Companies incur business travel expenses amounting to approximately $799 per employee per day. But businesses generate incremental revenue of $12.5 for every dollar invested in business travel. No company can generate incremental revenue simply by investing more in employee travel. To get higher returns, it must complement the escalated costs with a corporate travel management program.
In addition to meeting the company’s employee travel needs, corporate travel management helps employees to enjoy business trips without handling hassle and managing stress. Every company can manage its corporate travel needs in a variety of ways.
- Deploying a dedicated business travel manager
- Partnering with a corporate business management company
- Investing in business travel management software
While comparing these employee travel management options, decision-makers must identify and address some of the common challenges in business travel. Also, they must focus on integrating and streamlining two interrelated processes — business travel management and business travel expense management.
Hence, it becomes essential for decision-makers to streamline the six important phases or steps in corporate travel management workflow.
Let’s see the six important stages in corporate travel management
1) Making Travel Arrangements
Employees these days travel for business or work purposes for various reasons — meet clients, visit suppliers, attend meetings/conferences, identify global industry trends, and conduct market research. While scheduling and planning business trips, they have to make travel arrangements and track trip details. Often employees look for options to make travel arrangements in their own way.
Most enterprises these days allow employees to book flights, accommodations, and car rentals by choosing from multiple options. Some companies make travel arrangements through in-house travel managers, while others enable employees to make arrangements using travel management software or contacting the travel management company.
2) Providing Real-Time Assistance and Support
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed both leisure travel and corporate travel. Employees these days need real-time information to stay safe during and after the business trip. Likewise, they need on-time assistance and support to manage sudden and unexpected changes. After allowing employees to make travel arrangements, companies must focus on keeping them safe and comfortable during business trips.
Most corporate travel management companies and platforms offer 24/7 support and assistance to business travelers. Employees can get the required assistance by sending instant messages or making voice/video calls to the provider. But enterprises have to deploy dedicated and offsite staff to provide support and assistance to employees during business trips outside business hours.
3) Filing Travel Expense
Employees spend money while making travel arrangements and during business trips. Companies need to reimburse the travel expenses incurred by an employee before and during business trips. Employees claim travel expenses by submitting expense reports along with expense receipts. The employees have to comply with the company’s travel expense policy while preparing and submitting the expense report.
Also, most companies require employees to file travel expense claims by predefined timeframes. But the process of travel expense filing or submission varies across companies. The employees need to scan expense reports using third-party software if the company is managing travel expenses traditionally. But they can scan the expense receipts and upload expense reports quickly if the employer has implemented business travel management software.
4) Approving Travel Expense Claims
The travel expense reports submitted by an employee need to be reviewed and approved by the finance team or HR team. While reviewing expense reports, managers look at individual expenses and check the related expense report. Also, they ensure that the travel expense is legitimate according to the company’s travel policy.
The manager forwards the expense report to the finance team to process payment after reviewing and approving. However, the expense approval workflow varies across companies. Some companies require employees to forward expense reports to their reporting managers, while others allow them to forward expense reports to the finance team directly.
5) Reimbursing Travel Expenses
The finance team reimburses travel expenses to the employee once the manager approves the expense report. Most companies these days set up automatic payments. Hence, the amount is transferred to the employee’s bank account in minutes. But expense reimbursement takes more time when the money is transferred by finance managers manually and individually.
6) Conducting Travel Expense Audits
Companies in the United States lose a significant percentage of their revenue due to travel expense frauds committed by employees. That is why; they conduct travel expense audit regularly to mitigate the risk of travel expense fraud. In addition to detecting and preventing travel expense frauds, travel expense audits focus on ensuring travel policy compliance and improving the entire process.
While conducting an expense audit, auditors review expense reports, expense reports, and approvals. They need additional time to conduct expense audits if more employees file travel expenses regularly. Likewise, they find the process challenging if the company adopts traditional expense management techniques or its expense policy is complex.
Many companies these days conduct real-time travel expense audits by leveraging business travel management software. The software has native features to send automatic notifications each time a duplicate receipt or policy violation is detected. Also, they accelerate the entire travel expense auditing process by enabling auditors to access digital expense receipts and recording expense approval trails.
Conclusion
A company can generate higher revenue by streamlining and optimizing corporate business management as a core business process. It also has the option to manage its employee travel needs efficiently in a variety of ways. But decision-makers can streamline the entire process only by focusing on each of the six important stages in corporate travel management. Many organizations these days automate corporate travel management workflow through automation.
They invest in business travel management software to make it easier for employees to make travel arrangements according to the company’s travel policy. Also, employees can use the software to file travel expense claims without putting in extra time and effort. At the same time, the corporate travel management software helps the finance team speed up travel expense reimbursement and conduct real-time expense audits.
References
https://financesonline.com/business-travel-statistics/
https://salestrip.com/faqs/how-much-do-companies-spend-on-business-travel/
https://blog.spendesk.com/en/corporate-travel-management
https://tripactions.com/corporate-travel-management
https://www.revfine.com/corporate-travel-management/
