Managing business travel can seem like you’re taming a wieldy beast. There are lots of moving parts and many stakeholders both seemingly near (e.g., employees travellers, management) and far (e.g. airlines, hotels) to coordinate. Integrating the needs and demands of all these actors in a way that achieves your company’s objectives can be complicated. In order to simplify their thinking around business travel, most organisations have taken one of four approaches. All of them can be easily improved.
The archetypes
Traditional
This is travel management as it was initially conceived: everyone in the organisation funnels all their requests directly to a travel agency via call or email. The travel agency acts as a quasi-manager, providing basic reporting on travel spend, typically in the form of monthly invoicing. There is limited oversight on travel bookings; in the best case, the travel agency rudimentarily enforces your travel policy. If you're looking to tailor your travel policy to address the rapid changes caused by the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, make sure to check out our Travel Policy Template.
Single travel organiser
Similar to the traditionalists, simple control seekers want to funnel travel requests through one source; however, they rely on internal resources as the primary conduit (e.g., office manager, travel manager, senior executive assistant). By doing so they aim to exert more control over travel compliance. The internal resource themselves then tends to use a travel agency or traditional tools (e.g. Expedia). In most organisations, the simple control setup was added to a traditional model to instil greater discipline on managing a growing travel budget.
Everyone for himself
In such organisations, managing travel is secondary to other company objectives. Everyone can and should manage their own travel with best intentions in mind. There is typically no/very little oversight. Travellers use digital & public platforms (e.g, Expedia, Skyscanner, Booking.com) to book travel and claim expenses thereafter. You’ll often find fast-growing start-ups and SMEs in this archetype.
Digital SaaS
For companies in the Digital SaaS archetype, travel management has gained operational importance. The organisation implements a travel agency’s digital booking tool, which typically provides additional controls (e.g., policy compliance, validation) and reporting. Employees are encouraged (and sometimes mandated) to book for themselves via the booking tool, but often leak to public sources (e.g. Booking.com) when the tool is unsatisfactory.
Capturing additional savings without compromising your business
Upgrading to a Digital SaaS model that has an easy-to-use, fit-for-purpose tool can unlock significant business travel savings without jeopardising your business. Well-designed booking tools do a few things very well:
They deliver an exceptional booking experience so you can de-centralise the booking process, but maintain high in-tool booking rates
They encourage cheaper travel by incorporating best-practice travel policy strategies directly into the platform and having low, transparent rates
They have simple, easy-to-set-up, and effective administrative controls
They enable seamless integration with your accounting software, automating your travel accounting
All of these features work hand-in-hand to boost the productivity of your administrative team and travellers, provide an extra level of safety for travellers, and reduce travel spend.
How each travel management type benefits by upgrading to the right Digital SaaS tool
Everyone for himself to Digital SaaS
20-25% potential savings by
Promoting compliance with your travel policy
Automating your accounting integration and improving employee productivity
Encouraging travel avoidance when not necessary
Single travel organiser to Digitial SaaS
15-20% potential savings by
Automating your accounting integration and improving employee productivity
Promoting compliance with your travel policy
Encouraging travel avoidance when not necessary
Traditionalists to Digital SaaS
10-15% potential savings by
Promoting compliance with your optimised travel policy
Reducing/eliminating traditional agency fees
Automating your accounting integration and improving employee productivity
There are also self-management solutions such as the Invityou platform from the company Corpo'Events, which offers an integrated technology to manage your own professional corporate events: an all-in-one tool allowing the organization professional events, follow-up with statistical data and personalized support.
