Travel and expense: Going the extra mile

Big benefits to gain:

A London School of Economics study found that proactive management of T&E, through best practices and improved IT systems, can generate significant results:

1. The cost of processing a transaction: reduced by ½.
2. Over 10% savings from using an online booking tool.
3. Employee satisfaction levels sky-rocket.
4. 20% higher fraud identification.

Best practice looks like...

By adopting best practice processes, ROI opportunities exist across the T&E spectrum. 

Stage 1: T&E strategic sourcing

Best practices:

1. Complete spend analysis 
2. Define formal travel policy
3. Ensure process compliance
4. Implement demand management

Stage 2: T&E buying

Best practices:

1. Enforce a managed-buying channel
2. Implement ‘smart approval’
3. Drive corporate card usage
4. Status = very few best practices applied

Stage 3: Traveller support and duty of care

Best practices:

1. Clearly-communicated travel policy
2. Policy is consistently enforced 
3. Cultural contract of responsible spend
4. Status = some best practices applied

Stage 4: Expense management 

Best practices:

1. Deploy automated, commercial T&E system
2. Use mobile scan-and-send technology
3. Granular expense reporting
4. Status = best practices mostly applied

Stage 5: Analytics and feedback

Best practices:

1. Eliminate data silos
2. Reduce manual reporting effort
3. Facilitate feedback loops
4. Use real-time analytics and alerts
5. Status = very few best practices applied

Many missed opportunities:

1. Despite the benefits, many organisations are skipping best practices.
2. 100% of interviewees have a defined T&E policy. Yet, 95% permit out-of-policy booking. 
3. 80% don’t have access to spend information sufficient for T&E sourcing.
4. Two-thirds lack sufficient tools for T&E demand management.
5. Up to 20% of travel bookings don’t go through a managed-buying channel. 
6. Corporate credit cards are widely underutilised in tracking travel spend:

• Only 26% use a central credit card for booking major travel.
• While 32% allow employees to pay for flights using their own personal credit cards.

The result = missed savings opportunities and sub-optimal ROI.

The T&E technology topping CxOs’ wishlists:

1. IT is seen by CxOs as a key enabler to help improve T&E programs. 
2. 60% of CxOs are considering changes to their T&E IT systems in the next 1–3 years.
3. Improved analytics and reporting is priority one.
4. 53% want out-of-policy travel alerts. 
5. Access to granular expense detail is critical for 70%.
6. 59% have mobile scan-and-send expenses on their IT wishlists.
7. Mobile functionality is the top booking priority for 94%.
8. The 2nd most-requested booking feature is automated alerts on lost savings.

Download the Managing Every Milewhite paper to access the full research findings.