Some organizations consider corporate travel as an investment, while others treat business travel as a cost. But no organization can get higher ROI simply by making more employees travel for work. They can make business trips successful by ensuring that work travelers remain comfortable, safe, and stress-free, so they make great deals.
Hence, companies and startups these days focus on managing a time-intensive and cost-intensive business process like corporate travel efficiently.
What is Corporate Travel Management?
Corporate travel management refers to the structure or strategic approach enterprises adopt to make domestic and international business trips. The corporate travel management process focuses on making it easier for employees to make a business travel booking, managing business travel risks, and getting travel expenses reimbursed.
At the same time, the process also focuses on controlling corporate travel costs by recording, monitoring, reporting, and controlling the travel expenses incurred by employees efficiently. Hence, corporate management strategies always focus on making business trips successful without affecting employees’ personal wellness and escalating costs.
How do Companies and Startups Manage Corporate Travel?
Companies and startups these days manage business travel efficiently by implementing business travel programs. These programs focus on controlling travel costs without affecting travel experience and safety.
But many organizations lack the expertise required to enable employees to accomplish business travel goals without experiencing stress. Likewise, they find it challenging to ensure the safety and security of employees during international business trips by meeting duty of care obligations.
Hence, many enterprises improve the performance of corporate travel programs by deploying an in-house travel manager, partnering with a travel management company, or implementing travel management software.
How Can an Enterprise Manage Corporate Travel Efficiently?
Corporate travel management is a multi-step business process. No company or startup can manage corporate travel efficiently without focusing on a wide range of factors. Here are some of the factors decision-makers must consider to make business trips successful.
Travel Policies
Every enterprise must make it easier for employees to plan business trips, make business travel bookings, and get travel expenses reimbursed by defining rules and parameters. Employees make realistic travel budgets and avoid non-reimbursable expenses by referring to the can refer to the policy. However, every organization needs to ensure that employees can access the travel policies and comply with the organizational policies.
Business Travel Approval
Pre-trip approval is an essential element of organizational travel policy. Employees must get approval from relevant authorities to engage in business travel or incur out-of-policy travel expenses. But every organization needs to ensure that an employer can send the business travel request to the appropriate authority. Also, the approver must approve the request quickly while ensuring travel policy compliance.
Travel Inventory
While making business travel arrangements, employees book a variety of travel products and solutions. But they want to book their choice of business travel solutions. A business must allow employees to compare and choose by providing them with access to travel inventory consisting of airlines, hotels, and car rentals. Also, it must explore ways to curtail costs by partnering and negotiating with various vendors and suppliers.
Travel Booking
Organizations must enable employees to book their choice of business travel solutions without putting in extra time and effort. Hence, they must provide employees with self-booking tools. However, they need travel booking software that recommends in-policy travel products to employees and encourages them to book cost-efficient travel products.
Duty of Care
Employees can accomplish predefined business travel goals only by overcoming many common and unanticipated challenges. Also, they must remain safe and stress-free to make business trips successful. Businesses ensure the safety and security of employees by meeting their duty of care obligations. They make a duty of care plan an integral part of corporate travel management to ensure that employees can get the required information and assistance without any hassle or delay.
Expense Report Digitization
No business can manage travel expenses efficiently without replacing paper-based expense reports with digital expense reports. At the same time, it should make it easier for employees to generate digital expense reports without putting in extra time and effort.
Organizations these days automate expense reporting by implementing travel management software. The software generates captures digital receipts and generates automated expense reports based on the digital receipts. The digital expense reports make it easier for approvers to review, approve, or reject the travel expense claims submitted by employees.
Travel Expense Management
Many bloggers describe travel expense management as the process of controlling business travel costs. A business can control costs only by tracking, reviewing, and reporting travel expenses incurred by employees.
Most organizations these days automate travel expense management by implementing unified travel and expense management software. In addition to unifying travel expense data, the software helps decision-makers track and review travel expenses by generating custom reports.
Expense Audits
No organization can prevent revenue leakage without ensuring travel policy compliance and preventing travel expense fraud. It must conduct expense audits regularly to monitor travel expenses and prevent expense fraud. At the same time, the business must prevent business travelers from conducting expense fraud by punishing employees committing such fraud.
Travel and Expense Data Analysis
No business can manage corporate travel efficiently without meeting employees’ expectations and emerging corporate travel trends. Most organizations these days keep their business travel programs flexible enough to accommodate changes and modifications.
But they can make data-driven decisions only by analyzing travel and expense data. Data analytics make it easier for businesses to finetune their corporate travel programs by providing actionable insights gained by analyzing large volumes of travel and expense data.
Conclusion
As a strategic approach, corporate travel management focuses on making business trips successful without escalating costs. Enterprises these days manage business travel in a variety of ways. But many organizations control travel management costs through automation. They save resources and costs by deploying unified travel and expense management software.
The features provided by the travel management software help businesses meet employees’ expectations, boost their work travel experiences, and keep them safe. At the same time, the software helps businesses control corporate travel spending by providing negotiated rates, ensuring policy compliance, and preventing travel expense fraud.
