Choose Travel Management Software – Investment in business travel creates opportunities for small and medium businesses to generate incremental revenue. A small or medium business can further increase the ROI by automating the business travel management process.
This article is part of our Software Fundamentals resource section.
Unlike on-premise software solutions, cloud-based travel management software enables the company or startup to automate the complex process without spending money on hardware, software, and maintenance.
Also, they can customize, integrate, and scale the software according to precise business travel needs. But a corporate travel manager must focus on a slew of things to make the most of the special-purpose tech tool.
Travel management software is a specialized business application that centralizes bookings, approvals, expenses, reporting and corporate travel policies. Readers who want a broader understanding can first explore what software is and how different types of software work before comparing travel-management platforms.
For instance, he needs to ensure that each employee can access the software using a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet. Likewise, he must evaluate the software’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) elaborately.
However, the manager must shortlist travel management software based on the features and tools provided by them. We are highlighting some of these essential functionalities the manager must consider to choose the right travel management software for small and medium businesses.
Table of Contents
11 Functionalities to Consider While Choosing Travel Management Software for SME
1. Travel Policy Configuration
The software must allow the manager to implement organizational travel and expense (T&E) policies at the time of configuration. Also, the manager must have the option to divide the policy into small sections like domestic business trips and international business trips.
Choosing a travel platform involves more than comparing booking features and subscription prices. Businesses should follow the broader principles for choosing the right business software, including documenting requirements, calculating the total cost of ownership, checking integrations and testing the product with employees who regularly arrange or approve travel. Integration and scalability should also be considered from a technical perspective, making software architecture best practices useful when evaluating how a travel platform will fit into the existing technology environment.
The granular policy will convey relevant rules and guidelines to each work traveler. Also, employees can control costs by booking in-policy travel products and avoiding non-reimbursable travel expenses.
2. Travel Policy Compliance
In addition to keeping T&E policy accessible, the travel management software must prevent employees from violating pre-set policies. Hence, the travel manager must check if the software shows and recommends only in-policy travel products to each employee.
Also, he should check how the software detects and tracks T&E policy violations. He must prioritize software that sends automated notifications when any employee violates pre-set policies.
3. Approval Workflow Automation
It becomes easier for small and medium businesses to curtail additional costs when employees book business trips after getting the required approval. However, each business must streamline and speed up the business travel request process through automation.
Because employees are the primary users of a corporate travel platform, the HR department should participate in the selection process. HR teams can help assess usability, onboarding, policy communication and employee support. Understanding how software tools affect HR operations can also help a business choose a system that reduces administrative work rather than adding another complicated process.
The corporate travel manager must convey who can approve what type of business trip and travel expenses by defining a multilevel approval hierarchy. At the same time, he needs to ensure that each employee can send pre-trip approval requests to the appropriate authority using the software.
4. Extensive Travel Inventory
Work travelers often experience stress when they can’t book their preferred travel products like flights, accommodations, and car rentals. However demographic characteristics of employees these days impact their travel choices and preferences.
Hence, the travel manager should choose software that accommodates varying travel choices by providing access to an extensive travel inventory. The software must allow employees to book direct or connecting flights. Likewise, it should allow employees to choose either hotels or unconventional accommodations like homestays. For organizations that operate offices, campuses or other physical locations, software tools for digital signages can also complement travel systems by communicating important information to employees and visitors.
5. Seamless Travel Booking
In addition to providing access to an extensive travel inventory, the software must enable employees to book business trips in minutes. The software must boost the booking experience by supporting multiple currencies and widely used digital payment methods.
In addition, it must allow employees to compare and book travel products without visiting third-party websites. Likewise, employees must be able to cancel and reschedule bookings using the same software.
6. 24/7 Support
Often employees visit new destinations for business purposes. They need relevant information to plan business trips, create travel itineraries, and choose travel products. Likewise, they need support to manage various business travel challenges.
The manager should choose travel management software providers that offer round-the-clock support. Also, he should ensure that each employee can get the desired information and required support using commonly used channels like telephone, email, text messages, and instant chat. Since travel platforms can handle sensitive itineraries, invoices and employee information, businesses should also consider software tools for removing sensitive data from documents when sharing or distributing travel-related files.
7. Duty of Care
It becomes easier for small and medium businesses to ensure the safety and security of work travelers when software features a comprehensive duty-of-care solution. The travel manager should prioritize providers who provide emergency assistance to employees by partnering with a global health and security risk management firm. However, he should check if the software enhances business travelers’ safety by delivering real-time information and tracking their real-time locations.
8. Expense Report Digitization
The travel manager must keep work travelers motivated by accelerating travel expense reimbursements. Hence, he should choose a travel management tool that enables employees to generate and submit digital expense reports.
In addition, he should eliminate data entry errors and expense fraud by opting for software that generates expense reports automatically by capturing information from invoices. Also, the software must enable approvers to access receipts and invoices while reviewing expense reports.
9. Travel Expenses Management
No small or medium business can increase the ROI of business travel without streamlining the travel expense management process. The corporate travel manager should prioritize software that automates travel expense management.
The software must enable the finance team to track travel expenses in real time by featuring an intuitive dashboard. Strong integration with financial systems is equally important, so businesses can also review the top software tools for accounting when assessing how travel expenses will connect with broader accounting workflows.
In addition, the software must help the finance team process, reimburse, and audit travel expenses without putting in extra time and effort. Businesses operating in India should also consider how travel expenses connect with tax processes and may benefit from a comprehensive GST software solution to streamline related financial workflows.
Travel management should not operate separately from workforce planning. Connecting travel data with scheduling, attendance and employee-management systems can help organizations coordinate business trips without creating staffing gaps. Companies with distributed or frequently travelling teams should therefore consider how the platform will integrate with their chosen workforce management software.
10. Custom Report Generation
The travel manager must help decision-makers make informed decisions by understanding the T&E. He should software that generates custom reports based on real-time data using various parameters.
Also, it should check if the software allows them to schedule custom reports using parameters like department, destination, business travel goal, and employee level. This functionality is essential to make sense of employees’ travel and expense data. When travel initiatives form part of larger organizational programs, understanding EPMO software features for successful EPMOs can also help businesses coordinate projects, resources and strategic priorities.
11. Data-Driven Insights
The manager must choose software that uses advanced data analytics. The data analytics solution will analyze the T&E data automatically and share actionable insights regularly.
The insights will help the manager detect trends and patterns in the data. Also, he can leverage the insights to increase the ROI of business travel by controlling costs, refining policies, and ensuring policy compliance.
Conclusion
The right travel management software should make corporate travel easier to book, approve, monitor and report. Begin by identifying the needs of travellers, managers, finance teams and HR personnel. Organizations that also manage physical inventory or distribution operations can apply similar selection principles when choosing the right warehouse management software, particularly around integrations, scalability and workflow requirements. Then compare usability, policy controls, expense capabilities, integrations, security, support and total ownership costs. A carefully selected platform can reduce administrative work, improve compliance and provide employees with a more convenient travel experience.
