How to Simplify Corporate Travel Management

Planning an out-of-town or overseas trip for yourself is a complex process. Planning one for your entire team is not only complex but also draining and costly if not managed carefully. While travel agencies promise to simplify things, their fees can strain the company’s budget and often create more problems than they solve.

Large companies often have a specialist manager appointed for corporate travel and employee spending. This saves time and avoids the hassle of dealing with agencies when planning an impromptu trip. However, small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often struggle with the complexities of travel management, especially in today’s market where automated solutions are becoming more prevalent. This article explores the inherent challenges in corporate travel management and offers solutions to simplify the process.

What makes corporate travel management complicated

If it weren’t for corporate travel management software, startups and SMEs would have no choice but to rely on low-tier agencies or overburden their managers. But before we dive into solutions, let’s first discuss the factors that make corporate travel management complex and mentally exhausting.

Logistics and coordination

This involves coordinating multiple employees’ travel schedules, finding suitable flights or trains, ensuring everyone arrives at the destination on time, and making sure the accommodations meet their comfort and safety expectations. As you can imagine, the more employees you have, the more stressful this part of the process becomes. Shortcomings in interdepartmental communication, such as between the HR team and the Travel Manager regarding pre-planned leave, can increase the margin for error.

Visa and immigration issues

Visa and immigration issues can be particularly tedious for companies with a diverse pool of employees. Visa regulations vary from country to country depending on the passports held by your employees. For example, European passport holders may have an easier time travelling across Europe than American passport holders. Additionally, immigration laws are subject to change and can evolve on short notice.

Managing costs

Every corporate travel manager aims to strike the perfect balance between providing employees with comfortable travel arrangements and lodging while adhering to budget limitations. This requires establishing clear and transparent policies for allowable expenses and implementing a system to ensure adherence to them.

The first step is determining a suitable budget based on estimated financial projections. The hard part, however, comes later when you must allocate your budget to various categories of expenses, ensure adherence to spending policies, and monitor them. Fortunately, this part of the process can be streamlined using automated bookkeeping software.

Xpence offers an unparalleled user experience for accountants, data security, spending insights, reports, and auto-categorisation of payments within its price range. To get started, you only need to open an Xpence account.

Special requests

It’s not uncommon for companies with regular business trips to be overburdened with special employee requests. Employees have unique dietary preferences, religious calendars, privacy concerns, and other special requirements that must be considered. It is always in any company’s best interest to accommodate every employee’s needs efficiently, but this is easier said than done.

It is nearly impossible for founders to manage all special requests on time while also overseeing other aspects of business development. SMEs are increasingly turning to corporate travel management software for solutions, which we will explore shortly.

Managing expense reimbursement

Reimbursable expenses include costs that a business expects to recover, such as travel for a business trip. Non-reimbursable expenses are those that don’t qualify for recovery. The often cumbersome process of identifying which expenses qualify for reimbursement can be streamlined by implementing efficient systems. Leveraging digital tools such as corporate expense cards to automate expense tracking reduces administrative burdens and ensures timely and accurate reimbursements.

Technology and connectivity

Ensuring that employees can communicate seamlessly while on the move is paramount. Providing reliable communication tools and addressing data security concerns are essential for maintaining a connected and secure business environment.

Emergency preparedness

Emergency preparedness is an often overlooked aspect of corporate travel management. Companies need to identify potential risks at the destination and be aware of factors such as political instability or a looming economic crisis before booking any tickets. Adopting a proactive approach is essential. Companies must have various emergency response protocols and contingencies in place from the outset.

Environmental considerations

Environmental consciousness and sustainability are growing concerns. Companies with emissions targets must consider the carbon footprint of each business trip and follow eco-friendly practices to minimise it.

What solutions are companies using to manage corporate travel?

The challenges arising from corporate travel can be crippling for businesses that are unprepared or lack assistance. It cannot be understated.

The pillars of modern travel management are trust, transparency, simplicity, care, and sustainability. Businesses without an experienced, designated travel manager have opted for one of three solutions:

Booking sites

Booking sites are relatively simple and straightforward to use. They’re not designed to accommodate corporate needs but can offer a large enough range of services to help corporates make all their bookings in one place, from flights to hotels and local transit.

Travel agencies that specialise in business trips

Traditional travel agencies tend to specialise in leisure trips, but there are several with expertise in corporate travel management. Some agencies offer an online booking tool, while others may provide in-person consultations. The quality of service and cost can vary greatly from agency to agency, making it difficult to judge whether they provide a foolproof solution at a reasonable price. One major drawback of hiring travel agencies is the above-market price you’d have to pay for everything from transport to accommodation.

