How Healthy Is Your Travel Program?
Corporate travel is so much more than getting your people from point A to point B. It enables the personal connections with customers and between teams that help shape and grow your business. Being on the road can be taxing for employees, so making the experience as convenient, comfortable, and safe as possible is top of mind for travel managers. At the same time, finance leaders must keep a sharp eye on the bottom line – ensuring that every travel dollar is spent effectively and in accordance with company and regulatory policy.
Because travel management processes can impact everything from employee satisfaction to budgets, compliance, payroll, taxes, and traveler safety, it is critical that your company has a healthy travel program in place. This means ensuring you have full visibility into travel and expense management processes and data, as well as mechanisms for managing complex and changing internal policies and external regulatory requirements. It also means providing tools that travelers are sure to use to make their lives easier, so they can be more productive while on the go. And while your employees are traveling on your company’s behalf, it is critical that you stay on top of where they are at all times so you can ensure their safety in case of an emergency.
But, with so many factors to consider, it can be hard to know if you’re getting the most out of your current travel program.
Luckily, SAP Concur is here to help.
Take our online travel program assessment to find out if you are equipped to protect your people, your business, and your bottom line when it comes to corporate travel.
The assessment begins by evaluating your ability to leverage your data related to travel programs and costs. For example, are you able to capture data from bookings made outside your corporate booking tool? And is all your travel spend data integrated with your expense management system?
Next, we will look at your travel processes, which are naturally complex – covering many steps and types of purchases. Do you have the integration you need to ensure visibility into the entire process and all your spending? And is this information accessible to finance and budget managers, so they can use it to effectively manage and direct spending to top priorities?
Compliance is also a critical component at the foundation of your travel program. Do you have systems in place that are capable of addressing complex and changing internal policies and external regulatory requirements – often across multiple regions and countries? And are you able to evaluate your travel and expense data to ensure that you are paying all required taxes – and reclaiming all refunds – again, on a global scale?
Finally, are your people happy with the travel experience your program delivers? This often depends on your ability to provide them with user-friendly, consumer-grade apps that make travel and expense management simple and hassle free. It’s also important that they not feel locked in to certain travel and hospitality brands just to stay compliant with corporate policy. And, although they may not recognize it on every trip, should they ever find themselves in a dangerous situation while traveling for work, your ability as a company to help them out and keep them safe will play a major role in how they view you as an employer.
If your travel program is on track, we’ll help you keep it there with information on what to look out for in the future. If your foundation is solid with room for work, we’ll provide tips on how to get more value out of your travel program. And, if you find out you have critical gaps that could be putting your company and your people at risk, we’ll get you the information you need to start running a tighter ship.
Don’t delay. Take our online travel assessment today to find out how you can build a truly robust and healthy travel management program.