Christian Brothers University Transformed T&E with TravelBank

Company Overview

Christian Brothers University (CBU) is a four-year, private Catholic university founded in 1871 by the De La Salle Christian Brothers. Committed to academic excellence, CBU offers a range of programs that prepare students from diverse backgrounds for meaningful careers, all while promoting Lasallian values of faith, service, and community. With a focus on student-centered learning and personal growth, the university fosters an inclusive environment where students are encouraged to explore their faith and contribute to society.

The Cost of T&E Inefficiency

As the new Director of Procurement at Christian Brothers University, Ursula Atkins wanted to make an immediate impact on the organization by streamlining T&E. The absence of a centralized system for managing travel expenses was leading to significant inefficiencies for the organization’s finance admins and their travelers. This disjointed approach created challenges to effectively track employee travel, manage bookings, and gather data for the associated spend.

“Before TravelBank, it was all over the place. Employees were going out to different sites and each and every person was choosing what they wanted. There were no policies or procedures to follow in order to choose travel means or even how to deal with the expenses that followed,” Atkins said.

As a result, not only was reconciling expenses a cumbersome task for admins, it was difficult to maintain accuracy in expense reporting. Without a streamlined process, the team faced hurdles in budgeting and financial planning, ultimately impacting their ability to make informed decisions.

A True All-in-One Solution

TravelBank offered a comprehensive solution to Christian Brothers University’s challenges. By consolidating all the travel expenses and reporting on one platform, the university managed to streamline its processes significantly. TravelBank provided a one-stop-shop for booking flights, hotels, and car rentals, tracking employee travel, and monitoring spend efficiently.

Booking Travel with Guardrails Travelers within the university can now make better travel decisions thanks to custom policies built into the TravelBank booking platform. In-app guidance ensures employees are aware of travel policies when it counts, and guardrails enforce those policies throughout the booking experience. This has helped the employees avoid last-minute choices and holds them accountable.   With a system in place to enforce travel policies and procedures, finance is empowered to improve financial decision making. “The travel product has really optimized costs,” said Atkins. “It also allowed us to be able to make sure that we were putting our expenses in the right place and making the best decisions when it came to our employees that were traveling either domestically or abroad.”

Connected Accurate Data

With travel data and expense workflows generated from a centralized system, reporting has been significantly improved, giving admins 85% better insight into travel data and a 90% improvement on the expense side.

TravelBank’s integration with bank cards, combined with its automation features, has significantly reduced the burden of manual reconciliation. Employees at CBU can now effortlessly upload their receipts and automatically merge them with transactions from their card feeds. This streamlined process not only enables swift self-reconciliation but also enhances the accuracy of their expense reports. “Where we were more at 45 percent accuracy, now we’re at 95 percent accuracy,” Atkins said.

Providing an Exceptional Customer Experience