*GUEST BLOG* Data insights and how to use them

Many organisations don’t know precisely how much they spend on meetings. As they start the journey towards implementing a Strategic Meetings Management programme a good starting point is getting an idea of where meeting spend is going. If you don’t have a consolidated data view through your current supplier, consider these different sources and how they can help you fill some of the gaps.

1. General Ledger

Engagement with your Finance Team to understand what is being processed through the General Ledger is a good starting point – they should be able to provide some level of data based on supplier coding that incorporates things like hotel, leisure suppliers, restaurants and venues. It will give you a top-level view of the potential spend as well as which suppliers are being used and also identify the internal cost centres or departments spending the money.

2. Expenses data

Expenses data is another good source. As long as you consider that the average cost of a meeting is likely £200+ by focusing on expense claims above that level you can quickly get an overview of the potential spend levels, which suppliers are being used and which cost centres or departments are generating the spend.

3. Third party suppliers

Engaging with suppliers is a further option – you are likely going to have an element of your meeting spend being booked at the same hotels that staff stay in when they are travelling. Therefore, speaking to these suppliers either direct or via your TMC can help you identify the size of the pot.

4. Booker community

Last but possibly most informative is your booker community – you will already have a good idea of where these key stakeholders are in your business either through prior engagement or identified through your review of general ledger and expenses data. Engagement with this community can help you to understand if the identified spend is related to meetings and if so how, where and why you spend on external Meetings. Engaging these stakeholders early in the journey will also support you in developing a SMM that is more likely to be adopted quickly and widely across your business.

SMM is very data-driven by nature and this is the key to realising its value. However, having data is only the first step – generating data insights and how you then use them to enhance your SMM is the next step.

The first point to recognise is that meeting costs are only a small part of the picture – in fact the direct costs like venue hire, audio visual and so on, equate to only 15% of the total cost of people getting together for meetings. Therefore, when you have a meeting location, consider if it is the best value place for that meeting to take place or if you could change venue to reduce travel costs and improve productivity and wellbeing for the attendees by reducing travel time.

In the below tables we have outlined the Average Day Delegate Rate for popular meeting locations across the UK. With a great rail network creating easily accessible ‘hubs’ across the country why not consider one of the alternative destinations for your next meeting? This is just one insight that can start your SMM journey.

This blog was written by Lone Konradsen, Head of Customer Programme Optimisation at Capita Travel & Events. Want some advice on how to use your data to evolve your SMM? Why not speak to us on stand B140, register for your FREE visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* Expenses: A New Year’s Resolution

It’s not just shopping that’s left until the last-minute at Christmas. Finance departments around the globe battle with a huge influx of last-minute expenses submitted in the run up to the holiday season. Now in January, most of us are over that hurdle but this is the time to put some better practice in place to avoid a repeat in 2020.

December has traditionally always been a busy month for expense management and while it’s not necessarily difficult to understand why, especially for frequent business travellers, this bad practice leads to an increased workload for finance departments and approvers and puts an unnecessary strain on end of year accounting. 

Many organisations’ expense policies determine that all expenses must be submitted, approved and reimbursed by 31^st December to sit comfortably within the year they were spent and allow for better budget management going into the new year. 

So why do so many of us leave it to the last-minute? For road-warriors particularly, those who spend a lot of time travelling and thus build up a huge amount of expenses, dedicating time to filing expense reports can be a chore. It takes time away from the day job or eats into personal time; it’s often a laborious task so for many, gets pushed back time and again. Before you know it, the end of the year is upon us, and the pressure of expense submission deadlines looming. Quite like the last-minute panic buying before the festivities, everybody rushes at the same time to ensure compliance. 

Don’t let it happen again this year! It doesn’t have to be this way. Managing your expenses on-the-go is a much more time and cost-effective way for everybody; traveller, approver, finance department and the organisation as a whole. Traveldoo Expense is an app that offers simple, fast management of expense reports, wherever you are. It’s flexible and intuitive – and can save the dreaded hassle of the last-minute race for expense submission. 

With the Traveldoo Expense app, you can automate expense claim management; geolocate and record expenses quickly and easily in real time; scan receipts and attach them to expenses or save them for later in your e-wallet. It also allows you to check, validate and track expense reports from anywhere in the world at any given time and integrates into accounting and HR systems - it even has voice comment for considerable time saving. 

