5 Efficient Ways to Manage Business Travel

Business travel management is accompanied by several administrative tasks that can often become challenging. There is a need for support to efficiently fulfil the responsibilities that make the employees’ work trips hassle-free. Hence, this guide offers the most effective ways to streamline travel management for companies:

 

 

Travel management of corporate employees is among the most critical aspects of any business. Companies, therefore, need to optimize their travel management processes to avoid the complications that can leave their employees struggling. Efficient management of the employees’ trips and their expenses with the help of the best business travel management companies can offer a structure to the travel program and simplify it for better ROI.

 

Added to that, it is also crucial for enhancing the travel experience of the employees. Here are a few ways to manage employees’ trips and the business travel expenses that accompany them, optimizing the entire system for more success:

A business travel platform that automates workflows helps to streamline a large number of processes, including bookings, expense filings, and reimbursements. By limiting human interventions, automation also reduces the chances of error, thus making the whole system more productive. It also standardizes the processes, hence offering uniform reports and data that give a clear picture to the travel managers.

 

Additionally, self-booking features powered by automation allow employees to book for their comprehensive travel needs like flights, hotels, cabs, etc. This fastens approvals and authorization of expenses. Overall, it empowers the employees to have complete control over their corporate business travel, thereby making the management of corporate travel more efficient.

One of the reasons your business travel management is lagging could be credited to the lack of a defined travel policy. Studies suggest that many businesses still have not implemented a travel policy. The lack of an exhaustive policy that explains the T & E processes within the company can be disruptive to the overall growth of the company.

With a travel policy in place, the approval processes for booking business travel can be greatly simplified by eliminating the confusion surrounding bookings and authorizations. A good travel policy covers the following aspects:

 

• Travel-related workflows.
• Authorization flow for expenses.
• The spending limits for business travel booking.
• The various communication channels.

.. and more.

 

The next step in setting up a travel policy is spreading awareness about it to the relevant stakeholders. This can be pivotal in avoiding any confusion and conflict, thus helping to increase the accountability of the employees. It can improve the compliance rate by educating employees to stick to the approved limits, thus staying within the travel budget, all with the help of an ideal business travel platform.

A good travel management platform offers business travel solutions that are comprehensive. This also includes the prompt creation of real-time reports. It gathers all the corporate travel-related data and provides a vivid graphical representation and reports that can be crucial for company stakeholders like the CHRO, CFO, or Travel Managers in taking important decisions. These reports can be useful in offering a seamless analysis of several aspects of the company’s business travel like:

 

• The expense data.
• The spending habits of employees.
• The preferred properties or suppliers.

.. and more.

 

Based on these insights, important budgeting and policy decisions can be taken to make the management of work trips more seamless.

Once automated reports reflecting the various parameters impacting online business travel booking in your company are set up, the next step involves careful tracking, record-keeping, and analysis of this data. It can give you a comprehensive insight that can be effectively used to draw conclusions that benefit the business. For instance, an accurate record of the company’s expenses can enable the company’s stakeholders to take intelligent and productive decisions that can help scale the company to greater heights of success.

Centralizing online business travel payments is yet another way to manage the company’s travel requirements efficiently. Letting the employees use corporate credit cards can simplify the entire booking and reimbursement process. Employees do not have to seek approvals before each booking, thus saving more time and money. Additionally, the gruesome reimbursement process can be made quicker by increasing the company's overall visibility of travel spend due to the centralized nature of the payments.

If efficiently managed, business travel can yield significant results for your company. It, therefore, becomes important to have an effective travel and expense management solution that can enable employees to have a degree of autonomy and grant the company more visibility. For these reasons, myBiz is the ideal travel partner as it ensures:

• Easy automation that promotes self-bookings by employees.
• Complete compliance with easy policy set-up.
• Generation of real-time reports for deeper insights.
• Higher visibility over the company’s travel program.
• Hassle-free payments.

.. and several other features that streamline the financial as well as the operational side of business travel and expense management, making it more efficient!

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Q1. What are the complications faced by employees’ travelling for business?

Ans. Difficulty in securing convenient bookings, delays in approvals, lack of clarity on guidelines, complicated claim filing, and delayed reimbursements are some of the prominent challenges faced by employees. 

Q2. How can higher transparency help simplify business travels?

Ans. Maintaining transparency in the travel policy can encourage compliance. Additionally, higher transparency with the right travel management solution can give travel managers a macroscopic view of the overall travel trends, expenses, preferences, and more.

Q3. How are automated processes better than traditional corporate travel management?

Ans. Under the traditional system, employees are forced to save each invoice, struggle with longer TAT for approvals, and manually file reimbursement claims, among other challenges that are easily resolved by automated processes.

Q4. How can travel policy set up encourage compliance?

Ans. With the right travel management solution, employees can only book policy-compliant options, thereby increasing compliance.