As COVID-19 moves from a pandemic to an endemic, a surge is being noted in the number of business travel bookings. Also, employees are feeling confident to engage in both domestic and international business travel. Your company or startup can increase investment in corporate travel to generate incremental revenue in the post-pandemic age.
But COVID-19 has made it essential for your business to revamp existing business travel policies. You have to make several changes to business travel policies to boost business travel experiences and mitigate business travel risks. At the same time, you need to focus on controlling business travel expenses to generate higher ROI.
The business travel software will help your organization to manage post-pandemic corporate travel efficiently. In addition to improving the travel experience and traveler safety, the software will help you track, control, and process travel expenses incurred by work travelers.
You have the option to choose from many on-premise and cloud-based software solutions while automating business travel and expense management. But you can choose the best business travel software for your company or startup only focusing on some key features or functionalities.
10
Features You Must Consider to Choose the Right Business Travel Software
1. User Interface and User Experience
The user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of the business travel software directly impacts its popularity with end users. You should choose the software that features an interactive UI and sends real-time alerts and notifications to employees. At the same time, you need to ensure that the software delivers superior UX by being accessible on multiple devices, supporting multiple payment options, and keeping financial transactions and sensitive data secure.
2. Access to Large Travel Inventory
While making business arrangements, employees feel confident and motivated when they have the option to choose from multiple airlines, hotels, or car rentals. You can provide more choices and employees to corporate travelers only when the software allows them to access an extensive travel inventory. Also, it must make it easier for employees to compare business travel products and services using relevant parameters.
3. Negotiated and Discounted Rates
You can reduce business travel costs significantly when employees can book flights, accommodation, and car rentals at lower rates. Most business travel management companies these days provide business travel products and services to clients at negotiated rates by partnering with vendors and suppliers. You can leverage discounted and negotiated rates by opting for software launched by one of the leading business travel management companies.
4. Managed Travel Booking
Most business travel automation solutions these days support self-travel booking. They make it easier for business travelers to flights, hotels, and car rentals in minutes using a website or mobile app. But you must remember that first-time corporate travelers need assistance to choose and book the right business travel products.
You can make it easier for both first-time and frequent business travelers to make business travel arrangements by choosing business travel software that supports managed travel booking.
5. Personalized Recommendations
Most professionals these days travel regularly for various business purposes. They want to make business travel arrangements quickly and effortlessly. You can make it easier for frequent corporate travelers to book flights, hotels, and car rentals by choosing business travel software that enables personalization for business travelers. The software will recommend the appropriate business travel products to employees based on their travel history and preferences.
6. Travel Policy Implementation
You must keep in place checks and balances to ensure that business trip approvals and business travel expense reimbursements are done according to preset policies. You can support rule-based trip approvals by choosing business travel software that allows you to implement dynamic travel policies.
Similarly, the software must support rule-based approval to process business travel expense claims automatically and accurately.
7. Travel Expense Management Automation
No organization can increase business travel ROI without managing business travel expenses. In addition to making it easier for employees to create expense reports, you need to focus on accelerating travel expense reimbursements. At the same time, you need to ensure that business travel expenses are processed without policy violations and expense frauds. You can streamline business travel expense reimbursements by investing in a unified travel and expense management software.
8. Travel Fraud Prevention
Companies lose a significant percentage of revenues due to travel expense fraud committed by employees. You can detect travel expense fraud and travel policy violations by opting for AI-driven business travel software.
The software will use intelligence technologies to detect expense frauds and policy violations automatically by scrutinizing expense reports submitted by employees. Also, it will inform your finance or HR team about the fraud or policy violations committed by a business traveler.
9. Travel Analytics
The business travel software will create opportunities for your company to collect a variety of data regularly. But you can make informed decisions by leveraging the big data only when the software features travel analytics.
The data analytics tool will help you get actionable insights by analyzing a large amount of data collected from diverse sources. You can use the actionable insights to boost work travel experiences and mitigate business travel risks without escalating corporate travel costs.
10. Duty of Care Solution
In the post-pandemic age, every business must ensure the safety and security of work travelers by meeting the duty of care obligations. In addition to conveying the latest travel rules and updated travel policies, businesses must enable traveling employees to get relevant assistance and support without any hassles and delays. Your choice of business travel software must provide real-time support to every business travel through his preferred communication channel.
Conclusion
You can improve business travel experiences, mitigate business travel risks, and control business travel costs by investing in the right business travel software. It is always important to shortlist business travel automation solutions that are easy to access, use, and customize. But the software differs from each other primarily in the category of features.
But you should use features or functionalities as the key parameter while comparing or shortlisting business travel software applications. At the same time, you should opt for software that meets your long-term business travel management needs by leveraging disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and big data analytics.
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