The COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted a range of corporate travel elements. Travel policies are one such element.
Travel managers have expressed the need to tighten policies to keep up with changes occurring at a frantic pace over the past year. This means implementing versatile measures that enable fast adjustments, better controls, and more efficient processes.
Thankfully, advanced travel management solutions make all of this possible. These tools will be essential to effectively review your travel policies in the existing climate and long into the future. Why is this important? Here are three major reasons:
Ensuring traveler safety
The biggest priority and challenge for travel managers is maintaining traveler safety. Vastly different travel restrictions across international borders, states, and cities make this key component particularly difficult.
Using cutting-edge travel management tools, you can access helpful traveler data that facilitates decision-making. Yet, this is only the first step towards achieving optimal traveler safety. These platforms can make the most significant impact when it comes to dealing with issues surrounding policy control.
With such a wealth of valuable data generated by travel management tools, travel managers can use them to quickly and easily make changes to policies as required. This means having the ability to make critical decisions, such as temporarily halting travel to specific geographical locations during the current global health crisis or whenever it may be required again.
Streamlining approval processes
Travel approval processes differ from company to company. Depending on your business requirements, size, and corporate culture, you’ll need to consider the procedures for approving travel, the type of travel allowed, and rules around vaccines and testing. As the world undergoes so much change quickly, the same can be expected for existing travel procedures.
To keep pace with the evolving landscape, automation, as opposed to the more labor-intensive in-person decision-making approach, is a new way forward. Creating travel policy rules that enable automated approvals will minimize the time spent on monotonous tasks and significantly improve travel department efficiency.
For cost savings & policy updates
One of the main goals for any business entity is to save on costs. The best way for travel managers to attain this is by getting buy-in from traveling staff. It entails employees adhering to company travel policies, where the disconnect often begins.
In many cases, travelers are unsure about what’s included in the policies. This is understandable, seeing as travel expenses generally change according to factors like the travel destination and the traveler’s role within the company. It can cause discontent and the much bigger issue of non-compliance.
As a result, it’s crucial to first put policies in place that account for these differences and then regularly update them to reduce employee discontent and maximize buy-in. Doing so delivers considerable cost savings and elevates the organization’s bottom line.
A crucial part of effectively reviewing travel policies is accessing the correct data. Failure in this regard leads to poor decision-making, which can have long-term effects. The good news for travel managers is that excellent third-party tools like Oversee are available on the market.
Using this platform will benefit from comprehensive insights that put you in the best position to align your travel policies with industry best practices consistently. The result? You’ll reduce your spending on travel, be in a stronger negotiating position with suppliers, solve new ticket issues, and benefit from more excellent TMC partnerships.
