Where Does Travel Go from Here?
Talking about travel in 2020 is like talking about, well, anything else in 2020 – none of it makes much sense anymore. But what we can discuss with absolute certainty are the ways to improve travel management that make it easier to hit the road again and truly know where we’re going.
Getting there comes down to one thing: getting together. And in this instance, we don’t mean traveling around the world to see your customers, we mean traveling across the hall to talk to your finance and travel manager counterparts. These two teams have to work together to ensure the safety of your travelers, increase visibility into spending, and improve the overall experience for all those who pack up their roller bags and actually experience it.
Safety first
If you work in finance, you know the risks. Literally. You know the risk of blowing past the budget. You know the risk of falling out of compliance. You know the risk of missing some obscure regional regulation. And all those risks add up to costs.
If you’re on the travel management side, you know the risks of sending employees out into a volatile world.
So yes, you both understand what’s at stake. What’s interesting, though, is that finance and travel hold the answers to each other’s problems. When you come together and you have the right tools in your hands, you can see what’s being spent, so you’ll eliminate the risk of going over budget. You can capture every booking, so you’ll know you’re in compliance.
And most importantly, you’ll know where your people are, so you can not only stay on top of regulations and requirements – you can do your duty of care, supporting the safety of your travelers wherever they’re working. If you want to know more about protecting your people, check out the details in this quick travel eBook.
Seeing is believing
When you reach out to each other, you’ll see more than a way to help yourselves – you’ll be serving the entire organization. Take controlling spend, for example. With a few simple tools implemented into travel programs, both finance and travel managers can see every reservation, every itinerary, and every charge made by every traveler.
They can see it all, so they can control it all.
These travel and expense tools also get rid of the errors and delays that come with paper receipts and manual expense reports. So instead of waiting until next month to find out what was spent last month, finance can see actual, accurate numbers as they happen.
By capturing all this information, travel managers can see if policies are being followed and easily train travelers to stay on track. They’ll have the spend data to strengthen negotiations and, alongside finance, they’ll have the intelligence to make smarter decisions faster.
Your entire organization will be more informed and more flexible, and that’s a win for everyone.
A better experience
Speaking of everyone, collaboration between travel managers and finance leaders improves the overall employee experience for employees out on the road. Apps and automation simplify the process – letting travelers book with brands they love, get the updates and upgrades they want, and eliminate the busywork of expense reports and receipt management.
This means more than easier travel, it means more time to do the work they’ve set out to do. And that improves employee engagement, not only productivity.
When travel managers help make the travel process effortless in these ways, adoption goes up. And when adoption goes up, finance gets to see more of the data they need. And everyone’s happy.
Go together
Combining the efforts of finance and travel eliminates much of the effort of travel management itself. It’s good for the number crunchers, it’s good for travel managers, and it’s good for every single person in the company. So look up a few deeper details in this eBook and get going.
