Automation helps your company streamline complex business processes, including corporate travel management. Your company can automate corporate travel management to help employees accomplish business travel goals and reduce business travel spending simultaneously.
You can automate the complex process by implementing travel management software. But you must choose the travel management software that meets your organization’s precise business travel needs.
Also, you need to ensure that employees can access it seamlessly and effortlessly on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. At the same time, the software must automate the multistep process end to end by providing the required features and leveraging technologies.
That is why; you must focus on automating key business travel management activities while comparing and shortlisting the software. Likewise, you must consider several factors to choose the best travel management software for your company.
11 Things You Must Consider to Choose the Best Travel Management Software
1. Policy Implementation and Enforcement
By implementing policies, your organization can define the do’s and don’ts of business travel. Also, you need to ensure that employees do not violate policies while booking business trips. Hence, you need travel management software that allows you to set policies.
At the same time, you need to ensure that the software ensures employees book only in-policy travel products. It is also advisable to prioritize software that detects policy violations using intelligence technologies and conveys policy violations by sending alerts.
2. Business Travel Approval Workflow
It becomes easier for your company to control the average business trip costs when employees start business travel booking only after getting relevant approval. But you must ensure that business travel employees can send business travel requests directly to the approver.
Also, the approvers can review these requests without any delays. Hence, you should choose software that allows you to define multilevel approval workflows. It must enable employees to send travel requests to the appropriate authority directly.
3. Travel Choices and Booking Options
Employees experience stress when they cannot book their choice of flights and hotels. Your company needs travel management software that enables employees to access domestic and international travel inventories.
The access will enable every employee to book her choice of flights, hotels, and car rentals. However, you need to ensure that the software shows and recommends only in-policy travel products to each employee.
4. Real-Time Information Delivery
Employees need real-time information to manage minor business travel risks like flight delays and flight cancellations. You can help employees manage business travel risks by investing in travel management software that delivers real-time alerts. The feature will ensure that employees do not experience stress while engaging in business travel.
5. Duty of Care Solution
Your business must invest in the duty of care resources to keep employees comfortable and safe during business trips. You need robust duty-of-care solutions to ensure that business travelers manage emergencies without experiencing stress.
That is why; you should opt for travel management software featuring comprehensive safety solutions like live traveler tracking.
6. Automated Expense Reporting
Your company cannot improve travel expense management without replacing paper-based expense reports with digital reports. You can enable employees to produce and submit digital expense reports by investing in the right travel management software.
But you must prioritize software that generates expense reports automatically by capturing information from invoices and receipts scanned by employees. The feature will enable employees to submit travel expense claims using mobile devices.
7. Travel Expense Tracking and Auditing
You can keep business travel spending under control only by tracking expenses incurred by employees in real-time. You need travel management software that provides real-time travel expenses visibility using dashboards. In addition to tracking travel expenses incurred by employees, the dashboard will enable you to generate custom reports.
The custom reports will make it easier for you to track travel expenses across departments, teams, projects, and destinations. However, you need to ensure that the software allows you to detect policy violations and travel expense fraud by conducting expense audits regularly and effortlessly.
8. Data Security
While booking business trips, employees will share both personal and financial information. The sensitive information can be misused by cybercriminals when the software does not secure data storage and transmission.
You can prevent identity thefts and financial fraud only by investing in travel management software that enhances data security using security methods like encryptions, firewalls, and access restrictions.
9. Data Analytics
The travel management software will help your company collect employees’ travel and expense data. But you cannot leverage the real-time data without using data analytics.
Hence, you should choose software that provides actionable insights by analyzing travel data. The actionable insights shared by the software will help your organization get higher returns by finding opportunities to improve the business travel program and control the average cost of business trips.
10. Integration
In addition to extending the software’s native features, the integration will help you improve data access and sharing.
Hence, you need travel management software that can be integrated with your existing accounting, HRMS, and ERP software. The cloud-based travel management solutions can be integrated with your existing systems using application programming interfaces (APIs).
11. Support
Your employees will need both information and assistance to manage business travel risks. It becomes easier for them to overcome emerging travel risks when the travel management software provides 24/7/365 support across channels. You need to ensure that employees can contact the support team and get the required assistance in minutes.
Conclusion
Travel management software helps you get higher ROI by automating a multistep and complex business process. But you can help employees accomplish business travel goals and control average business travel costs simultaneously only by investing in the right travel management software.
You need to choose software that delivers optimal user experiences across computers and mobile devices. At the same time, you must evaluate the features and tech solutions provided by the software to ensure that it automates corporate travel management fully and efficiently.
Angela Spearman is a journalist at EzineMark who enjoys writing about the latest trending technology and business news.
