• The Business & Corporate Travel Management Platform | Roomex

    Year: 2019

Why duty of care and security are big concerns for Office Managers

Anyone who is responsible for travel booking in an organisation is well aware that there’s more to their job than meets the eye; booking accommodations is just the start of it. The real challenge lies in ensuring the safety of employees away from the office and securing their privacy on-the-go. Unfortunately, some companies believe this is easier said than done so it can take a backseat to other tasks. Duty of care, personal privacy and cybersecurity should be at the top of your priority list when it comes to business travel. With the right policies and tools in place, acting on best practices becomes a breeze. Why is duty of care a concern? Duty of care has existed for a century as the letter of law when it comes to employer responsibility towards employees. It dictates the legal responsibility that businesses have in safeguarding their staff from manageable risks. It can take a variety of formats, but booking accommodation is one that travel bookers are most familiar with. Organisations small or large may find it easier to let team members find their own hotels or may see their internal process ignored altogether. Rather than making everyone’s lives easier, it actually invites unnecessary risk. Here’s an example: Janet has a last-minute meeting with a client pop up while she’s on her way back from a long business trip. Rather than go through the travel bookers, she books a room at her favourite hotel in the area that she’s used before because she knows she can expense it later. When she arrives, she learns the room was double booked and the hotel is filled up, forcing her to find last-minute arrangements. Despite the fact that the company wasn’t involved in the decision-making process here, it’s still held liable for anything that happens to Janet during and after her journey to find new accommodation. Sure it’s unlikely that anything will happen to Janet, but on the off-chance it does, it’s an issue. And what happens if she, for example, has an allergic reaction and now she’s technically off the grid as she booked the stay herself? If Janet had gotten the travel booker to book the hotel using business travel software, then the business would have been able to: Quickly find replacement accommodation at a safe location. Get a real-time look at where the team member is. Digitising the booking process means employees are more inclined to follow internal policies knowing they’re streamlined and efficient. In return, companies get the all-important assurance that their mobile staff has a safe place to stay. Protecting employee privacy during business travel Personal data and privacy have nearly earned its own section of the news after the recent scandals coming from Facebook and a number of other Fortune 500 tech companies. You might only think that GDPR applies to companies dealing externally with the public, but you can get in just as much trouble if something goes awry with how you handle employee information during business travel trips too. Organisations that operate in the EU are mandated by GDPR to safely process and store data of customers and staff members – which is basically general knowledge at this point. What’s not so commonly known is that these legal obligations extend to business’ relationships with hotels. Take the recent data breach at the Marriot chain of hotels, for example. Nearly 383 million records were compromised, which included names, addresses, financial information and passport numbers. While it’s still early in the investigation, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that some businesses could potentially see fines if employee information was compromised. Travel bookers need to ensure that team member’s information is stored securely, especially when it’s processed by a third party. Using a reliable medium like business travel software is one of the ways companies can keep financial and personal information safe – and potentially avoid hefty fines or issues with staffers. The buck doesn’t just stop there though, as cybersecurity is a burgeoning concern too. Keeping cybersecurity in mind on the road Nearly every business has digitised much of its routine and operation. While this allows for greater flexibility and agility, it also opens the business up to digital risk. Travel bookers must be acutely aware of the cyber risks that employees face when they’re away from the company’s network. Sensitive information is being accessed through potentially public and unsafe wireless internet connections, which could be compromised by hackers. Ensure that employees are following best practices by enforcing policies and the use of cybersecurity tools at all times. Specialised software of any kind, whether it be an antivirus for data protection or business travel software for booking hotels and data privacy, can have a significant impact on reducing risk in the daily life of a travel booker. Malware costs consumers and individuals alike over $100 billion and like Janet and her last-minute stay, nothing may actually go wrong. The question remains though: are you prepared if it does? {{cta(‘3e669db7-aa69-4218-84b5-c6aac242ea58’)}}  

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How to convince your boss to buy-in to corporate travel software

