6 Reasons to adopt Travel & Expenses solution now

Sonia was on her way to close one of her biggest sales deals with a large Hongkong bank. Since the local offline booking agent — her company had partnered with — never responded to her requests, she booked all by herself: return flights, hotels, and an airport-transfers cab. She informed her manager about the travel plans a week before diligently, but forgot to mention an alteration she made within days of the travel date to attend ‘Fintech Sales Show’, largest APAC sales show.

It all seemed good till Sonia, on the way to the hotel, heard about the Hongkong Govt announcing curfew in certain pockets of the city. The news of such an event had been going on for a few weeks. Her manager caught up in the long-pending performance reviews and didn’t check her phone or news for a long time. Sonia stared at the impending uncertainty without a clear idea of what to do next — to take the risk of staying or cancel everything and return — she got super stressed with all her plans going for a toss… All this could have been avoided had the company considered using a compelling T&E automation platform.

Modern T&E automation platforms prioritize employee-safety along with the cost-control objectives of the company.

Top 6 reasons which companies should adopt T&E solution for employee safety:

Complete visibility of ongoing trips to alert travelers

Companies need a complete overview of the ongoing trips with all the essential details like the traveler’s contact details at the fingertips. In case of any unavoidable situation, the admin can send alerts instantly to the traveler via SMS or notifications through the platform.

Policy-control to restrict/allow travel in real-time

Admins need policy control to regulate or ban travel at the city and country-level. Regulated trips will go out of policy and need additional approval while the banned ones will be unbookable. Such real-time implementation of policies will help avoid massive cancellation costs and prioritize only the essential travel.

See the travel history of all employees who traveled recently

When the employees book travel all by themselves, their itineraries get buried in their mailboxes. It is impossible for travel admin to coordinate and pull up history to check for a recent trip to a restricted zone. T&E platforms provide advanced search filters at both employee and department levels to provide precise information.

Filter travel suppliers for best quality standards

Cleanliness is the most important consideration before booking travel now. Using such software, the company can allow travel searches only for flights and hotels that are highly-rated on the hygiene standards. This will not only ensure the safety of the traveling employees but their teammates as well.  

Concierge to solve issues around travel

Corporate travel can get stressful when paired with an uncertain environment. Getting stuck because of the language barrier in a lesser-known city can leave employees strained. Dedicated concierge which comes with an end to end T&E solution can help travelers in such dire situations. Providing accurate information, communicating emergency, and informing the right teams in the company could provide instant relief so the employees can focus on their key objectives.

Manage changes at scale

Sudden changes in plans can send scores of scheduled travel itineraries in a disarray. It’s tedious to manage such cancellations and rescheduling manually over emails and phones. Empower your travel-desk team to make such changes at scale and communicate directly with a click of a button.

Empathy has emerged as an important core value from the current crisis. Prioritizing employee-safety during travel is a must and doing it at scale is only possible by adopting an automated T&E solution.

If you have any questions or want to share your opinion about implementing T&E automation solution, comment below or contact me on [email protected]