Automation Is Now the Foundation of Corporate Travel, Payment, and Expense Software
In a recent Skift+TravelBank survey, 40% of travel and finance leaders said they plan to adopt a new travel tech stack in the next year. That’s because the pandemic accelerated the evolution of personal technology, and employees don’t want to take a step backward in their professional lives. Corporate expense automation, specifically, is moving from “nice-to-have” to “must-have.”
How to Kickoff Corporate Expense Automation
Companies often like the sound of automation, but need guidance into how to best deploy it at their organization. Financial decision-makers are understandably hesitant to make changes if things are working, or shy about trying anything new if it’s not proven.
The good news is that there are a lot of low-risk automations that can have a big impact.
First define what the ROI of such a project would be, for example in monthly hours recouped. Then work with accounting and finance to prioritize which small projects are achievable within a pilot period.
After successfully launching small automations, and tracking/achieving ROI, there will be more appetite for larger projects.
>> Related: Anatomy of the New Corporate Travel Tech Stack <<
Examples of Automation in Corporate Travel, Payment, and Expense Software
Companies can automate the most manual and annoying parts of the corporate travel, payments, and expense processes.
The expense process has the most to gain:
- Approved expenses can be automatically reimbursed
- Managers can automatically receive alerts for out-of-policy requests
- And expense reports can be automatically added to the general ledger
A corporate travel platform that integrates dynamic budgeting — or the ability to automatically adjust travel spending guidelines based on changing circumstances — can help immensely with approvals by looking at flights and hotels for a team offsite or other group travel function all together.
Automation can handle any number of straightforward employee support and service requests. There’s no reason to have to call a human on the phone to book or change a flight if the information needed is already available in an app. And no one wants to call a customer service agent to ensure they have on-time car service at the airport when they can simply pre-order a ride on their own device, now up to 90 days in advance.
>> Download the full research report from Skift: Essential Software for the New Era of Corporate Travel <<
