To enable any firm to lessen its overall business costs, it's wise to obtain corporate travel management. Businesses do need to invest in corporate travels but some are throwing away a great deal of time organizing it. Your business may save thousands of dollars annually by employing these 5 tips to minimize travel costs:
1. Firms cannot generate a much less expensive package directly with the flight companies. Nevertheless, when you have corporate travel managers, you can enjoy better travel promotions and discounts that they've set up with the airlines.
2. In booking and planning the travel alone, the company is spending considerable time and money. The company must pay an employee or officer who will manage the travel arrangements. It would be more cost-effective if you will use outside agencies for the job than using a separate employee to do it because you need to pay him his salary as well as the law-governed benefits. If in case your officers will be the ones planning their own travel, they are throwing away the time they must be using in doing their specific assignment for the company.
3. If an employee must cancel a ticket or reservation for whatever reason, the company will lose money on the non-refundable costs. Therefore it will really save you a lot of money if you work with a corporate travel manager who purchased the ticket on your behalf that is refundable at a lower price.
4. If an employee makes an unauthorized upgrade from economy to business class flight, the business is wasting lots of unwarranted expenses. The company can have a peace of mind when they can get company travel managers who will ensure that all flights are economy unless the firm authorizes an upgrade.
5. All your travel-related expenses are recorded by a corporate travel management agency. When it's time to pay off taxes each year, you can easily get complete records of flights, accommodations, car rentals, cab fees, parking fees and other travel expenditures from your travel management company. You can then take tax discounts in lowering your tax liability.
When you need someone to manage your company's travel bookings, contact business travel managers . Not only you'll be able to save cash by outsourcing but also you can save yourself the headache of dealing with it on your own. Your employees will also thank you that they are no longer accountable for all the administrative tasks associated with organizing their own travel.
The Benefits of Using A Corporate Tr avel Management Company
If you need to travel on business, chances are, you already have a lot on your mind. You have presentations to deliver, meetings to attend and possibly chair, you have an endless list of to-dos and preparations to make. Add to that the personal side of packing and getting ready, and the details of travel are just another load to carry.
There is a way to simplify though; you can use corporate travel management to get where you need to get with the minimum amount of pressure or stress on your part. Professional travel management means you just pack and go, thinking less about how to get there, and focusing on your work instead.
Corporate travel management is more than a travel agency which will book your tickets for you. They pretty much take care of everything, A-Z. If you need a visa, you’ll get that done by them; you simply need to provide your passport and personal details. Doing this means you don’t have to waste time going back and forth to an embassy, but can focus on what’s important to you.
Most professional travel management companies are available 24/7, so regardless of where you are in the world, you can get help in any way that you need. If you need to change your tickets at the last minute, you can pass that on to them, not having to worry about time difference, etc.
Saving on travel costs is another great plus side to using a corporate travel management company. A lot of extra little costs also come about doing the run-around, picking up tickets, visa, documentation, etc, which is taken care of efficiently in a way that will cost you less in the long run. They also help you find the best deals for your travel, saving you time and money.
If you need to travel in a group, corporate travel management can work that out for you as well. Even if you have different people arriving or leaving at different times, they can sort that for you with the least amount of headache on your part. The goal is for you and your team to get to your business seamlessly, which is what a professional agency will provide.
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Extracting Real Benefits From Travel & Expense Management
For your company to truly reap the rewards of a structured corporate travel policy, it must focus on one thing above all else: compliance. Unfortunately, while the explosion in convenient Self Booking Tools gives you a lot more freedom of choice, it also makes compliance a great deal more challenging. Any technology that supports an increase in compliance to policy has merit; it will save your company money and bring back the benefits of corporate travel.
Today's diversity of choice in self booking tools makes compliance through denial of access a very difficult protocol to enforce. What you really need is a funnel through which 100% of your company's travel activity must pass. In the corporate world, the only viable funnel is the payment mechanism – getting paid is the ultimate leveler. If you use a corporate credit card as the payment mechanism, supported by an expense management solution, and suppliers who can report back to you a reasonable level of data, you stand a very good chance of supporting the compliance objective.
A compliance-friendly Expense Management Solution (EMS)
An expense management solution which processes card transactions (and possesses decent workflow) requires the traveler to personally justify all deviations from policy to their supervisor – on a transaction by transaction basis. Just as importantly, the warehoused individual transactions give the corporate travel manager the opportunity to conduct spend analysis and examine individual and aggregate behaviors.
You might argue that this is after the act, but it still encourages compliance. As per all card based procurement systems, if an employee consistently deviates from company policy, they may be penalized (e.g. card withdrawal, official warning, employment termination, etc.). The threat of negative repercussions acts as a deterrent to card misuse, thereby increasing the level of compliance.
The benefits of policy compliance 80% of the business case benefits of corporate travel will come from travel policy compliance. This requires:
• Sound policy and procedures;
• A comprehensive communication strategy;
• A gate through which all activity can be channeled (the card and the expense management solution); and
• Tools to monitor and measure compliance.
There will also be some peripheral benefits to be gained from an expense management solution in the pre-trip phase:
For instance:
• The traveler can use the work flow component of an expense management solution to create travel request and approval records rather than using something less structured like emails.
• Using the expense management solution, the traveler can create a “commitment” record at the time of booking for subsequent matching of the credit card transaction when it comes through.
• You can obtain a download of trip data from your TMC, and travelers can seek to match that against trip card transactions, thus reducing the quantity of manual entries required of the travel coordinator.
• The expense management solution provides travelers with a real-time log of commitments beyond what might be recorded in a personal diary.
How does it apply to your company?
In looking at the business case for this exercise, you do need to closely examine a number of factors to determine the benefits you will actually realize:
• There are no industry-wide standards, and the market tends to work as a series of isolated closed provider loops – your efficiencies will be greatest if can conduct your business entirely within one closed loop. It is up to you to determine if you can obtain maximum purchasing power in this environment.
• The importance you place on understanding the cumulative value of travel booked but not yet paid.
• The extent to which you can source the data you require from your travelers via a TMC data feed and, consequently, the keystroke savings you can achieve for those travelers.
• The productivity gains you will obtain for your travelers by virtue of them setting up trip details in your Expense Management Solution (EMS) at time of booking rather than at time of arrival of the card transaction.
The combination of Electronic Travel Management and Expense Management is an important subset of eProcurement, and it is subject to the same challenges facing all eProcurement initiatives over the past 10 years – industry standards, supplier participation, and a seamless marketplace. Until these elements are all in place, greatest advantage will be gained by companies that focus on the big picture of where they can achieve maximum purchasing value with reasonable purchasing productivity – usually based on being able to perform an analysis of spend patterns and behavior.
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