Professional trips

How to assess your company’s travel management

Writing up the company’s travel policy is a good place to start. But defining a concrete strategy to optimize your business travel expenses is even better.

Contents

The same question always comes up when we question traditional management of travel expenses: why change what works?

The answer is simple: because the economic situation is changing, as are our needs, not to mention the technological innovations that are gradually transforming our industry.

While technology is omnipresent today and deserves to be closely examined, we first need to prepare the field, so to speak, to make Travel Management amenable to new technological implementation.

To do this, we help you make a quick assessment of your company’s Travel Management situation.

Structural organization

Is there a travel department? If so, how is it structured? If not, which department in the company is responsible for the tasks related to business travel?
Does your company rely on a business travel agency? If yes, does the agency only deal with ticket purchasing for your employees or does it also allow shoulder part of the tasks related to the management of business travel expenses?

Simplify your management

Plan, book, track and analyze your business travel.

Negotiation with suppliers

Do you have contracts with travel suppliers?
Do you have the necessary tools to analyze your yearly travel expenses and leverage their numbers during negotiations with suppliers?

Technological means used

Do you rely on an online booking tool? If so, can your employees still make reservations on consumer sites or are they compelled to use the tool you provided?
If you use an online booking tool, are all your online partners connected to it? (e.g., HRS)
Are there alternative solutions to travel such as videoconferencing in your company?
What internal tools do you use to monitor real-time travel-related expenses and produce relevant statistics?

Travel policy

Does your company have a defined travel policy? If so, when was it last updated?
Is employee security an integral part of your travel policy?
How do your employees pay for services before and during their business trips?
How are expenses related to MICE activity managed today? Are they part of the travel policy in place?
Have you implemented a regular control of travel expenses?

Communication and change management

How are your employees informed of new policies related to business travel?
How long does it take to get your employees to adopt a change (e.g., a tool)?
Are your employees truly ready to change their habits?

In a future article, we will see how this assessment will allow us to make full use of an undeniable tool for managing travel: technology.

Our solution is dedicated to the moblity management. In addition to the expense reports management you can plan, book and track your business trips. It is also possible to manage your car fleet.