Business class travel is becoming common nowadays with most of the middle and senior level executives embarking on short business trips for specific purposes. Whether it is domestic or international, travel surely demands lot of planning, co-ordination and execution – how best you can manage your travel budget, cutting down unnecessary expenses. However, the most daunting task an executive might face is how soon his/her expenses can get reimbursed, upon submission of the required bills, mobile travel and expense management receipts.
Travel management though appears to be a simple business process, however, in practice it involves lot of paper work and cumbersome manual processes, as per typical organizational workflows. Though automation is seeping in every business segment of the industry, travel still seems to lag behind, as travel expense management is always relegated to a support process, rather than a mainstream process. This in turn is posing a severe challenge for organizations to timely process the travel receipts and other expense reports of executives, causing inordinate delays and effecting employee satisfaction.
In order to mitigate these challenges, organizations should think of automating their travel receipt approval processes to do away with manual and cumbersome paper based processes. Though there are good solutions available in the market, however a typical in-house ERP solution may not fully solve the purpose, since most of the managers in an organization, who are authorized to approve receipts may be away from the desktops or laptops, leading to delays. A mobile solution that can seamlessly integrate with an organization’s backend ERP can be the right solution to help managers to expedite the approvals, anywhere, anytime.
Now, let’s examine how a typical mobile travel management solution can accelerate your organization’s receipt approval process and other related aspects.
- Helps you focus on your business, while cutting travel costs
Considering that business travel is quite expensive, it becomes prudent for your organization to drastically cut travel costs and at the same time enhance compliance. A typical expense management solution can help you manage and integrate processes including planning, booking, travel receipt capture and expense reimbursement. This way you can analyze costs and expenditure, thereby improving visibility, efficiency and above all valuable insights that aids in efficient decision making.
- Quick capture of your travel receipts
Apart from using traditional methods of capturing receipts (scanning & mailing), a good mobile solution can aid in capturing receipt information in real time and manage expenses, while you travel to accomplish your business assignments. In fact, the mobile solution can leverage native device application features – camera, location services and date defaults to capture travel and expense receipts as you incur them. This way, you minimize the chance of lost receipts and avoid in-ordinate delays in submitting your expense receipts.
- Optimizes your complete trip life cycle
A good solution can integrate the complete travel life cycle right from booking a trip, approving a trip to final submission of expense receipts for reimbursement. This way you can keep track at every stage of your trip cycle, particularly the real-time status of your receipt approvals. On the other hand, your managers can approve trips and expenses swiftly and efficiently, while maintaining an audit trail of all approval processes.
- Offers seamless integration with the Finance function
Since processing of travel receipts is related to Finance, the mobile solution should be able to seamlessly integrate with your financial and reconciliation process to improve cash management at a predictable cost. Automation means fewer steps that translates to fewer errors and quick reimbursements on the go.
- Provides right insights about the travel expenditure
With the right mobile solution in hand, you can track your travel expenses and analyze your spends at every stage of your trip, thereby providing great insights about your spending habits and overall travel expenditure. You can use these insights to negotiate enhanced partnership terms with travel vendors that can be a win-win situation for you and your manager. Apart from that, you can even use your insights to comprehend and analyze trends in travel to perfectly plan your future travel expenses.
Having discussed about the key features that a good mobile travel solution should have including the value that it can add in timely processing of travel receipts, the next step is to embark on the right solution to get started. But with multiple solutions competing with each other in the market, it becomes a challenge for your organization to select the perfect solution. While there is always the right mobile application available for you to choose, however you might encounter certain apps, which are complex to use, though enticing you with an impressive interface. Added to that is the cost factor – you expect to spend less and get more, which is another key criterion for your selection.
Keeping the above points in mind, Innovapptive has developed a mobile travel and expenses solution (mTravel) that makes expense reporting much easier and simpler.
It integrates with the backend SAP ERP, offering an intuitive and a seamless travel expense processing mechanism, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction to new heights. With this app, you can create new expense reports, capture photos of receipts, save expense reports & attachments to SAP, submit and approve expense reports anywhere, anytime. The mTravel mobile app automates the entire process from expense capture to expense approval.
Now let’s discuss briefly about the key value drivers and benefits that you can accrue by using mTravel
Key value drivers
- Minimized human errors
- Improved employee satisfaction and talent retention
- Improved employee productivity
- Reduction in Accounts Payable FTEs
Business Benefits
- 8-10% direct cost savings through increased productivity of managers
- 40% Increase in productivity to drive higher operational efficiency
- 80% decrease in approval time in contrast to manual processes
Don't miss the opportunity to experience Innovapptive's cutting-edge Native or Web-based mobile solutions firsthand. Book a demo today and discover how our solutions can transform your business operations. For personalized assistance, contact our solution experts by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or calling our sales representatives at (713) 275-1804. Elevate your business to new heights with us!