If a business keeps the same painfully slow business travel management workflow process in place because it’s what everyone’s used to, there’s a problem. Innovation isn’t limited to products or services; it can be massively beneficial to internal procedures as well. Travel bookers who have adopted business travel software and online business hotel booking solutions are seeing a profound impact on their work. The benefits are manifold, including the ability to centralise booking, consolidate payment and invoicing, manage employee requests, and gain unprecedented visibility with easy access to all your booking, usage and cost data. Business travel is expected to ramp up across the world so enterprises of all sizes will need to find ways to reduce and manage costs that don’t rely on cutting out trips altogether. Business travel software – and more specifically online solutions for booking and managing workforce hotels – nicely fit that bill. How business travel software benefits your office Inefficiency is a primary source of unnecessary spending. Today, Travel Managers book business trips and workforce travel by dealing directly with hotels, or by using multiple online consumer travel tools or offline travel agencies – which leads to hours spent manually comparing prices, managing bookings and reconciling employee expense claims. There are many issues with such a piecemeal approach, including an inability to guarantee bookings and rates, a lack of visibility and control, and process inefficiencies that consume valuable time. The right online booking solution, tailored to the needs of business, empowers travel bookers to compare hotels on a single digital platform that has access to business-specific rates not available on consumer-focused sites. It ensures that the company is always getting the best rate available and often results in an average of 12 to 21 percent savings on hotel bookings. By centralising the hotel booking process, Travel Managers and finance departments instantly replace the hassle of multiple invoices, receipts, and employee expense claims with a single monthly invoice for all workforce hotel accommodation. In addition, they’ll have all the data on which hotels have the best deals in one place. It makes it incredibly easy for them to track this information and streamlines their process, allowing them to get rid of stress-inducing Excel spreadsheets. Modernising business travel management workflows is the only way to keep up with the changing demands of businesses – who desire more insight into the booking process – and maintaining a spending policy that’s in line with the budget. How business travel software benefits the rest of the business While the average employee may not recognise all the work that goes into booking business travel and hotels, the process itself has an impact across the company. There’s a lot of moving parts, from invoices to corporate policy and everything in between. By hosting the most time-consuming processes – hotel booking and management – on a digital platform, the rest of the workforce is able to see the real value specialist business travel software provides. Take reporting, for example. When done traditionally – with spreadsheets in particular – cross-department collaboration is incredibly difficult. CFOs may have to wait days for the travel booker to find the time to aggregate the data and provide a report. With a digital solution managing it, administrators can access vital information in real-time. Furthermore, staff who are looking for information or updates on their schedules won’t have to contact the travel booker directly. All information is hosted on an easy-to-use portal, giving the remote workforce quick access to their plans so that they can be fully prepared for their journey. Corporate policies are the backbone of an organisation that’s run effectively, but they’re difficult to implement in traditional business travel management workflows. With multiple people involved in the process and no clearly defined structure, important information can fall by the wayside. Under a digital platform, travel bookers can clearly define the policy and enact tighter controls to curtail spending when it makes sense, as well as enforcing a better approach to duty of care. Finally, adopting business travel software allows Travel Managers to turn the hundreds of monthly payments and receipts into one invoice and one payment – making it easier for travel bookers to track, and for CFOs or financial teams to process spending. Naturally, this leads to better productivity across the board, which becomes a competitive advantage that pays dividends on the company’s bottom line. When you put it all together, it’s obvious how business travel software can radically transform the way organisations approach business travel for the better. {{cta(‘3e669db7-aa69-4218-84b5-c6aac242ea58’)}}  

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How travel management is changing and how to use it to your advantage

Business travel is a staple of today’s workforce, especially for organisations that service a dispersed customer base, or are carrying out jobs across the county. Workers find themselves on the road for meetings, projects or service calls more than ever before. The global economy has boosted business travel across the world and Travel Bookers now play just as integral a role for employees who are out of the office as they do for those who are in it. The trends are spurring a more intense focus on how travel bookers go about their work and the costs that come with it. Because of that, business travel management is changing. Whether it’s supporting clients, managing internal company needs or growing a business, Office Managers find themselves needing greater control over the booking process so that they can place key people on the ground in the country or abroad. At the centre of it all is specialised business travel software, which is having an immense impact on companies using it. It’s a competitive advantage that’s helping companies position themselves as innovators in business travel.

9 tips to effectively managing your mobile workforce

The workforce is the single most important asset any business has and of course, it’s often the most expensive, but that shouldn’t mean eating unnecessary costs especially when it comes to business travel. CFOs shouldn’t take overspend or a lack of productivity for your travelling workforce as a given as there are many ways to influence productivity while still keeping costs low here are nine of them!

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5 ways for CFOs to reduce business travel costs

