensive travel inventory. However, the software customizes the travel inventory according to T&E policies.
The software lets employees book their preferred travel products without visiting third-party websites. Also, employees can make payment securely using their preferred currency and payment method.
Employees use the corporate booking tool to make business travel arrangements without contacting a corporate travel agent. The software makes it easier for them to save money using reward points and the best deals provided by various suppliers.
- Managing Business Travel Risks
While implementing policies, travel managers help employees mitigate common travel risks by sharing information and best practices. However, employees need specific information and assistance to manage common travel risks.
Travel management solution providers enable employees to gather information and get assistance by offering 24/7 travel support. An employee can interact with a skilled executive by making a phone call, sending an email, or using an instant messaging app.
In addition, providers help companies ensure the safety and security of work travelers by partnering with global health and security risk management firms. Hence, a company can provide emergency assistance to employees across destinations without investing in duty-of-care resources.
- Accelerating Expense Reimbursements
Every enterprise can make business trips successful by keeping work travelers stress-free. Work travelers often experience stress when their travel expenses are not reimbursed quickly. Corporate travel solutions speed up reimbursements through digitization of expense reports.
They generate automated expense reports by capturing data from scanned receipts and invoices. The chances of data entry errors and expense fraud are eliminated when employees scan original receipts and invoices. Also, the finance team can access and process the digital expense reports using the same software.
- Getting Real-Time Spend Visibility
Every enterprise can only reduce business travel costs by tracking and monitoring employee travel expenses. Travel management solutions feature intuitive dashboards. Decision-makers can use the dashboard to track travel expenses in real-time.
Further, travel managers can boost expense tracking by categorizing travel expenses while configuring the software. The real-time spend visibility helps decision-makers find cost-saving opportunities and make informed financial decisions like budgeting and cash flow prediction.
- Automating Travel Expense Audits
Employees often escalate business travel costs by violating preset policies and executing expense fraud. Enterprises detect policy violations and expense fraud by auditing travel expenses regularly. However, they must deploy additional staff to make expense audits ongoing.
Travel management solutions simplify expense auditing through the digitization of expense reports. An auditor can access digital receipts and invoices instantly while reviewing expense reports. Also, the software creates digital audit trails by capturing remarks made by a manager while approving or rejecting individual expense claims.
- Sharing Data-Driven Insights
Managers can use the dashboard the software provides to generate and schedule various custom reports. The feature helps them analyze T&E data by generating reports using multiple metrics and parameters. At the same time, the software gains actionable insights by analyzing the data using analytics.
The robust data analytics solutions make the software gain insights that help managers make business trips successful, control business travel costs, and ensure policy compliance. The data analysis helps them boost the entire process by making informed decisions regularly.
- Reducing Average Business Trip Costs
Travel management software reduces human resource costs by automating important steps in corporate travel management. It controls costs by ensuring policy compliance and preventing expense fraud. In addition, employees can use the software to book travel products at discounted and negotiated rates.
Likewise, they can cancel and reschedule bookings without paying hefty cancellation fees or charges. However, an enterprise can help employees save money on business travel booking only by opting for software provided by leading travel management companies.
Conclusion
Travel management solutions help enterprises increase the ROI through end-to-end automation of a complex process. Hence, it becomes easier for them to streamline the travel management process without hiring a corporate travel agent or consultant.
Leading travel management software makes employees engage in business travel confidently and safely by providing robust features and tools. However, enterprises can control costs only by implementing an integrated travel and expense management solution.
They should check how the software facilitates travel expense tracking, reimbursements, and auditing. Also, they must prioritize tech solutions that detect cost-saving opportunities by leveraging the employees’ travel and expense data.
