April marks the beginning of a new financial year and an end to the labyrinth of bills, expenses and final accounts. In the midst of this abyss, travel and expense management (T&E) proves to be a crucial expense item for all enterprises. At present, the entire process of expense management in companies is time-consuming and largely manual.
The employees find it tedious to keep the receipt of a bill safely while the accounting departments struggle to gain visibility and real-time insight into managing business travel. As the CFOs and their departments emerge out of the cumbersome process of claims, the big question still remains. “How do I tackle a whole new year of expense submissions and reimbursements more effectively and efficiently?”. This is especially considering the challenge of T&E management being the second most difficult expense item for companies to control.
With the advent of IT and changing business dynamics, the future of T&E lies in embracing technology to transform the modern enterprise. Amidst this radical shift, it is essential that enterprises employ digital tools to streamline business practices and enable bankable savings. Here are some crucial pointers to unveil smarter management of enterprise travel expenses.
Visibility is key
According to research from the Aberdeen Group, 51% of companies identified lack of visibility into spend as the top T&E management challenge. One of the top priorities of CFOs is to be privy to the information regarding T&E expenses being incurred from their inception.
We are at a time when there are app platform options where employees can simply input end-to-end expenses.This is done in order to create transparency that enables companies to drive greater compliance to policies and prevent unnecessary spending decisions. The enhanced visibility will also entail capturing of bills and quotations that very moment. One can easily do away with spreadsheets and pesky receipts. It is crucial for companies to ensure that visibility remains paramount as it provides accurate and real-time information further accelerating the decision making process and curbing losses and expenses simultaneously as the year progresses.
Enabling insights
Insights is a direct outcome of visibility and can help companies drive innovation and hence the implementation of new business extensions to give an enterprise some competitive edge. Availability of facts at CFO’s fingertips gives them new insights on operating processes. For example, according to a Concur-Neilson study,a delay of five days in a travel approval can push up airfare costs by 10%. Insights like this can pave the way for companies to save on increased airfare and other travel-related expenses.
Automation for efficiency
Automation also goes hand in hand with visibility and eliminates the
‘approval-cost-approval’ loop while simplifying the bookings as well as expense submission from the onset. A few benefits of automation include submitting receipts on the go, faster reimbursements, staying in compliance with the companies’ T&E policies & budgets and avoiding duplication of work. More importantly, automation will streamline the entire T&E lifecycle to unlock productivity and efficiency. The numbers don’t lie - using an automated travel and expense management solution cuts booking fees by 79% and saves as much as 41% of time spent on completing expense reports.
Mobility for competitive edge
India is the second largest market of smartphones. This creates a huge potential for use of apps and applications by all consumers alike. CFOs should ride on this to enable ease of processes for employees by providing mobile solutions which can be accessed from anywhere anytime to process expenses faster and increase the convenience factor remarkably. Adapting mobility will reduce reimbursement time for CFOs and also help employees to recover their expenses swiftly.
With the rapid growth of disruptive technology, enterprises are touted for faster growth and transformation. Given the advantages, the adoption rate of technology for T&E expense management in enterprises is a cause of distress. As per Concur report titled “Asia’s Journey to Optimized Travel and Expenses Management”, only 13% of the Indian companies have deployed an automated T&E system. One of the reasons for this is the reluctance of CFOs to adopt new technologies owing to the additional cost involved and the resistance to change from the traditional system.
To unlock a hassle-free environment, the solution lies in an advanced Travel & Expense management system can be a CFOs partner of choice in controlling costs, ensuring compliance and reducing expenses to positively impact the bottom line. This will have to trickle down to the individual employees as a user-friendly, productivity-boosting tool. The time has come for enterprises to embrace the technology-enabled, automated expense filing!
Anu is the Marketing Director, Concur India
