In today’s globalized business landscape, corporate travel plays a crucial role in fostering strong client relationships, expanding market reach, and driving company growth. However, managing business travel effectively can be a daunting task, especially when companies need to balance cost control, policy compliance, and employee satisfaction. Without a streamlined process, businesses may face challenges such as policy violations, budget overruns, and inefficient travel bookings, all of which can negatively impact productivity and financial health.
To tackle these challenges, many organizations are turning to company travel management software—a powerful solution designed to automate and optimize every aspect of corporate travel. From booking flights and hotels to tracking expenses and ensuring policy adherence, this software helps businesses gain complete visibility and control over their travel operations. By leveraging automation and data-driven insights, companies can enhance fraud prevention practices, improve compliance, and create a seamless travel experience for employees.
Let’s explore the key benefits of adopting company travel management software and how it can transform your business travel process.
10 Benefits of Company Travel Software
1. Easy Booking
Booking flights and hotels using multiple third-party websites can be tedious for employees. They must go through thousands of options before finding the right one. Hence, you need to opt for a solution that makes business travel booking easier.
A travel software company provides flight and hotel options in a combined trip package. Therefore, your employees can make all the bookings on a single screen. Also, they don’t have to spend extra time on consumer travel websites. Hence, your employees can fulfil all their travel needs with just a few clicks.
2. Cost Savings
Reducing travel costs is important for every organisation. However, you do not necessarily have the most cost-efficient options when you book from online travel agencies.
Alternatively, most corporate travel software solutions have an inventory of economical travel options. Therefore, you can access the best Low-Cost-Carriers flights, hotels, and rental cars and save travel costs on every booking.
3. Personalization
Your employees might find it challenging to find a policy-compliant flight and hotel booking option that aligns with their preferences. Additionally, after booking, they might forget about an upcoming trip until it’s too late to make any last-minute preparations.
You can solve all these problems by personalising business travel for your employees through corporate travel software solutions. A modern corporate travel management platform uses behaviour analysis to assess your employees’ past preferences. It then recommends policy-compliant customised booking options based on those preferences.
4. Streamlined Approvals
An unclear workflow can cause unnecessary delays in trip approvals. The problem escalates even further in the case of international travel because it requires various approvers. If the request gets sent to the wrong authority, it can get stuck in a to-and-fro motion, wasting everyone’s time and energy.
A travel software company solves this problem by enabling companies to define multi-level workflows. The workflows can be defined according to various departments, employee levels, trip destinations, etc. The trip requests move automatically to next-level approval once an official approves them.
5. Extensive Travel Inventory
Your employees need access to all the suitable options while booking flights and hotels. However, third-party booking websites do not have such an extensive travel inventory. Hence, they provide limited booking options.
Alternatively, some travel software providers partner with multiple vendors to give you access to a wide range of flights and hotels. So your employees can get the best-suited options at their fingertips.
6. 24/7/365 Travel Support
Your employees need extensive support while travelling internationally. For instance, they might need to know the best routes and public transportation or get stuck in an emergency. Therefore, they need a steady source of support 24/7.
You can solve this problem with the help of company travel software. Most new-age corporate travel software solutions come equipped with AI-enabled customer service chatbots. These chatbots are trained to handle routine emergency questions and provide support beyond office hours.
7. Audit and Fraud Detection
Expense reimbursement fraud accounts for 11% of total workplace fraud. It is also tough to spot. According to a study, an average expense fraud causes a $40,000 median loss per year. Hence, you need to find a solution that detects and prevents expense fraud in the early stages of expense filing.
A unified company travel software comes with an in-built fraud detector. This feature automatically validates expense reports and detects duplicate expenses, wrong expense categories, out-of-policy expenses, etc. Hence, you can avoid wrongful and inflated reimbursements.
8. Real-time Alerts
Often, trip approvals get delayed because the approver is unaware of the booking request. And afterward, if the approver approves the request in haste, they may mistakenly allow a few out-of-policy claims. Therefore, you need a real-time solution that can notify the approver when the travel request is placed.
Corporate travel software solutions like itilite provide real-time notifications to alert approvers about a new trip request. Additionally, if the request is out of policy, it goes to a different approver. This way, you can avoid problems like approval delays and out-of-policy approvals.
9. Policy Compliance
Travel policy violation is a serious issue faced by travel managers. One of the reasons employees violate company travel policy is because they are confused by generalised guidelines. Moreover, they cannot view the policy in real time while booking.
With state-of-the-art company travel software, you can incorporate all the nitty-gritty of your travel policy. Additionally, you can customise the policy according to departments, employee level, and trip duration. Moreover, your employees can avoid violations by viewing the policy terms in real time while booking.
10. Seamless Data Sharing
Seamless and error-free data sharing across multiple platforms like HRMS, accounting, etc., is vital for a business travel process to function correctly.However, data sharing becomes difficult if you use a spreadsheet travel management system. Spreadsheets don’t integrate with third-party software like HRMS or ERP. So, the travel data needs to be entered separately into all the systems.
However, corporate travel management software offers multiple third-party integrations. You can integrate it with all the applications that need travel data, like accounting software, HRMS, etc., and ensure seamless data flow across departments.
Time to Adopt Company Travel Software
These are a few benefits of having a travel software company for your business. It helps you ease the booking process, cut travel costs, increase policy compliance, and detect and prevent expense-related fraud, to name a few.
itilite SaaS-based travel and expense management solution offers a lightning-quick booking system, vast flight and hotel inventory, travel analytics, 24/7 support, and more. Get a free demo and try out all the features yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
The main benefit of company travel software is its ability to streamline and automate the entire travel management process. It allows organizations to efficiently book employees’ flights, accommodations, and transportation while enforcing travel policies and ensuring compliance.
Various stakeholders can manage company travel software within an organization. The stakeholders include travel managers, the accounting or finance department, administrators or HR personnel, and the IT department.
Yes. Company travel software offers integration capabilities with existing CRM systems. This integration allows seamless communication between the travel software and the CRM. Hence, businesses can manage customer relationships and travel activities in one unified platform.
