If you’re at a growing SME, you may not have considered incorporating travel management into your organization’s processes. Here’s how it can reduce costs and simplify travel for your team.
For small teams with few business travelers, there can seem to be little need for travel management. However, as teams grow, that travel becomes more complex. So does ensuring Travelers are kept safe, and business travel stays within budget. This is when travel management becomes necessary.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is Travel Management?
Travel management, in short, is a resource to simplify travel on all fronts. Typically, when someone refers to “managed travel,” they’re talking about travel management overseen by a travel management company (TMC). However, more broadly, travel management can also be conducted by a skilled Travel Manager who works internally for the company.
Travel management comes with two key goals in mind. You need to ensure that Travelers are kept safe and comfortable throughout the course of their trip and that all travel aligns with the company’s policies and procedures.
On a more granular level, this means ensuring that Travelers follow correct booking procedures (if they’re permitted to book their own travel). It means providing itineraries and tracking Travelers’ movements to provide assistance as needed, as well as overseeing risk management and ensuring Travelers are safe. It also means balancing travel budgets and ensuring each trip falls within budget. That might include finding new ways to save money on the travel budget, such as through partnerships. And can also mean, in some cases, overseeing a company’s business travel carbon footprint. This might encompass trying to minimize that footprint to meet company goals.
All in all, though, the goal of travel management is to reduce risk and simplify travel for you and your travelers.
What Does a Travel Manager Do?
Along these lines, a Travel Manager’s role will include tasks that help support all of these goals and tasks. The Travel Manager might book requested trips for Travelers. They might build out a travel policy and ensure it’s being followed, answering any clarifying questions that Travelers might have. They may source tools and vendors that can help make the traveling process easier, more efficient and more affordable. And could arrange group trips and meetings. They likely collect data and information on all of the above. Then, they report back to decision-makers on progress toward budgetary and sustainability goals, among others.
To get all of this done, the Travel Manager may use travel management software that performs functions such as reporting, booking, approvals and expenses.
A TMC can help with all of this as a vendor who works outside of the organization. They can use their expansive network resources to offer you as much value as possible. This way, there’s no need to hire an internal Travel Manager.
Why Does Travel Management Matter?
But why does all this matter? Why should travel management be a standalone service or internal team when you’ve been doing all this on your own?
For one, a qualified travel management provider comes with expertise. They know the best ways to go about ensuring that travel processes and policies meet Travelers’ needs, as well as budgetary needs. TMCs have inside connections, local knowledge and a global network. They know the tricks of the trade that can make business travel the most profitable it can be.
How TMCs Can Simplify Travel
Secondly, a qualified travel management provider is often always on call. They’re always watching your Travelers’ movements and always ready to help. If a late-night flight is delayed or canceled at the last minute, they can step in with a solution. If the worst happens and disaster strikes while a Traveler is on the other side of the world? They’ll know what to do. If a Traveler is just unsure of something on their itinerary? Or do their plans change once they’re in a destination? All they have to do is let that provider know. They’ll get everything they need to conduct their business trip with ease.
Thirdly, a travel management professional can help build your travel policy from the ground up. If you don’t even know where to start, and your team has been booking travel with little oversight, much to your budget’s detriment, a travel management provider can begin building out a policy to fit your unique needs.
Lastly, travel management exists to simplify travel for everyone on a team. This means that those who were in charge of arranging travel in the past are freed up to focus on their original roles. It means that decision-makers have to spend less time shifting through travel reports and data to glean the information they need to make quick decisions regarding travel and budgets. It means that the actual Travelers on your team spend fewer hours researching trip options, booking trips, building itineraries and more. The Travel Manager can do all that on everyone’s behalf, and they can do it better while also reducing business travel costs.
What Should You Look for in Travel Management?
No matter your organization’s individual travel needs or the travel management solution you ultimately pick, there are a few things that travel management should offer you, above all else. As a travel management solution works to simplify travel, it should also protect three elements of your business: your Travelers, your budget, and your organization.
Again, what this will look like will differ according to your SME’s individual travel needs. However, before deciding on a certain travel management approach, ask yourself a few questions. Will this approach make our Travelers’ experiences better, as well as safer? (The safety element is a big one you won’t want to overlook, as every organization has a duty of care toward the Travelers traveling on its behalf.) Will this approach save our company money? And, will this approach benefit our company in the long run, helping it grow, innovate and thrive?