Travel management software

Travel management software is the future of corporate business travel management. These tools are designed with both employers and employees in mind, helping to balance providing comfortable travel arrangements and lodging with adhering to budget limitations. However, it is important to remember that not all tools are created equal. Some tools may be excellent but might not be the right fit for your business. It’s essential to find software that precisely meets your company’s needs. You can do this by exploring our top 2023 business travel management software choices.

Final thoughts

It goes without saying, but neither jeopardising employee safety and comfort nor exceeding the budget is sustainable for any business. The goal must always be to strategically avoid both scenarios. Simplifying corporate travel management is a significant challenge, but it is attainable. The key lies in carefully evaluating your company’s and employees’ needs and always choosing the solution that best meets both to a reasonable degree.

6 Simple Strategies to Boost Finance Team Efficiency

Finance teams face numerous challenges in optimising their workflows, such as streamlining processes, eliminating bottlenecks, and enhancing productivity. The role of finance teams becomes even more critical in steering businesses towards success. Automated tools for accounting, vendor, and expense management can significantly improve their efficiency. This blog explores the complexities of finance team management and offers insightful strategies to overcome common hurdles.

Key Strategies to Improve Your Finance Team’s Productivity

Here are six key operational changes businesses need to make to maximise their finance team’s efficiency in 2024.

Identify the Bottlenecks to Productivity

The first step to creating a winning strategy is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current and previously employed strategies. It’s crucial to build on strengths and eliminate weaknesses to develop strategies backed by experience and data.

Common weaknesses observed among finance teams today include:

Over-reliance on manual data entry for repetitive tasks like invoice processing and data input, which is time-consuming and error-prone.
Paper-based processes that hinder flexibility in remote work environments and delay important documentation sharing.
Insufficient integrations between different financial processes, leading to inefficiencies and data silos.
Cumbersome and slow approval processes for expenses and receipts, disrupting cash flow.
Insufficient emphasis on asynchronous communication, leading to delays in coordination.

Once you’ve identified your finance team’s weaknesses, systematically root them out.

Embrace Paperless Expense Management

While paper has been a cornerstone of commerce, its drawbacks are numerous. Paper records are perishable, prone to damage or misplacement, hard to share with remote teams, come with storage and security costs, and create waste. The digital revolution, through cloud solutions and automation, has addressed these issues.

Using digital scanners and camera apps, opt for electronic versions of documents like invoices, receipts, and expense claims. Digitising paper processes makes all documents immediately accessible to your team via cloud computing and allows efficient expense tracking.

Unlock Insights and Optimise Workflows

Automation and the delegation of repetitive tasks to expense management software define finance efficiency today. Automation won’t replace finance teams but will make their jobs easier and more productive. Accounting tools like Xpence can handle tasks such as:

Data Entry
Invoice Processing
Expense Tracking
Receipt Tracking
Bank Reconciliation
Payroll Processing
Accounts Receivable
Tax Preparation
Inventory Management
Financial Analysis and Credit Control
Compliance Monitoring
Vendor Management
Accounts Payable
Financial Reporting
Budget Monitoring

While Xpence excels in many areas, some tasks like cash management, financial planning, and audit preparation require human oversight.

Create a Culture of Transparency

Asynchronous communication tools become indispensable for remote finance teams. This form of collaboration does not require real-time interaction, ensuring updates, information, and discussions are organised and accessible in one place. Platforms like Xpence Teams allow seamless communication of spending limits and budget constraints without meetings or lengthy email chains.

Choose the Right Tech Stack for Efficiency

The market offers countless tools to automate business processes, access centralised data, and communicate seamlessly. However, picking the right tech stack is crucial:

Ensure it fits your industry.
Supports integration with existing tools.
Fits your budget.

Xpence’s tech stack, focusing on SMEs in the UAE and Bahrain, includes:

Virtual Prepaid Cards Or Virtual Debit Cards, as they’re also called.
Corporate Expense cards
Automated Bookkeeping
Invoicing Tools

The Xpence app integrates these tools to automate processes end-to-end, making it ideal for startups.

Measure Outcomes and Continually Improve

Once your new finance efficiency strategy is in motion, systematically monitor and measure its impacts to make iterative improvements. Consider questions like:

How much time was saved?
How much money was saved?
How many errors were made?
Did employees require additional training?
Were there communication barriers?
Were KPI targets met?

Implement feedback mechanisms to gather insights from team members and use this input for continuous improvement.

Final Thoughts

Optimising financial workflows is an ongoing commitment. Implementing these strategies is a step towards improving organisational efficiency. These simple yet powerful strategies can help finance teams overcome challenges and pave the way for a more agile, transparent, and successful future.