GUEST BLOG: Companies embrace business travel and expense report management as part of their digital transformation

Goodbye Bureaucracy

In business travel, as in many other sectors, advances in technology have led to a shift in users’ habits, revolutionising the entire industry. Meeting the expectations of their employees in terms of technology is just as important to companies as implementing travel policies, keeping costs in check and guaranteeing the safety of their travellers. When they are at work, employees expect to find the same fast and intuitive tools that they use to organise their lives at home. Today, it is unthinkable to spend an hour looking for the perfect Paris-London flight that both complies with company policy and arrives on time for a meeting. The same goes for devoting hours to going through receipts, submitting an expense report and being reimbursed months later. We expect things to be easier with technology. Companies no longer have a choice: they must do away with bureaucratic red tape and usher their travel and expense report management into the digital era.

Conscious of this two-fold challenge – satisfying users while helping companies to achieve their objectives – KDS offers fast, simple solutions intended to play a key role in businesses’ digital transformation projects.

Automating business travel and expense report management offers users a simpler, faster and more consistent experience. With traditional tools, expenses generated during the trip are not integrated into the booking process, which is often limited only to transport and accommodations. With KDS Neo, you can book an entire trip (taxis, accommodation, transport, shuttle buses, additional baggage, upgraded seating, etc.) and at the same time, on the same platform, manage your expense reports via web or mobile. The unified platform offers usability on par with the best-loved mainstream websites. As for companies, they can expedite processes, automate certain tasks and get greater visibility and control over the actual costs of trips, allowing them to step up their management of assignments and contracts. And it's all totally paperless thanks to KDS Neo digital expense reports, which have the same legal value as the original documents.

For improved efficiency and a faster response to complex situations ... the only way is technology

Productivity is a key concern for senior management teams and deploying platforms to manage business trips and adaptable and user-friendly expense reports is now inevitable. Every company seems to have a strategy for this.

For a long time, the French engineering firm, TechnipFMC, managed its employees’ business travel (an average of 20,000 to 25,000 trips a year) using an internally developed tool which required many manual processes. For its international projects a wide range of personnel are required to travel at different phases of the projects (preliminary study, development, construction, transport to the oilfield, on-site installation), which led TechnipFMC, like many companies, to seek simplicity, responsiveness and control for its travel programme.

“We have to be reactive, so we need travel booking tools that are a perfect fit for the very specific constraints of our industry,” highlights Claude Lelièvre, who handles Regional Travel Management Development for TechnipFMC in the EMIA region. “To meet the expectations of our project assistants, who are often in charge of business trips, and to cater to the frequent changes and last-minute requests that they are faced with, we opted for a tool that is complete, flexible, agile, and highly user-friendly.” At TechnipFMC, bookings can now be made much more quickly, and the company has significantly reduced the length of a typical expense reimbursement cycle.

In addition to these operational factors, companies also need to forge ahead with the digital transformation for strategic reasons. This transformation and a company’s choice of tools can influence its image and culture. A company’s internal tools and processes should reflect its vision, its strategy, and the way it does business with clients and suppliers.

Thanks to a significant investment in R&D, KDS is able to keep innovating, pre-empting advances in technology and regulations and helping its clients to achieve their objectives. As an account manager, thanks to the implementation of KDS Neo, I’m fortunate enough to to witness this with my clients, especially at TechnipFMC.

If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact me and to read the TechnipFMC case study: https://www.kds.com/case-studies/technipfmc-visibility-flexibility-and-safety-of-business-trips/ 

This post was written by Romain Fory, Key Account Manager, KDS, who are exhibiting at Business Travel Show on 20-21 February 2019. Register for your free ticket now at www.businesstravelshow.com/register 

GUEST BLOG: Expenses: a waste of time? 10 reasons you might want to consider automation…

Automating your expense management process brings with it a number of benefits. If you’re still not sure we hope this list might change your mind…

1) Reduced Costs

By connecting various sources of expense data, and reducing the need for manual data entry, the cost of processing expense reports can be reduced by as much as 78% per transaction. Plus, with accurate and consolidated data, you can make smarter business decisions.

2) Connected Travel

Automating expenses enables your business to explore travel integration too. With an end-to-end process, business travel information can be prepopulated into expense claims. Then it’s much easier for employees to quickly and accurately submit claims for reimbursement.

