Business travel is a fast-growing industry. With so many organisations emerging every year, the number of employees traveling for work purposes has also increased. This includes small and medium-sized businesses.
Hence, streamlining business travel is important. It is crucial for organisations with employees constantly traveling for business purposes. One way to do this is by selecting the best travel management software. This will help streamline business travel management, enhance efficiency, and ensure policy compliance.
With many options in today’s market, finding the best fit requires a strategic approach. Hence, you must assess your organisation’s travel needs, define what features will help you, and research the best providers before choosing the best software.
Download Free Checklist for Business Travel Management Software
Download this checklist to compare the essential features of various travel management software. Choose the one that best fits your needs. You can also use it to assess if your current provider has the key attributes.
What is a Travel Management Software?
To make business travel seamless, organisations must have robust software. Travel management software is a comprehensive tool designed to streamline the process of business travel. It automates and integrates various travel-related tasks.
These include booking flights, hotels, and rental cars, managing travel expenses, and ensuring travel policy compliance. The software typically offers features like real-time travel updates, expense reporting, analytics, and support for policy enforcement.
By centralising these functions, the software helps organisations reduce costs, improve efficiency, and enhance traveller safety and satisfaction. It also provides valuable insights through data analysis, aiding in better decision-making and strategic planning for future travel.
8 Features of a Best Travel Management Software
To choose the best travel software, you must look out for certain features that is beneficial for employees and your organisation. Some of the features that you must look out are:
1. Automated Booking System
The best travel management software simplifies the process of booking flights, hotels, and rental cars by offering an automated booking system. This system integrates with various travel service providers. This allows users to search, compare, and book travel options directly within the platform.
It ensures bookings comply with corporate travel policies and negotiated rates Thus, reducing the time and effort needed for manual bookings. Automated booking also provides instant confirmations and updates, making the process seamless and efficient.
2. Expense Management
Integrated expense management is a key feature of travel management systems. It automates the process of recording, submitting, and approving travel expenses.
Users can upload receipts, categorise expenses, and generate detailed reports, all within the same platform. This feature helps ensure that all expenses are tracked accurately and are in compliance with company policies. Additionally, it speeds up the reimbursement process, reducing administrative workload and minimising errors.
3. Travel Policy Compliance
The best travel management software incorporates corporate travel policies into their workflows for better security. They enforce these policies by setting rules and guidelines that govern booking options, allowable expenses, and approval processes.
For instance, the software can restrict bookings to preferred vendors or specific fare classes. This ensures that all travel activities adhere to the organisation’s policies. This helps in controling costs and maintaining consistency.
4. Real-time Updates
Real-time updates are crucial for keeping travellers informed about their travel plans. Travel management tools provide notifications and alerts about flight changes, cancellations, delays, and gate changes.
These updates are sent directly to travellers via email, SMS, or mobile app notifications. Real-time information helps travellers adjust their plans promptly, reducing stress and improving their overall travel experience.
5. Data Analytics and Reporting
Advanced data analytics and reporting capabilities are essential for the best travel management systems. These travel management tools collect and analyse travel data, providing insights into travel spending patterns, trends, and performance metrics.
Organisations can generate customised reports to monitor travel expenses, identify cost-saving opportunities, and evaluate the effectiveness of travel policies. Data-driven insights help in making informed decisions and optimising the travel management process.
6. Mobile Accessibility
Mobile accessibility is a vital feature for modern travellers. Leading travel management software solutions offer mobile apps that enable users to manage their travel plans on the go. Through itilite apps, travellers can access their itineraries, book travel options, submit expenses, and receive real-time updates.
Mobile accessibility ensures that travellers have all the information and tools they need at their fingertips, enhancing convenience and flexibility.
7. Integrated Approval Workflows
Having a proper approval system is crucial for seamless business travel management. Integrated approval workflows streamline the process of approving travel requests and expenses. The best travel management software allows users to submit travel plans and expenses for approval within the platform.
Approvers receive notifications and can review and authorise requests with just a few clicks. This feature ensures that all travel activities are properly reviewed and authorised, reducing delays and enhancing compliance with corporate policies.
