Innovating for smarter expense management during COVID-19 and beyond
There is no-doubt that COVID-19 is having an impact on the business travel experienceand corporations’ travel management teams. Corporations are adapting their policies fast to cater to this changing reality, for example, when it comes to requiring additional pre-approvals for certain destinations or favoring providers that make their employees feel safe and taken care of.
But it is not only travel that has changed. This new context has brought about changes on corporate expense policies as a whole. Corporations are on the one hand limiting and restricting expense categories to what's agreed as ‘safe’. But on the other hand they are also being more flexible, adding new expense policies and categories such as safety and well-being kits – like masks or COVID-19 tests – or covering the cost of ancillaries like the empty middle seat on an airplane. One other example is that more mileage is being claimed as part of an employee’s expense reports.
Digitization of expenses is here to stay
As employees continue working from home, organizations have realized they need to digitize their processes to ensure paperless expense reimbursement. Only this way can travelers be reimbursed even if working remotely, and remote auditing of their receipts can take place - minimizing disruption for finance staff in the event of any future changes imposed by the government, such as work from home or border closures.
Earlier this year, Amadeus commissioned astudy on thedigital transformation for Travel and Expense(T&E) conducted by Forrester Consulting . The outcome of over 550 surveys confirmed the necessity for companies to accelerate the shift towards digital transformation, with a large number of respondents recognizing that their firms still rely on outdated tools, adding manual burden to the workload of employees, managers, and Accounts Payable teams. Participants in the study also agreed that an integrated T&E solution can improve user experience (UX), increase efficiency, and enhance the use of data and analytics for better planning and cost control.
At Amadeus, we have been supporting Corporations in their journey towards digital transformation with our T&E integrated solution, cytric Travel & Expense. cytric enables Corporations to integrate the elements of global travel programs including travel policies, preferred suppliers and negotiated rates, all in one platform. This helps corporate travelers take better control of their on-trip expenditure, simplify reimbursements of expenses and comply with travel and expense policies. For example, we have seen that technicians who, unlike many others given the current circumstances, still make business trips in Germany, don’t need to book hotel services for day trips by car but do use cytric Expense to claim back mileage. And using the integrated "Mileage map" tool, this calculation is automated, with no room for human errors or fraud.
Travel and Expense, better together
As agreed by the 550+ executives surveyed by Forrester, there are clear advantages in using one integrated tool to handle both Travel and Expense.
Having one single platform and one single database for both guarantees that data will inherently be accurate, error-free and standardized. By having one single tool, bookings, captured receipts, electronic invoices, and payment data are immediately available in the expense portal. Allowances and per diems are deducted from the traveler’s booking data. Even before your travelers return from their trip, expenses are ready to be approved.
Corporations can also set up trip and expense approval flows, validation rules, audit trails, notifications, and reminders for all participants in the end-to-end process. Once a change in the travel or expense policies is decided, travel managers can implement and deploy the new strategy and settings quickly and easily. Companies with multiple sites can easily change the policy in one place, and it will be replicated for all employees across the world.
From a user perspective, the experience for travel and expense is the same, both on their mobile app as well as a desktop application. And with cytric Expense in several European markets such as Germany, France, Spain, Benelux and the UK, travelers can even dispose of paper receipts after scanning them thanks to a digital signature and secure archiving approved by local tax authorities.
Innovating for smarter expense management
For Amadeus, our cytric Expense solution plays an important strategic role in the evolution of our portfolio. Despite the challenges that COVID-19 has presented, we continue to invest in cytric Travel & Expense to ensure the solution continues to adapt to the changing needs of corporations and their travelers and to further expand our position in key EMEA markets and beyond.
An important solution development area for us is maintaining one of cytric Expense’s strengths; it’s flexibility. Our solution is modular and can be easily adapted not only to an enterprise’s existing IT system landscape, but also to the organizational and financial policies and processes, including HR, payment solutions or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools.
Our customers can look forward to further innovations coming in just a few months, including additional credit card formats and virtual credit card payments to cater for the next generation of touchless expense.
The road ahead
We believe that technology will play a crucial role as an enabler and accelerator of recovery. With the right policy framework and the development and adoption of new technologies, companies in the key EMEA markets can reduce risks, ensure compliance and remove friction for their travelers, auditors and accounting teams.
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