3) Improved Compliance

Compliance is high on the agenda for many businesses. After all, non-compliance could result in fines that damage your bottom line and your reputation. Using an automated solution enables you to quickly update your policies when necessary or flag exceeded spend thresholds to employees.

4) Mitigated Risk

Data accuracy is essential. Using a solution that imports feeds from travel suppliers and corporate credit card providers means that data is increasingly reliable. This integration creates an accurate audit trail that protects your business from penalties when the tax office pays a visit.

5) Ongoing Savings

Having access to consolidated data makes it easier to analyse spend and identify potential savings. This insight can help your business when developing policies, spotting where better deals could be negotiated with suppliers or where employees may be submitting improper expense claims.

6) Simple Implementation  

Cloud solutions offer minimal implementation costs so ROI can be realised sooner. Mobile and web-based tools means there’s little to no additional infrastructure required. Concur manages maintenance and functionality upgrades too, meaning less work for your business.

7) Growth Ready

As your business grows, you might open new offices or expand into new countries. This brings more expense claims, more complex regulations and sometimes additional currencies. Concur offers a scalable solution – as your business grows, we grow with you. We help you prepare for the future with confidence.

8) Unbiased Approvals

Different employees have different expectations when it comes to booking travel and claiming expenses. What may have been acceptable at their previous company may not be acceptable now. Automated solutions ensure that fair and consistent rules apply to everyone and makes fraud easier to spot.  

9) Increased Productivity

When expenses go digital, managers can access them anywhere at any time. Finance can also see all the open but unapproved expenses in the system, giving them visibility of their upcoming cash flow. Plus, they can easily report on spending across each department to identify areas of excess.  

10) Mobile Optimised

Concur offers a mobile app that enables employees to manage travel and expenses quickly and easily on the move – including photographing receipts and attaching them to their expense claim. Time once spent on expenses becomes time spent on more valuable activities.

This blog was written by Eric Tyre, VP, chief data scientist, CWT. Visit CWT at stand B230 at the Business Travel Show to learn about integrated solutions for your travel programme that offer a seamless, personalised and integrated experience for your travellers.

Guest Blog: More room on top – how the right content can drive savings even in a mature travel programme

Your travel programme is mature. Compliance levels are high, preferred suppliers won’t give any more ground on rate, terms or availability and traveller feedback is generally positive. So, what can you do to drive more savings, make processes more efficient and keep stakeholders happy?

One area where you can find more room on top is ‘content’.

To answer all the questions a traveller or booker may have, any booking channel must provide the right breadth of information and depth of supplier choice. Millennial travellers know more about, and are therefore more demanding of, travel choices than previous generations. They also expect the same quality of booking experience as the OTAs provide for their leisure travel. In the social media age, traveller feedback can be more powerful than a cheap rate.

Good content stops the buyer from looking elsewhere and benefits every stakeholder.

The supplier’s product is presented in the most compelling way; the booker or traveller has the reassurance of information that enables informed purchasing decisions to be made, whilst the travel manager drives greater policy compliance.

So, what does good content look like? After ensuring that the choice of preferred suppliers meets travellers’ needs in terms of location, amenities and personal security, the essentials include images that reflect the personality and features of a hotel and its different room types; professionally-translated descriptions (where required), plus detailed information about facilities, services and location, room availability and cancellation policy.

Content also includes NDC (New Distribution Capability), the IATA-sponsored supported programme for the industry adoption of a new, XML-based data transmission standard to enable travel management companies and online booking tools to access airline ancillary services and more dynamic airline pricing.

We have been working closely with our technology partners and key airline suppliers for the last two years on new ways to integrate airline content into our existing booking platforms. We will soon be announcing our NDC development roadmap and are proud to be playing a key part in shaping the roadmap for NDC in the TMC space for the benefit of our customers.

NDC brings opportunities to improve traveller services by ensuring their programmes benefit from the changes.

This blog was posted by Alexander Blunt, Head of Hotel Supplier Relations at FCM Travel Solutions who will be taking part in the Business Travel Show conference panel session ‘Policy – why it’s time for a complete re-think’ at 1600 hours on Wednesday 21^st February