8. Round the Clock Travel Support
One of the best features of travel software is that it should provide round-the-clock travel support. Let us assume a traveller is stuck in an unexpected situation. This can be delayed flights, baggage loss, uneasiness during travel, or political unrest. In such cases, the traveller should be able to contact the support team to get the issue resolved immediately.
Support services typically include help with booking modifications, emergency assistance, and technical support. This feature enhances traveller confidence and ensures that any disruptions can be swiftly managed. It provides security and minimises any sort of inconvenience.
Why Does Your Business Need a Travel Management Software?
The best travel management software is crucial for streamlining the travel management process. By leveraging travel management tools, companies can easily streamline their business travel processes.
The software centralises and automates booking flights, hotels, and rental cars. This ensures compliance with corporate travel policies and negotiated rates. It significantly reduces manual effort, minimises errors, and enhances efficiency in managing travel logistics.
Expense features allow for accurate tracking and reporting of travel expenses. This speeds up reimbursement and ensures compliance with company policies. Real-time updates keep travellers informed. This, in turn, reduces stress and improves their overall travel experience.
Moreover, 24/7/365 support ensures that any travel-related issues can be resolved promptly, regardless of time zones. The software becomes essential for any business aiming to improve travel management, enhance traveller safety, ensure policy compliance, and reduce operational costs.
6 Ways to Choose the Best Travel Management Software
Here is the step by step process to choose a travel management software:
1. Determine its Ease of Use
A travel booking software should be easy to use so that it offers employees a delightful travel booking experience. To ensure ease of use, look for the following features:
Intuitive UI/UX
The business travel booking software should have a user-friendly user interface that eases the booking process. Employees should find it convenient to see all available flights, approval status, and book travel as per the corporate travel policy– all in one window. They should get to what they need quickly, easily, and without any instruction manual.
Multiple Platforms
Apart from a desktop for bookings and expense filing, the business travel manager software should be available on a mobile app to make tracking and managing travel easier.
The mobile app can help your employees to request travel bookings and check the status of their requests on the go. Moreover, they can file business travel expenses in real time by clicking and uploading pictures of the receipts instead of preserving physical copies until they return to the office.
2. Ensure it has all the necessary features
When selecting a travel management software, knowing which features matter to you is necessary. Make a list of such features.
Here are some essential features :
- No setup costs and fast setup time: The business travel software you choose should not have any setup costs, and the vendor should be able to set it up within no time. Additionally, the software should not require any over-the-top technological upgradation- It should run smoothly on laptops with basic configuration.
- Near-zero downtime : Your business travel software should keep the data accessible to employees and be up and running 24/7/365. Moreover, the best travel software provider should offer prompt technical support in case of any issues with the functioning of the travel booking system.
- Customisable approval workflows : Unclear travel request approval workflows can cause unnecessary trip delays. Moreover, if the employees don’t know who will approve their travel request, they might send it to the wrong authority. This might lead to the request getting stuck in an endless back-and-forth, wasting everyone’s time and energy. Therefore, while choosing a travel booking tool, ensure it includes customisable complex approval workflows so that the employees know when to take approvals and if there are any exceptions.
- Cloud computing : The business travel management tool should be totally or partially cloud-based. With cloud computing service, your employees can access the software anytime, anywhere, with an internet connection. Additionally, cloud-based software systems are scalable on demand. Therefore, you can add additional employee data and manage extra travel requests without any added costs.
- App Integration : Travel data is required across multiple departments for various purposes. For instance, the finance department needs business travel data for complete and timely reimbursement. Therefore, the business travel software should offer custom integrations or API so you can integrate it with other systems, such as ERP, HRMS, accounting solutions, etc. for seamless data sharing.
