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Reducing travel cost in business is a high priority for many Finance teams. While the demand for and benefits of business travel still remain strong, business leaders want to minimise expenditure when applicable – and potentially reinvest those savings into revenue generating activities or areas.
Many businesses pay a travel management company to book and ticket their travel, which can lead to significant costs over time – particularly if they often have large numbers of employees travelling or require frequent travel.
The best way to save money on business travel is to use travel booking and expenses management automation software that can customise budgets for designated trips, minimise expense management by automatically limiting options based on the corporate travel policy in place, and leverage the more traditional cost-saving tactics of manual booking processes through software.
Rather than applying a standardised limit that lacks flexibility or consideration for particular clients or teams, travel booking and expenses management software can allow you to define which business trips can be determined as high-spend and which trips should receive a more modest budget. This capability can be built-in to any particular business trip activity and customised by employee or department. In that sense, a Sales team can have the ability to spend as needed on an activity that will drive revenue while simultaneously restricting other budgets that don’t lead to similar levels of profitability.
By using an travel booking and expenses management system that can manage expense tracking on-the-go, employees can save time entering key data needed for compliance, while accounting and finance teams can save time on reconciliation and invest that time on sophisticated analysis of the data. This can lead to resource saving in time spent managing back-and-forth communication around reconciliation and audits, as well as time savings when compared to working with a third-party or external systems.
Integrated travel booking and expenses management software gives travellers the ability to forecast and book the most cost-effective flight and accommodation options for their trip. It can also be used to prioritise showing flights and accommodation options by price or restricting options that are out of budget.
While companies may think that paying for intelligent travel booking and expenses management software would increase their costs, a subscription-based system actually saves money compared to working with multiple contracts and vendors with different costs and variables. Given that and the fact that the advanced data analysis and reporting features allow businesses to reinvest in high-profitability activities, an automation software with these advanced features is a key first step in reducing travel costs in business.
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