Travel & Expense Management Trends Worth Watching
Anna Barnett 2 Oct 2015Earlier this year, PayStream Advisors published the Invoice Automation Navigator, the first report in a brand new series that evaluates, scores, and ranks business process software. The Navigator report provides in-depth, completely unbiased comparative reviews of several leading automation providers and their solutions, summarizing the strengths and advisements for each company.
Now, we’re gearing up to do it again with the 2015 Travel and Expense Management (TEM) Navigator, and as we survey the technology landscape and market trends, we’re pretty excited about what we’re seeing so far. We won’t give away any names, but we will share a few of the TEM features and capabilities that are catching our attention this month.
- Location, Location, Location: Some solution providers are using GPS tracking to detect where a travelling employee is and what services they may need. For example, the solution may identify that an employee has left a restaurant and it will prompt the traveller to submit an expense or upload a receipt for that meal. Other solutions will notify organizations of a potential danger in an area that is submitted with travel plans, such as political unrest or serious weather conditions. This attention to location brings a holistic and geographic advantage to traveling employees.
- Compare and Contrast: Solutions may offer competitive pricing functionality that will take a look at different prices by type of travel, such as cost by air versus by rail, or will incorporate pre-negotiated vendor rates. Other solutions offer travel cost benchmarking tools that will analyze cost data across different cities and dates for more strategic booking. In addition, some solutions enable employs to submit vendor reviews after a trip, which allows an organization to strategically optimize their vendor lists.
- Nice and Flexible: Many solutions are offering a wide scope of controls and capabilities for administrators, enabling them to make complex customizations around expense report templates and approval workflows themselves. Solution providers have made more efforts to meet the needs of specific industries, and many are offering strategically designed expense reporting for healthcare, non-profit, and even advertising organizations. In addition, support for complicated legal requirements like the Sunshine Act and VAT compliance enables organizations to travel farther with less pain and less risk.
There are a lot more exciting TEM features in today’s leading solutions, and we’re excited to share them with you in our upcoming Travel and Expense Navigator report. Look out for it later this month to find out who the TEM leaders are and how they can empower your travelling workforce.
