Automation is one of the key trends in corporate travel management. Companies and startups have automated the complex business travel operations by implementing feature-rich travel management software. Travel management software helps employees accomplish business travel goals and helps employers reduce business travel costs.
But your organization needs a robust strategy to successfully automate a complex process like corporate travel management. The strategy should focus on selecting a travel management system that simultaneously meets your company’s short-term and long-term needs.
At the same time, it needs to ensure seamless integration of the software into your organization’s workflow. Hence, you must finalize the travel management software before making an adoption and integration strategy.
In addition to leveraging its built-in features, the strategy must explore ways to configure, customize, and integrate the software according to precise organizational business travel goals and needs. Your strategy must consider many crucial factors to successfully adopt and integrate travel management software.
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10 Crucial Factors to Consider While Adopting and Integrating Travel Management Software
1. Policy Access and Communication
A travel management system allows you to configure customized travel and expense policies. Also, employees can use the software to access organizational travel policies. But you must focus on making each employee find and access relevant business travel rules and guidelines.
That is why; you should configure granular travel policies while implementing the software. Instead of uploading a lengthy policy document, you should divide guidelines into small sections using parameters like employee level, department, travel destination, and business trip type.
2. Travel Request Approval Workflow
Employees can save money by completing business travel booking early. But they can avoid last-minute bookings when their business travel requests are approved as early as possible. While configuring the travel management software, you must define a multilevel approval hierarchy.
Also, you must allow each employee to send business travel requests directly to the appropriate authority. Likewise, you must make the manager approve travel requests early by making the software deliver automated notifications. This simplifies your business travel operations.
3. Self-Booking
The corporate travel booking tool the software provides helps your organization facilitate self-booking. Your employees can use the tool to access a travel inventory customized according to travel destination and organizational policy.
Also, they can use the same tool to book preferred travel products and manage travel bookings. But you can boost employees’ business travel experiences by supporting multiple currencies and digital payment methods. At the same time, you should support self-funded upgrades to enable employees to book a higher airline class or higher start hotel.
4. Information Delivery
The travel management software enhances work travelers’ safety and security by delivering various real-time information. For instance, it helps employees minimize travel risks by giving the latest travel guidelines and updates. Similarly, it keeps them stress-free by providing flight status in real-time.
But travel management systems deliver real-time information as mobile alerts. Your travel policy must instruct employees to install the travel management app on their smartphones and tablets. Also, they must check the mobile alerts sent by the app instantly and regularly.
5. Travel Expense Reporting
Travel management software enables your employees to generate automated expense reports. Employees can use the software to produce digital expense reports in minutes by scanning various invoices, bills, and receipts.
In addition to ensuring data accuracy, expense reporting automation helps your organization speed up travel expense reimbursements. But your travel policy must instruct employees to submit expense reports generated using the software.
6. Travel Expense Management
Leading travel management systems these days feature expense management tools. They enable your finance team to track travel expenses in real-time using a dashboard. Also, you can use the same dashboard to evaluate travel expenses by generating reports based on parameters like department, project, and travel destination.
But you can simplify travel expense audits only when managers write comments while approving or rejecting travel expense claims. Your strategy must fully leverage the software’s expense management features to automate expense tracking, evaluation, and auditing.
7. Data Management
The travel management system unifies the travel and expense data of employees. In addition to consolidating the data in a central location, the software shares the data with business tools integrated with it. This way, you can enhance your business travel operations.
Your integration strategy should focus on making the software share data with other business tools seamlessly. At the same time, you must optimize data security using encryption technologies and installing security firewalls.
8. Data Analytics
Travel management software gains actionable insights by analyzing the consolidated travel and expense data using data analytics solutions. You can leverage the software’s insights to find opportunities to boost the business travel experience and reduce average business trip costs.
It becomes easier for you to make informed decisions when the software shares data-driven insights regularly and automatically. While configuring the software, you should allow the software to share actionable insights required to fine-tune business travel programs.
9. Training and Support
Employees need both information and assistance to use a new tech solution. Your finance team needs training to make the most of the dashboard the software provides. Likewise, employees need help to use the corporate booking tool provided by the software optimally.
Your software adoption strategy should ensure that each employee can get the information and support required to use the travel management software. However, you must make training and education an ongoing process to cater to the needs of first-time business travelers.
10. Usage Monitoring
While implementing the software, you can configure and customize it according to predefined needs and goals. But you should remember that employees face several issues while using the travel management system. Also, the issues faced by employees will vary across departments.
Hence, your strategy should focus on identifying and fixing issues proactively after the software implementation. You should encourage employees to highlight issues regularly and instruct the software provider to fix the problems early.
Conclusion
Travel management software facilitates the automation of a cost-intensive business process by providing features, tools, and options. But you can automate a complex process like corporate travel management only by selecting the right travel management system and implementing it successfully.
While making a strategy for software adoption and integration, you must adopt several software implementation best practices like defining clear goals, involving stakeholders, and evaluating the software regularly. At the same time, you need to consider some crucial factors to integrate and adopt travel management software successfully and seamlessly.