- Ability to configure complex policies : Unclear travel policies can cause hassle in the booking process and also disrupt expense filing. If the policy terms are too generalised, the employees might not understand them properly and end up violating the policy unknowingly. Therefore, the travel management system should offer the flexibility to configure complex flows for various scenarios so that your employees are aware of the policy limits. For instance, if an employee is traveling internationally, the software should show expense limits or per diems according to the destination as per your company’s travel policy.Â
- Ability to customise travel policies : One of the major reasons behind low travel policy compliance is that employees are not aware of the changes in the policy and cannot view the guidelines in real-time. Therefore, your business travel management tool should reflect the changes you make to your corporate travel policy in real-time. So, it’s visible whenever an employee books a trip. For instance, you can change the time taken for approval from 24 hours to 48 hours instantly, failing which the request would automatically get canceled.
3. Ensure it has features to provide enhanced safety
The business travel management software you opt for should help you keep up with your duty of care obligations by implementing employee safety procedures, such as :
- Safe hotel tagging : Select a TMS that enables you to tag a hotel safe and compliant according to WHO’s global safety standards. Moreover, the corporate travel booking tool should also allow the blacklisting of hotels that provide sub-standard services or are unsafe for travellers. This way, you can ensure your employees are staying in a safe place every time they travel.
- Locating travellers live : The corporate travel management platform should have a feature to track where your employee is at any given time – whether on a business trip or commuting to the office. This will help your travel managers to intervene and help your employees in case of any emergencies.
- Controlling where it’s safe to go : The travel booking platform should enable you to block unsafe cities/accommodations from being searched by employees. For instance, with itilite Shield, you can lock a city, hotel, or airline that you deem unsafe for employees.
4. Check if it provides 24/7 multi-level support
Employees might need support at any given point during their journeys. Hence, the business travel management provider you choose should offer support proactively, no matter what time of day it is.
Also, it is equally critical to ensure that they provide support through easily accessible channels such as chats and calls. In emergencies, your employee should be able to reach out to an agent directly instead of through chatbots.
5. Check if it provides advanced reporting & analytics
The business travel management software you choose should offer advanced reporting on the T&E process. Choose software that helps you with:
Actionable data-driven insights on saving travel costs:
Your travel management system should deliver data-driven insights on the ways you can save travel costs and increase policy compliance. Some business travel management tool come equipped with a virtual travel consultant that can deliver such insights.
A virtual travel consultant like itilite Mastermind can collect and analyse your company’s past travel data and compare it with the industry’s benchmarks to tell you how much you can save. Moreover, it can also give you actionable steps you can take to increase savings.  Â
Real-time visibility of travel reports:
You should get real-time updates on what’s going on in your T&E process through your business travel software. Also, it should allow you to identify patterns and trends to make smarter decisions.
For instance, you should be able to look at the monthly booking cancellations that might be increasing your travel costs. With the help of this data, you can determine whether there were any unnecessary cancellations.
Moreover, you can make changes to your travel policy to incorporate clear guidelines about valid and invalid reasons for cancellation. This can help your employees avoid any unnecessary penalties.
Detailed reporting via a single dashboard :
As a travel manager, you should be able to view all the travel-related information in a consolidated manner. The reporting should be:
- By function
- By departmentÂ
- By periodÂ
- Individual employeeÂ
Having all this information on a single platform will make it easier to fetch the data you want whenever required. Therefore, you can make insightful decisions and accomplish your travel goals seamlessly.
6. Check if it aids eco-friendly travel
According to a study, business travel is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions. Hence, it is high time companies take accountability and work toward reducing their environmental impact through sustainable business travel. While opting for travel management software, ensure it aids your sustainability goals. Choose a software solution that provides features like carbon footprint tracking and reporting. With this data, you can analyse your negative environmental impact and take corrective actions by implementing a green travel policy.
Invest in the Best Travel Management Software
The software you use to book and manage travel can greatly impact your experience as a travel manager. Moreover, every employee traveling for work also needs a solution that is easy to use.
itilite is a SaaS-based travel and expense management platform with an easy-to-use interface and a wide range of travel inventory. With itilite, you get a lightning-fast booking, advanced travel analytics, 24/7 support through calls, chat, email, and much more.
To get a first-hand experience of our advanced features, get a free demo now.
