If You’re Not Analyzing Travel Data, How Do You Know Where You’re Headed?

No one plans a trip without planning a way to pay for it – whether it’s a family vacation or a corporate excursion. But if you’re not capturing, connecting, and dissecting all the digits of your business travel data, you’re essentially doing the same thing. Because if you can’t see what your company’s spending, you can’t see where it’s going.

Travel is undergoing an overhaul right now, and not only is it being watched by every business owner and CFO, as well as challenged by every traveler who wants greater safety and increased flexibility, it is a critical part of kickstarting post-pandemic business momentum.

Your travel strategy has never enjoyed this much attention (and it may not be enjoying it now), but because it impacts how business takes off again: You should know every single thing you can about how your travelers are booking, what they’re spending, where they’re going, and how your organization is making sure their trips are both safe and sustainable.

Simply put, it would behoove you to find a travel analysis tool that fits your company and the new realities of business travel.

Get a good look at the numbers

Since all eyes are on you, you need the best possible way to see and analyze your travel and expense data. This quick tip sheet lays out four things to look for when comparing solutions, and if you’re including the status quo in the competition, you’ll want to ask yourself:

1. Can you capture every booking and itinerary detail, regardless of how or where your travelers booked their trips?
2. Are you automatically logging mileage, or just hoping employees aren’t making mistakes when they manually plug in the numbers?
3. Can you see spending by vendor, cost center, and employee, thereby boosting savings, discounts, and negotiations?
4. Does all your spending come together in one, easy-to-access place, like your ERP or accounting system?

If you answered “no” to one or all of the above, don’t worry. You’ll still be able to send your travelers out to spark sales and foster relationships. The problem is, without any of the data or analysis, you’ll be flying blind.

• How will you know where your travelers are if there’s an emergency or a new quarantine?
• How will you forecast the budget if you don’t know if more people are traveling by rail or by air – or by car, because they’re currently avoiding public transit?
• How will you respond to employee requests about tracking (and reducing) their corporate travel carbon footprint?

A sermon to the choir

Naturally, you want these numbers as much as anyone. You want to know everything you can about where and how and when your teams are on the road. You want not only to see their spending, but to effectively control it. You want to bring insights and accurate information to the table, because you know the role travel plays in moving your company forward.

It’s just a matter of getting there, and this tip sheet is a good place to start.