What is unmanaged business travel costing my company?
The true cost of business travel can be hard to quantify. Unlike set costs, such as payroll and other regular operating expenses, various direct and indirect factors contribute to the real cost of travel for your business.
Finding the time to book, supplier rates and access to technology can all impact your bottom line. Similarly, businesses both large and small can feel the effects of unmanaged business travel, with out-of-policy travel often being the main contributor to increased spending.
That’s why at CTM we offer a full analysis of your business’s travel costs to arm you with the information to make an informed decision if your travel programme is providing the best value and is fully optimised for cost avoidance.
In this blog, we list some areas for consideration when reviewing your business travel.
Booking business travel is not always straightforward.
How many hours per week are you paying staff to book travel? Booking travel is not always straightforward. There is the initial search for price and availability, the consideration of alternative travel days and then a price comparison between multiple suppliers before an itinerary is finalised. Industry knowledge also tells us that most ‘Travel Bookers’ are usually employed for other administrative tasks, taking time away from other important duties and hindering their efficiency. Therefore, an important indirect cost of booking to review is – employee cost per hour.
Introducing a travel management company (TMC) and an online booking tool such as Lightning could reduce your employee’s booking time from over half an hour to less than ninety seconds, significantly reducing the booking cost.
How can you be sure you are getting the best value?
An unmanaged business travel policy will mean time spent booking on consumer websites or direct resulting in your business not always receiving the best corporate rates and value ads. Working with a TMC, such as CTM, allows you to take advantage of their global buying power as well as specially negotiated rates that are unavailable to the public, such as the CTM Preferred Hotel Programme. A TMC can also assist you in direct negotiations with suppliers and will ensure your agreed rates and discounts are applied to each of your bookings. A travel policy that requires employees to book travel through a TMC ensures there are no missed opportunities.
For every dollar your business invests in a TMC-managed travel programme, you will see a positive return in cost savings through negotiated supplier rates and enforceable policy controls. If you’re paying more to book and manage your travel than you’re saving it might be time to talk to an experienced TMC.
Travel technology can save you dollars
The efficiency of processing bookings and a holistic overview of the company’s travel expense data can be very time consuming and cumbersome for unmanaged business travel programmes.
Intuitive travel technology tools that create a positive end-user experience for your travellers and bookers are an important consideration when it comes to developing a budget-friendly travel policy. Without an internal approval system, businesses that allow staff to book business travel directly can find they are subject to a significant degree of out-of-policy booking costs.
Technology and user-friendly online booking tools, such as Lightning and CTM Lightning Mobile, offering 24/7 accessibility, inbuilt booking and policy controls and approval systems, can save your business thousands of dollars per year.
Do you have easy access to your travel programme’s expense data? If you are not leveraging this information into travel policy strategies you may risk advancing overall programme goals, continued leakage, poor programme visibility and increased cost. Furthermore, access to frequently updated pre-ticketing data allows you to capture and respond to policy breaches before they happen, helping to reduce spending and improving policy compliance.
Data Analysis tools such as CTM SMART Data provide all of this along with an easy-to-digest visual representation of your corporate travel programme’s performance.
You can access your business’s travel data online at any time, with a wide variety of search options available. Forecasting, benchmarking and hypothetical data inputs also allow you to see how changes to your travel programme could optimise costs and savings in the future.
A TMC will help drive savings
A good TMC can help your business streamline processes and develop a travel policy that drives savings through greater buying power, leading technology solutions and access to expert support teams and Account Management. Professional TMCs will be able to highlight the return on investment by partnering with them and look to not only reduce your overall supplier costs but save your business time.
