Leveraging digital travel expense management for SMEs

Travel expense management is a topic that is on most company’s radars but they’re not always sure the best way to manage it. Is a digital solution enough to handle travel and expense needs or are your needs more complex and you need to have a customized solution?

This article tells you how to leverage digital travel expense management, laying out the differences between a more customized approach to travel and expense management so that you can make the right decision for your SME. Keep reading to find out more.

Digital travel expense management

Digital travel and expense management, through an easy-to-use all-in-one platform like GetGoing, allows you to handle all your T&E in one place meaning that you can book and manage your travel arrangements, and control expenses from an easy-to-use app. 

Travelers can stop worrying about losing receipts, as they can upload them to the platform as they go, and team leads and the finance department can approve and manage expense claims easily from all their devices.

Digital solutions tend to be more user-friendly and more streamlined for small businesses who must multitask, and need a quick and easy solution to handle everything. SMEs ideally want to move away from sophisticated travel programs that are too complex and too customized for their needs, and take precious time away for set-up and customization.

The benefits of managing travel & expense digitally

Faster

Digital solutions tend to be faster because you can do everything in one place so you’re not scrolling the internet looking for the best travel deals, instead you have all the best travel deals built in. If you’re a traveler, it’s just a matter of logging in, booking your trip and submitting for approval, and then uploading expenses from your phone as you go. If you have to manage regular office expenses, you can just scan and submit easily from your laptop or mobile device.

If you’re an approver or the one in charge of choosing the digital solution, it’s just as easy as automating your travel policy, approving the travel and expense requests that come in, and leaving everyone to do their thing. 

On the other hand, it is also faster in the sense that there is no implementation time so essentially you just schedule a demo to get started, set up your travel policy, user permissions and approval processes and you’re ready to go.

More streamlined and easier on the team

Having everything in one place is important because it means processes are clear, so it’s easy for both you and the team to keep track of travel and expense approvals.The more you can keep things organized, the less time is wasted taking care of manual approvals.

This is also key for small and medium sized companies who don’t have a lot of time or human resources to allocate to each individual task relating to T&E management. They need an all-in-one solution that can make everyone’s lives easier.

Manage expenses in real-time 

Managing expenses in real-time is important because you can set limits and ensure that travelers aren’t going beyond their budget. You can also make more realistic predictions about keeping to the budget, managing business travel expenses and finding ways to optimize and improve as you go. Real time expense management is what you need to make more realistic budget forecasts and stay in control. 

The drawbacks of complex solutions for SMEs

Complex solutions aren’t necessarily suited to SMEs as they require customization, and the solutions are more fragmented. Instead of having everything in one place, there might be an individual solution for expenses, a different solution for booking travel, and a different solution for digital payments, etc. Having a fragmented solution when there is already limited staff taking care of everything in an SME may not be suitable. 

All-in-one vs. personalization

Personalization

Personalization, on the other hand, is usually required by big companies so they can handle all their complex travel and expense needs. A travel management company or TMC, creates the program based on the individual needs of the company. You start with finding a (TMC) that helps assess your needs and comes up with a strategic program tailored to the unique needs of your company. Implementation time can be from 3-6 months. Usually these kinds of customized solutions are costly. 

For larger companies with complex travel programs and a lot of expenses to manage, having a tailored program directly to suit their needs is not only a necessity but also makes it so that you have all the support you and your travelers need. This comes with a trade-off because travel and expense are usually operated by different providers who partner up to offer the company the service they need. However, this means different apps, different pricing and contracts and different invoices. 

Drawback: Inefficiency

This all translates to more manual processes and inefficiencies. Traditionally, employees incur business-related or travel expenses, and then the travel management company or finance department is in charge of receiving those expenses, recording them and tracking them, helping to give visibility over expenses. This involves capturing, recording and monitoring these expenses over time to ensure your company stays on budget.

The problem with using manual processes is they’re time-consuming and can lead to bottlenecks in your communication across departments. This means lost time that could be dedicated to revenue-producing activities. If the travel policy is cumbersome to follow, this means that often staff will be spending more on trips than allowed and if approvers aren’t on top of  it, they may end up approving a trip that’s out of policy.