One of the main benefits of Travel Expense is Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which allows digital devices to turn photos of handwritten or printed paper documents into machine-readable text.

The advantages to OCR technology for business travellers is obvious – for example, when you’re travelling and receives a receipt for a meal, you simply create a new expense line in the app and use your smartphone to take a picture of the paper receipt; the expenses software will then read the text on the receipt with all the details of the restaurant or other vendor and the bill amount.

All you have to do is check that the OCR software has read all the details correctly, make any necessary edits and then approve it. The expense can then be submitted to your employer then and there. If there are any subsequent queries or checks needed, all the receipt images are stored within the expenses app. No more 
December expense rush. 

Breaking the cycle of last-minute expense submission allows for better forward planning in finance departments for the year ahead. It would free up a significant amount of time through December to focus on January and Q1 as opposed to wrapping up expense claims that could have been handled more efficiently. At Traveldoo we always recommend managing expenses on-the-go, in real-time - it’s less hassle for everybody.  

Our data over the last four years shows significant peaks in December as travellers rush to submit expense reports before the Christmas period hits. It puts unnecessary pressure on the organisation and becomes a stress factor for the traveller. Traveldoo Expense app solution can negate all of that.

You may well be reading this knowing you are guilty of fuelling the pre-Christmas expense rush, as you think back a few weeks to your stack of unclaimed travel expense receipts - perhaps a new resolution for this year’s expense management is in order to get you off Santa’s naughty list in 2020?

This blog post was written for Business Travel Show by Stéphane Donders, CEO at Traveldoo. Traveldoo will be exhibiting at this year's Business Travel Show, register for a free visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com and visit them on stand B940 this February.

GUEST BLOG: How OCR technology improves mobility during business trips

You’re probably familiar with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, but are you aware of the benefits it can bring you when integrated with a mobile travel expense solution? We invite you to read further to find out how OCR can help you improve travel expense management and the mobility of business travellers.

According to a recent IDC research paper, OCR is one of the most-wanted features in a travel expense management solution. It is flagged as a must-have tool for companies that want to improve travel expense management processes by increasing efficiency for both managers and business travellers.

The trends for 2019, as highlighted in the same research, are straightforward when it comes to what companies are looking for in a travel expense management tool. Managers and business travellers will continue to shift towards solutions that offer better user experience through ease of use and multi-device support.

A mobile expense management app with OCR capabilities works as follows:

·                Your employee snaps a picture of the receipt;

·                The technology behind the app creates a digital format of the receipt;

·                The tool identifies essential data such as merchant name and net amount.

Allowing employees to do this on-the-go generates multiple benefits for your company, such as reducing the time it takes to submit expense and the ability to control expenses in real time. Your travellers’ experience is significantly improved with a positive effect on work satisfaction. With automated processes, the hassle of paperwork is eliminated, human errors are drastically reduced and work is completed faster. Less time spent submitting expenses means more time and energy to focus on the main objectives of your employees’ trips.

OCR can help you improve travel expense management and the mobility of business travellers in several ways, including:

Avoiding piles of receipts

Manually processing and checking paper receipts is inefficient, risky, and most of all a waste of time. Thanks to OCR, paper receipts are accurately transformed into digital format in an instant meaning data no longer risks being lost with a gust of wind or forgetful traveller.

Increasing efficiency

As they start using the OCR tool, your business travellers can create expenses in just a few seconds with more precision and accuracy, leading to a decrease in operating costs. A reliable OCR tool captures the most important fields from the receipts your employees want to submit.

Easy access 24/7

No matter where they go, employees have instant access to a user-friendly tool that helps them scan, process and submit receipts on the go. With such a tool, your employees can submit reports immediately and managers can keep track of their teams’ expenses.

Credit card integration

When travellers pay with a credit card and if the credit card is integrated with the mobile app, the receipt and the amount of that receipt are automatically matched. This is a clear advantage for the controller and a simple way to avoid duplicates in expense reimbursement requests.

Improving reports and reimbursements

An automated expense management app helps you increase travel policy compliance within the company by blocking non-compliant claims. Having access to the app from anywhere improves the quality of the data going in, and therefore also of your reporting. And finally, it allows for faster employee reimbursement: claims are submitted and approved much faster.

This post was written by Valérie Morel, Vice President Sales and Marketing, MobileXpense, who will be exhibiting at the Business Travel Show in London on February 20^th and 21^st. If you want to learn more about OCR, this page may interest you.