A business travel management software provider does have an array of safe hotels and airlines sourced from the Global Distribution System (GDS). To solve travel management, there is a platform that collects, aggregates and analyses travel data from various vendors.

Key Attributes of business travel management software are:

The purpose is to provide the most delightful travel booking experience. Here are the features available:

Intuitive UI/UX

Employees should feel the ease by seeing all available flights, approval status and book travel based on travel policy-integrated in one window. They would have guided decisional suggestions without any instruction manual.

Multiple Platforms

The travel management system should be available as a mobile app. So this is simpler for you and your employees to manage travel anywhere.

2. Make sure that it have necessary features

When you are choosing a travel management software, knowing all essential features are important. Prepare a list of such features.

No setup costs and fast setup time

The travel management system is good when there are no setup costs and the vendor should setup in minimum time. Also the system should run smoothly on laptops with ideal configuration.

Near-zero downtime

The travel management system should be ready for use for 24/7/365 days. Also the service should be backed with path finding customer support.

Cloud computing

The business travel management has now become cloud based. With an internet connection, the travel management system can be accessed anytime or anywhere all at once.

Cloud based travel management is scalable on demand. If more employee data are added to the system there will be no extra costs and manage any number of additional travel requests.

App Integration

Travel data is required for many department sin an organization.  Sometimes the finance department will need travel data for reimbursement.

The travel management system provides custom integrations or API such as ERP, HRMS, accounting solutions, etc. for data sharing.

Ability to configure complex policies

If the travel policy terms are too generalized, the employees get confused and counter productively get policy violated. Vague travel police clog booking and expense filing. Simplifying complex flows to known scenarios such that employees are knowledgeable to travel policies.

3. Ensure it has features to advanced safety

The travel management system should keep up with duty of care obligations by guarding employee safety procedures, namely-

Safe hotel tagging

Get a travel management system that ensures that you are tagged into a safe hotel and in compliance with WHO global safety standards. Also the travel management software is authoritative to black list hotels that provide sub-par services and doubt in travel safety.

Locating travelers live

The travel management system regularly tracks your employee’s trails, when they are business trips or commuting to the office. It is helpful to respond to untoward emergencies.

4. Check if it provides 24/7 multi-level support

During journeys employees expect emergency support and travel management software providers should act quickly, once a query is popped at anytime of the day.

On emergencies, your employee should be able to get help either through chatbots or telephonic conversations,

5. Check if it provides advanced reporting & analytics

The travel management system you use should provide features like advanced reporting.

Get a software that have features like:

Actionable data-driven insights on saving travel costs

Your travel management system should provide insights on how to reduce travel costs and also follow policy compliance.  The travel management comes with a virtual travel consultant that gives necessary insights.

A virtual travel consultant can interpret past travel data and compare with industry’s benchmarks and tell the exact amount you have saved. It also gives insights of how to save better.

Real-time visibility of travel reports

If real time updates are provided for the T & E process, usual trends and patterns can be understood.

For example, if monthly booking cancellations happen that might shoot up your travel costs. With information about cancellations, one could determine the number of cancellations and its impact.

Also you can draft a travel policy providing guidelines about valid and invalid reasons. This could save employees from the unwanted penalties.

Detailed reporting via a single dashboard

Consolidate travel related information in one place, so that the travel manager knows the details.

The reporting should be:

  • By function
  • By department
  • By period
  • Individual employee

Having all of the data on a single platform helps it easier to find that data whenever there is a thought of it. So, you can have delightful travel and make travel more easily.

Business Travel Management System Checklist

Download this checklist to differentiate the features of various business travel management software. Choose the one that is best according to requirements.