Corporate travel management is a time and cost-intensive business process. No company or startup can increase the ROI of corporate travel without streamlining the complex process. Organizations these days elevate business travel through automation.
They automate corporate travel and expense management end-to-end by implementing company travel software. A company travel solution helps employees achieve business travel goals by providing booking options, real-time information, and multichannel travel support.
Also, it facilitates travel cost savings by enabling them to book business travel products at negotiated rates. At the same time, the special-purpose software solution helps the finance team control costs by tracking and managing travel expenses more efficiently.
Your company can use company travel software to alleviate business travel efficiency in several ways. We are making it easier for you to make the most of the travel management software by discussing some of its key features and benefits.
11 Ways Company Travel Software Helps Your Company Elevate Business Travel Efficiency
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1. Policy Compliance
Company travel software enables you to configure granular travel and expense (T&E) policies. While configuring the software, you can implement separate guidelines for domestic and international business travel.
Likewise, you can divide the policy into small segments using parameters like employee level, department, project, and destination. Your employees can use the software to access relevant rules and guidelines instantly.
Hence, they will book in-policy travel products and avoid non-reimbursable travel compliance. The policy configuration and compliance will help your company achieve travel cost savings.
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2. Faster Pre-Trip Approvals
The software allows you to define multilevel approval hierarchies. While configuring the software, you can define which authority can approve what type of business trip and travel expenses.
The software will ensure that an employee starts business travel bookings only after his business travel request is approved. Employees can use the software to send business travel requests to the appropriate authority directly.
Also, approvers can use it to review and approve/reject business travel requests. This feature helps your company save cancellation fees and penalties work travelers pay when they book business trips without getting the required approval.
3. Self-Booking
Company travel software boosts employee experiences by supporting self-booking. The corporate booking tool provided by the software enables employees to access an extensive and customized travel inventory.
Hence, employees can choose and book their preferred flights, accommodations, car rentals, and other business travel products. They can use the software to complete business travel bookings in minutes without visiting external supplier websites.
The software ensures policy compliance by allowing employees to choose from in-policy booking options. Also, it facilitates travel cost savings by making employees book travel products at negotiated rates and using the best deals.
4. Personalization
You should remember that work travelers these days want to receive personalized recommendations. The company travel solution meets this expectation of employees using intelligence technologies. It recommends travel products to each employee based on travel choices and booking history.
However, the software still allows them to upgrade to a higher airline class or hotel star by supporting self-funded upgrades. The feature helps your company save money by restricting travel choices without impacting business travel experiences.
5. Travel Risk Management
Employees need a variety of real-time information to stay safe and stress-free during business trips. The software keeps them stress-free by delivering flight status and travel guidelines. Employees can access real-time information in the form of mobile notifications.
Also, they can use the software to collect the required information by interacting with a customer support executive. Leading company travel software providers deliver round-the-clock travel support across telephone, emails, instant messages, and other channels.
At the same time, you can use the software to track the real-time location of each employee traveling for business purposes. The real-time location tracking helps you communicate with work travelers and provide the required assistance.
6. Duty of Care
Company travel solutions these days feature robust duty-of-care solutions. Providers provide emergency assistance to work travelers across destinations by partnering with global health and security risk management firms. The feature helps your company meet an important legal obligation by ensuring the safety and security of employees engaging in international business travel.
7. Expense Report Digitization
Company travel software helps you speed up travel expense reimbursements by abandoning paper-based expense reports with digital expense reports. An employee can use the software to scan invoices and generate automated expense reports.
The software eliminates data entry errors and prevents expense fraud by producing expense reports using information captured from scanned invoices. Hence, your finance team can reduce the time required to review digital expense reports and reimburse travel expenses.
8. Real-Time Spend Visibility
Company travel software facilitates travel cost savings through expense management automation. Your finance team can use the dashboard provided by the software to track travel expenses in real time. The expense tracking helps them speed up reimbursements and make informed financial decisions.
Also, they can use the software to generate a variety of reports based on travel and expense data. The feature helps your managers make realistic budgets and predict cash flow by analyzing real-time expense data using various metrics.
9. Regular Expense Audits
You can prevent policy violations, expense fraud, and overspending only by auditing travel expenses incurred by employees regularly. The software facilitates regular expense audits by capturing comments and remarks made by managers when they approve or reject an expense claim.
Additionally, you can access receipts and invoices corresponding to individual expenses instantly and digitally. The feature makes it easier for you to audit travel expenses without putting in extra time and effort.
10. Data-Driven Insights
New-age company travel software features data analytics solutions. They use data analytics to make sense of the travel and expense data of employees. The analytics further make the software effective in understanding patterns and detecting trends. The software will share actionable insights with you regularly. You can leverage data-driven insights to find opportunities to refine policies, control costs, and boost business travel experience.
11. Travel Cost Savings
Company travel software helps your company reduce human resource costs through the automation of a complex business process. At the same time, you can use the features provided by the software to help and incentivize employees to reduce the average business trip costs.
The data-driven insights provided by the software facilitate travel cost savings by negotiating with suppliers for better rates and running preferred supplier programs. Also, you can find new cost-saving opportunities by tracking and analyzing the expense data efficiently.
Conclusion
Your company can use company travel software to elevate business travel efficiency in several ways. But you should focus on automating travel and expense management simultaneously while shortlisting travel management solutions.
Also, you should prioritize travel management solutions that facilitate travel cost savings using cutting-edge technologies like data analytics and artificial intelligence. The right company travel software will help your company increase the ROI of business travel consistently.