Extracting Real Advantages from Travel & Expense Management

For the company to seriously reap the rewards of a structured corporate travel policy, it must concentrate on one thing most of all: compliance. Unfortunately, as the explosion in convenient Self Booking Tools offers you much more freedom of preference, in addition, it makes compliance considerably more challenging. Any technology that supports a rise in compliance to policy has merit; it'll save your valuable company money and recreate the advantages of corporate travel.

day's diversity of preference in self booking tools makes compliance through denial of access an extremely difficult protocol to enforce. Everything you really need is really a funnel by which 100% of one's company's travel activity must pass. In the organization world, the only real viable funnel may be the payment mechanism - getting paid may be the ultimate leveler. If you are using a corporate charge card because the payment mechanism, supported by way of a corporate expense management software solution, and suppliers who is able to report back a reasonable degree of data, you stand an excellent potential for supporting the compliance objective.

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A compliance-friendly corporate expense management software solution

A corporate expense management software solution which processes card transactions (and possesses decent workflow) requires the traveler to personally justify all deviations from policy with their supervisor - on a transaction by transaction basis. As importantly just, the warehoused individual transactions supply the corporate travel manager the chance to conduct spend analysis and examine individual and aggregate behaviors.

You may argue that is following the act, nonetheless it still encourages compliance. According to all card based procurement systems, if a worker consistently deviates from company policy, they might be penalized (e.g. card withdrawal, official warning, employment termination, etc.). The risk of negative repercussions acts as a deterrent to card misuse, thereby increasing the amount of compliance.

The advantages of policy compliance

80% of the business enterprise case great things about corporate travel should come from travel policy compliance. This involves:

   Sound procedures and policy;

   A thorough communication strategy;

   A gate by which all activity could be channeled (the card and the organization expense management software solution); and

   Tools to monitor and measure compliance.

There may also be some peripheral advantages to be gained from the corporate expense management software solution in the pre-trip phase:

For example:

1. The traveler may use the task flow element of a corporate expense management software treatment for create travel request and approval records instead of using something less structured like emails.

2.  Utilizing the corporate expense management software solution, the traveler can make a "commitment" record during booking for subsequent matching of the charge card transaction as it pertains through.

3.   You can get yourself a download of trip data from your own TMC, and travelers can seek to complement that against trip card transactions, thus reducing the amount of manual entries required of the travel coordinator.

 4. The organization expense management software solution provides travelers with a real-time log of commitments beyond what may be recorded in an individual diary.

So how exactly does it connect with your company?

In considering the business enterprise case because of this exercise, you do have to closely examine numerous factors to look for the benefits you'll actually realize:

   You can find no industry-wide standards, and the marketplace tends to are a number of isolated closed provider loops - your efficiencies will undoubtedly be greatest if can conduct your organization entirely within one closed loop. It really is your decision to determine when you can obtain maximum purchasing power in this environment.

   The significance you put on understanding the cumulative value of travel booked however, not yet paid.

   The extent to which you are able to source the info you require from your own travelers with a TMC data feed and, consequently, the keystroke savings it is possible to achieve for all those travelers.

   The productivity gains you'll obtain for the travelers by virtue of these establishing trip details in your corporate expense management software solution at time of booking instead of at time of arrival of the card transaction.

The mix of Electronic Travel Management and Expense Management can be an important subset of eProcurement, in fact it is at the mercy of exactly the same challenges facing all eProcurement initiatives in the last a decade - industry standards, supplier participation, and a seamless marketplace. Until these elements are set up, greatest advantage will undoubtedly be gained by companies that concentrate on the picture as a whole of where they are able to achieve maximum purchasing value with reasonable purchasing productivity - usually predicated on having the ability to perform an analysis of spend patterns and behavior.