Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, business travel was growing at a very fast pace. And though the travel industry is well into recovery, it is a very slow process. If there is one thing about business travel that is constant, it is that it is constantly changing. Yet if you were to ask any finance manager what they focus on in their business, they would probably say, “budgets and the bottom line”. This is just as true after the pandemic as it was before. For travel managers and travel management companies (TMCs), this means being able to provide timely, accurate and robust data reporting to their clients.
Corporations depend on travel managers and TMCs to give them data reports that give key insights into travel spending patterns. It helps to reduce trip leakage and further assists in analyzing, budgeting and controlling travel expenses. This can place a lot of pressure on travel managers and TMCs. And considering how complex business travel is, it can be a nightmare for most. But with the right tools and technology, reporting has never been easier.
Automation is key
When it comes to running a report, consider how time-consuming it is to do it manually. Automation should be a no-brainer.
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Where travel data management once relied on mounds of paper receipts and spreadsheets, technology has now developed in a way that expedites and simplifies this whole process. Corrections in data errors or redundancies that were traditionally done by hand, have been replaced by automation and intelligent solutions to become a strong asset to TMCs.
Bad data equals bad decisions
In the corporate travel space, buyers rely on TMCs to service the traveler, provide duty of care and provide perfect data. As we all know, within business travel, there are a lot of data points that come with inconsistencies and errors.
It is one thing to have inconsistencies and errors in your data sets. But to then spend enormous amounts of time and effort correcting and cleaning your back office data, that is a problem. We have a client who used to spend up to 3 full days a month correcting back office data. But with GraspPREPARE, they are spending less than 2 hours a month.
Think about all the errors and inconsistencies in your data and think about what you must fix before you run a report. GraspPREPARE automates all those time-consuming data corrections against a set of 18 rules: duplicate passenger names, void hotel and car duplicates, fix dates on same date travel, and more. Corrections are made with minimal user intervention. By simply making this change from manual to automated, to ensure there is always a quality check, can speak volumes for your business. The amount of time and effort you save is incredibly beneficial.
the whole package
While the benefits of automation go without saying, it needs to be clarified that automation alone is not enough. You need solutions that cover the entire business travel process. It is helpful to have partners who understand everything that goes into a trip and who can offer insight into the true cost of trip. With a broad, centralized, and automated travel data management tool, your travel teams will not have to waste time on manual tasks but can instead focus on delivering key insights.
Instead of With a broad, centralized, and automated travel data management tool, your travel teams will not have to waste time on manual tasks. Instead, TMCs will be able to focus on delivering key insights to their clients, helping them focus on analytics, performance management, and keeping their businesses strong.
