Make informed decisions, create automatic alerts and make personalized reports
With changes in the way of doing business, spends are becoming varied across different categories. Employees are using more than one method to incur business expenses – be it personal credit cards, digital payments or cash. Business travel is also booming, it’s not without its challenges and changes. A few years ago, to book business travel, employees used a pre-approved system and did it through a corporate agency. Today, employees are doing it by themselves –spoilt for choice by the airlines and hotels with offers and upgrades, air miles and a better seat. They are making their own bookings at far better rates. How do you keep track of your company spends? On any given day, you can guarantee that one of your employees is booking a business trip, submitting an expense claim or raising a purchase order. Do you have separate system for managing employee travel another to review expense claims? Perhaps you are still using a manual paper-based expense process. Or maybe your invoicing system is completely disconnected from everything else.
Automation and technology integration is the key:
Things would be far easier if all three processes – travel, expense, and invoice – were managed in one place: One tool to learn, one source of reliable data and one reporting system. For instance, automating travel expenses and capturing all T&E related activity can help companies reconcile what was booked with what was actually expensed. If anything doesn’t match up, it will be instantly detected. This monitoring, will enable organizations to make more informed decisions and reconcile spends.
- So what should companies do to tackle multiple spends? Does your travel solution connect to your existing systems? By combining your travel program with your expense program, you’ll get a more accurate view. When you’re connected, you will receive alerts and you capture every itinerary, you can also make better spending decisions.
- Does it connect to supplier data? When you’re connected to airlines, hotels, cabs and other suppliers – you can capture bookings made outside your booking tool. This will also enable a seamless view to capture spend on a connected platform.
- Can you connect to third-party applications? By allowing your program to integrate with apps that manage mobile charges, tackle taxes and offer regulatory guidance, you can improve compliance and find new ways to save. Additionally, you can give employees trackable access to the apps.
With a unified travel and expense solution, you can get the data you need to make informed decisions, negotiate effectively with suppliers, and manage company policies.
By Neeraj Dotel, Managing Director, India and SAARC SAP Concur
