Corporate Travel Management: 6 ways Small Businesses Can Save Big!

It might seem challenging for small businesses to make savings on business travel bookings. This is especially true for companies that require frequent employee travel to expand their business and achieve greater heights of success. So, here are the top 5 ways such small businesses can reduce their overall travel expenditure:

Employees flying to different locations is good for the growth and development of the business. However, this can make expense management quite tricky, especially for SMEs that are constrained by limited finances. However, there are ways they can cut down costs on corporate travel booking without undermining the safety and comfort of the employees.

T & E or Travel and expense is a constant area that incurs spending, but it can be difficult to keep track of these expenditures. End-to-end and integrated solutions can control costs that are disorderly and turn them into lasting savings. Establishing a strategic process in place is the first step to saving money on every trip taken by the corporate travellers in your company. However, it is imperative to ensure that cost-cutting does not come at the risk of making the stakeholders unhappy.

 

So, here are the 6 most effective ways to reduce travel expenditure with the help of effective corporate travel management-

 

 

Flight tickets can be quite costly; hence there is a need to be smart while booking flight tickets. Saving up on travel costs can help small businesses save big, and the easiest way to slash costs is to get access to a better flight inventory. Booking economy flights and choosing the dates of travel wisely can help your small business save a lot. However, having access to corporate fares and a fixed travel plan through corporate travel management is a better alternative. An innovative travel management tool brings the best corporate rates and discounts on airfares, helping you to drastically reduce your travel costs. Last-minute changes and cancellations can also be accommodated with business travel management. But more importantly, such tools offer a large inventory, offering a sea of options to travellers for booking corporate rates on a single platform by integrating multiple carriers and offering the best travel network to your employees.

 

 

Usually, small businesses rely on a few favourite hotels or hotel chains for their business travelling needs. However, this strategy could cause you to miss out on huge savings. With the best corporate travel platforms, businesses can make the most of different options that are more cost-effective. Not only will it save on your travel expenditure, but it will also be able to provide your employees with a much better travel experience. A TMC ensures that employees find it easier to stick to their company’s travel budget, are compliant with the travel policy, and also have more flexibility with regard to choosing hotel stays. Corp travel management tools are able to offer discounted rates and corporate fares, ensuring your stay during business trips is cost-effective. Furthermore, ditching hotel chains in favour of business travel management services also implies the reduction of workload and cuts down paperwork for travel admins. Hence, large inventories of accommodation options mean more options to choose from as well as more options to save.

 

 

Business trips can often be unpredictable. Regardless of organising travel arrangements diligently, plans can be subject to change. Meetings with clients can get rescheduled or cancelled, the employees might get sick, or some other last-minute issue might hamper the travel plans of the employees. Hence, there should always be some flexibility with regard to the date of bookings. Disregarding this important aspect can cost the company significantly. Hence, it is crucial that travel admins, managers or employees, whosoever is making a corporate booking, should ensure that there is room for last-minute changes. This is where corporate travel managing companies can come to your rescue with their last-minute cancellation services and reduced cancellation charges. Doing so can ensure up to 50% savings on corporate hotels and flight booking. A travel solution like myBiz offers the most generous cancellation policies to employees, enabling them to cancel their business travel arrangements with just a click. Furthermore, utilising a corporate booking tool for official travel can also help your travel admins and employees gain more control and visibility, ensuring an optimised schedule and greater savings without the need for multiple approvals. Overall, trip flexibility with a TMC can save a significant expenditure, enabling travel admins to leave their worries about losing huge sums due to changes made at the eleventh hour behind.

 

 

Business travelling involves many different aspects. If all these are not efficiently managed, corporate travelling can be full of challenges. Hence, business trips require not only quick managerial approvals but also requires efficient management. Here are the three most important aspects of any business travel management-

• •  Requesting travel booking approvals
• •  Tracking travel receipts
• •  Analysing expense reports

These steps, if managed manually, can lead to significant delays. Hence, there is an urgent need to do away with these outdated processes. If not automated timely, they can lengthen the time taken to process and approve requests, leading to an increased administrative burden on the company. Furthermore, this can be risky as it also has the potential to increase costs. The longer the approval time, the higher the chances of flight and hotel fares increasing, thus creating a dent in the company’s budget. So, automation of the T & E processes is the key to getting past these challenges and minimising the overall costs on employee travel.

 

 

Setting up a travel policy is vital since it helps the employees understand whether their itinerary falls within the scope and budget of the company’s business travel expectations. Otherwise, it can be difficult to know what is and what is not included, making it a complicated task to set up a successful travel policy. For this reason, a travel management system is important as it can offer customisable templates that can enable a company to set up a travel policy quickly. Here are some of the important factors that must be kept in mind while outlining the travel policy of a company, ensuring higher savings as opposed to a company travel agency-

• •  The travel spend on air travel, accommodations, ground transfer, and other expenses on business travel must be defined.
• •  Guidelines regarding the type of cabin bookings approved for employees, vis-à-vis economy class vs business class tickets must be elucidated.
• •  The approval flow must also be defined with regard to hotel bookings, air tickets, ground transfer arrangements, and more.
• •  Outlining the payment process, whether the company will be offering a business credit card or utilising a wallet or any other mode of payment.
• •  Defined reimbursement, as well as real-time report analysis of corporate tours is another significant aspect of travel policy that should not be neglected.

It is imperative that a corporate travel policy must be simple, clear, and easy to access. Furthermore, they must be updated from time to time to keep up with the evolving trends in corporate travel. This is where a TMC can be of significant help in helping travel admins integrate their policies with the booking processes, achieving automation in the approval process. Automated approvals make it simpler for employees to stick to the company’s budget while also making bookings as per their preferences.

 

 

Employee travel incurs tax implications that can be an added cost to the overall travel expense of a company. The goods and services tax or GST is a tax imposed on both air travel and hotel stays across the country. Not only can a travel management service help businesses address this cost of GST expenses but also allow companies to automatically track all tax liabilities. Furthermore, some TMCs also guarantee GST invoices with every booking, which can, in turn, be useful in reducing the tax liability of the company by claiming the Input Tax Credit or ITC. Hence, regardless of the size of the company, corporate travel services can help them grow and propel them to greater heights by streamlining processes and helping businesses accumulate greater savings.

 

Booking travel for businesses using a B2B travel agency will cause SMEs to miss out on affordable costs. Hence, if a company relies on outdated corporate travel solutions, it can fail to take advantage of cost-saving opportunities. However, with a travel management tool like myBiz on your side, all the aspects of business travel can be streamlined, ensuring higher cost savings and better expense management. 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

 

Q1. How can an effective travel policy help save costs on corporate travel planning?

Ans. Travel and expense policies can be helpful in avoiding costly errors and ensuring compliance. They can further detect and prevent fraud.

 

Q2. Why can relying on manual approvals be inefficient in saving costs on corporate trips?

Ans. Relying on manual and outdated methods that involve paperwork can not only be costly, but it can also make policy compliance difficult, putting smaller businesses at risk.

 

Q3. How can setting up an approval system reduce costs on a corporate travel portal?

Ans. Having an approval system for each business travel booking defines a clear approval flow. This will further avoid cancellations due to delayed approval that causes excess expenditure.

 

Q4. How can corporate travel management services help reduce the costs of business travel?

Ans. Corporate travel partners can offer preferential rates on flight and hotel bookings. They can also collate data regarding trip expenses giving control and visibility to travel admins and reducing the overall costs of corporate trips.