The benefit of any technology used in business process automation implies an increase in its efficiency. With business travel happening more frequently than ever the question every corporate need to ask itself – How to increase the efficiency of Business Travel Management process? A sizeable diversified corporation typically has an in-house travel desk that interacts with the employees and an outsourced travel agency to fulfil the travel requirements. This is an archaic process which has a long chain of stakeholders (internal as well external) with the limited scope of improvisation and feedback.
In today’s world, there are many exciting and efficient tech-enabled processes and partners who can offer not just travel bookings but also can help you with real-time analytics and a complete cloud-based mobile-enabled solution that provides better business traveler experience as well as reduces travel cost. Here are 5 simple reasons why you may want to migrate your Business Travel Management process to a technologically-driven Business Travel Process :
Technology simplifies processes
Typically, travel desk personnel spend endless hours gathering information on the cheapest flights and hotel bookings. By the time the right itinerary is worked out, the prices have already soared. All the stakeholders: Business Traveler, Travel Admins, and Manager is all stressed due to the intricacy of the process. Automation ensures that itinerary finalization including flight details, hotel bookings, taxi drop & pick-ups managed through the Web/ Mobile application with approval from the Business Traveler in a click of the mouse.
Technology & Transparency go together
When the hotel and flight bookings are made manually by the travel desk personnel, it reaches a point when tracking the bookings becomes next to impossible. In companies, some business travelers may make out-of-policy bookings, last-minute cancellations. Consequently, there are delays in approvals. However not so with the Business Travel Management Tool. Here every transaction is dated and time-stamped. There can be no out-of-policy transaction. Also, all the bookings are initiated by the traveler leaving no scope for error or miscommunication.
Business Travel within Policy Guidelines
Surprising but true, many large corporates do not have a well-structured and comprehensive travel policy. There are loopholes like the spending limit, deadline for submission of travel expense bills, rules for trip cancellation. Employees often misuse them. The travel desk and accounts departments go through the unpleasant task of scrutinizing and penalizing defaulters. An automated Business Travel Solution places appropriate built-in controls to restrict unwanted transactions.
Employee Participation
In the manual travel management system, the ownership of employee is limited once he has given a travel requisition through email or otherwise. However, the automated management application, the choice of booking flights, hotels, check-in & check-out time is all initiated by the employee. They have the complete choice to select the service as per eligibility. Moreover, trip cancellation or rescheduling processed through mobile application on-the-go.
Easier Management
One of the frequent sources of disputes between the business traveler and the travel desk is out-of-policy bookings. Last-minute cancellations and rescheduling are the second. Mails over emails are exchanged between various stakeholders to negotiate the least cost itinerary. However, by the time the employee approves the same, the prices have gone up again.
In the automated business travel management system, flow of information in real-time making the governance and management of travel easy. This reduces delays in bookings and saves money. Over a period the company can do away with the travel desk altogether.
