Expense Management

The ROI of Uniting Expense and Travel Management Under One Provider

Return on investment, or ROI, is a key consideration when investing in new business tools and technologies, travel and expense management included.

Investopedia defines return on investment (ROI) as:

“A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment, the result is expressed as a percentage or ratio.”

In this post, we will focus on the ROI potential of combining travel and expense management under one provider to streamline processes for employees and reduce costs. We will also highlight an ROI calculator that is available to help you predict potential savings of a shift to an all-in-one solution.

Save Time and Manage Spend with the Right Expense Provider

Modern business expense applications are a game changer. They increase employee compliance with on-the-go automated expense tracking and provide your finance team with visibility into future spend. Unfortunately, many companies are still dependent on outdated, clunky expense reporting processes.

When asked why they haven’t modernized, many claim they don’t have the budget, time, or resources to make a change. Did you know that the resources needed to switch to a leading expense management tool can be far lower than increased efficiencies and company costs?

As we mentioned recently, “Travel managers work closely with the accounting department because of how much spend is flowing through a travel program. This means uniting both travel and expenses in one platform should be key in searching for a new tool, as should accounting software integrations and overall ease of use.”

With the right travel and expense management provider, you can manage spend while also saving money on the software subscription, streamline processes, improve operational efficiencies, and enhance policy compliance.

ROI Benefits of Implementing an All-in-One T&E Tool

When considering the benefits of implementing a travel and expense management software tool, you’ll want to think about both the tangible and the intangible. Tangible benefits are quantifiable and involve the monetary savings realized, such as a decrease in fraudulent expenses or improved compliance against expense policies. While harder to benchmark, intangible benefits would include things like improved employee satisfaction and retention, and operational efficiency.

If you’re looking to improve visibility, expedite reporting, error-proof the data entry process, enable budget management assistance, and provide crystal clear travel policies, it is time to consider the benefits of using an all-in-one solution to manage your business travel and expenses.

At a high level, having a one-stop-shop for business travel and expenses will:

Make tools accessible. When your travel and expense management is accessible via a single sign-on application, employees and their managers will have all of their tools in one central user-friendly environment.
Save you time. Employees won’t need to login in to multiple applications to document expenses, create, or submit reports. Your managers can easily review and approve the reports from their desktop, and your finance team will benefit from expense and travel being under one roof with pre-programmed billing categories and your policy wrapped into the solution.
Streamline business travel bookings. Having all travel reservations routed through a single system, such as TravelBank, is a key benefit for your organization as there will be one point of contact for customer support and a robust inventory of flights and hotels available.

Stop Wasting Time and Money on T&E Management

In a nutshell, business travel expenses are one of the most difficult to control as they involve tedious details and limited visibility. Further, if your reports are processed manually, they can cost more than $26 per report.

To put that into perspective, if you have 50 employees and they submitted the average 1.5 expense reports per month, it would cost your company $23,967 per year simply to process those reports.

If you’re tired of wasting time manually processing expense reports and wasting hours on tedious tasks related to travel and expense management, you definitely need to check out our recent guide focused on evaluating expense management solutions. It provides some great insights on industry trends related to solution considerations as your team looks to shift away from outdated systems or manual processes.

And even better, by consolidating travel and expense tools, you can immediately save 40% on software fees. With a comprehensive tool like TravelBank, Forrester Consulting found our customers actually saved $482k over three years.

Predict Your Savings with This ROI Calculator

Savings are important. Did you know that companies who use TravelBank save an average of 15-40% on their travel and expense program. In an effort to help you predict the return on investment in using TravelBank, we published a savings calculator.

It asks six quick questions and once complete, we will send you a copy of your results and a quick analysis of the cost savings your company could experience by switching to TravelBank for travel and expense management. Curious? You can check out our ROI Calculator.