Managing company-wide spending on business travel is tricky as there are so many factors to account for least of all staffers who may like to splurge. Without a regimented programme in place, gaining visibility into where that spending goes is nearly impossible. Still, that doesn’t mean the CFO is off the hook. The average day of travel will run at a cost of £117 per person and accommodation accounts for roughly half of that total, according to Budget Your Trip. When you’re sending a single employee to one or two conferences each year, that’s not a scary number; it’s when you have multiple team members who are regularly on the road that it begins to take its toll. A lack of transparency, poor policy engagement and non-existent innovation can drain the coffers in a business travel management programme, leaving the finance department empty handed. Here are five ways CFOs can flip the switch and start reducing those costs once and for all. 1. Make KPIs a sticking point Yes more metrics to track but we promise it works! While a travel booker will do the actual booking, their actions directly impact the business financial viability. If they don’t have an excellent understanding of the cost of every decision they make, it’s more difficult to curtail spending. Set and follow Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on a quarterly, bi-annual and yearly basis. While this on its own won’t help a company reduce business travel costs, it can highlight some of the worst offenders of overspending. KPIs that every team should be monitoring include: Transactional costs (hotel bookings, flights, food, etc.). Travel volume by individuals, roles and departments. Realised and expected savings through negotiated and dynamic pricing on hotel stays. The rates in which spending is within or overextends predetermined guidelines. Develop agreed upon thresholds in terms of where these numbers should fall and hold team members accountable for meeting them. Project manager Jim might think the extra coffee money he’s spending onsite isn’t really hurting the budget, but if every employee takes that approach, the pounds quickly stack! 2. Foster a culture of travel engagement Company culture is the buzz term of the year for HR, but it’s also just as valuable for finance. One of the main culprits of business travel overspending is people simply not following policy. It’s the result of a number of issues, all of which can be solved. These include: General lack of employee engagement across the board. Poor duty of care. Unrealistic travel arrangements. Substandard accommodation. Complicated travel processes and policies. By devoting a portion of management’s time to solving these problems as best it can, employees will reciprocate by following the policies more closely. Create a beneficial travel experience for your team members and watch the savings start to pile up. 3. Regularly review business travel experiences Business travel doesn’t have to be a one-way transaction. Travel bookers and CFOs alike should regularly collaborate with one another to figure out how they can innovate and create a better travel programme. Much of the feedback should come from employees who have recently travelled. Interview them to understand what they liked or didn’t like about the experience and what potentially led to overspending. All of this should feed into a board-approved business travel programme that is built for compliance and designed to be a cost-effective solution. 4. Get the whole picture on spending In the wrong hands, business travel can be mired in hidden costs. Many travel bookers will do it manually: they’ll go online and compare prices on booking websites many of which are for leisure travel and they’ll end up booking a stay that isn’t appropriate or shelling out extra. Other companies will use an agency or they’ll fall into the trap of paying consumer rates, rather than benefitting from negotiated or dynamic pricing models. It’s a common practice but it can have a negative impact on finances as a business hotel booking platform will give users greater visibility over their plans. A specialised business hotel booking platform takes the sting out of the task as it searches hotel prices for you to give you the best options for your team. Plus, the system can be key to avoiding hidden costs that might crop up in unfamiliar hotels for example having to pay extra for parking or Wi-Fi. These platforms are built to make booking hotels simpler and many give increased visibility over expenses and spending as it can be tracked from an integrated dashboard which is music to any CFO’s ears. For example, companies booking in the last quarter saved 1.17m with Roomex’s business hotel booking platform, so it’s absolutely worth investigating. 5. Bring analytics into the fold Time equals money and many haphazard booking strategies or disorganised spending policies can contribute to generally inefficient spending. Use a business hotel booking platform to align multiple teams under one umbrella and apply an analytical view to how they operate. By centralising the booking process, organisations gain real-time visibility into their spending and can efficiently make impactful changes. It’s time to get your company’s business travel finances back in the black by leaning on digital tools that make everyone’s job easier. Are you looking to streamline your company’s business hotel bookings? Get in touch with one of our experts today to learn how Roomex can help.

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How the smart CFO saves time and money on travel expense management

Talking on a phone won’t fix a problem onsite and a video conference can’t convey or capture the emotional presence that wins over big deals. They’re only two of the reasons that business travel is alive and well. In the meantime, CFOs have been tasked with making sure there’s enough funding available to make it all happen. But the business travel ecosystem doesn’t always get along with the finance team. There’s a wide array of third parties, bookers and credit card payments that feed into a manual expense system that’s often sorely in need of automation. Transparency over spending isn’t always a given, which only leads to bloated budgets and a collective departmental headache. Travel expense management can’t be ignored in the increasingly mobile world and remote employees aren’t going anyway anytime soon, leaving it up to the CFO to create full visibility over spending. The question, however, is how?

Business Travel Trends: Best tools for the business travel booker!

Businesses are more connected than ever before, with teams working around the globe. Even with video conference as a go-to, many businesses still need their people on the ground, at customer sites, subsidiary offices and project locations to get work done. Business travel is a big part of commercial life and despite advances in technology, Travel Managers still find themselves depending on scattered corporate travel management strategies and tools. Thankfully, one of the trends we can expect to see in 2019 is a move towards refined, purpose-built solutions for hotel booking and business travel expense management. Here are the five business travel trends that are set to change the way your business travels.  

5 New Year’s resolutions every Office Manager can actually keep in 2019

Sometimes, it feels like the holiday break over Christmas and New Year’s was made especially for Office Managers. The week – or longer for the lucky ones – away from the job gives everyone a chance to rest and re-energise. Between scheduling business travel and managing a barrage of requests throughout the year, it’s easy to feel over-worked and under-appreciated. 2019 should be different. It’s time to break bad habits and start fresh. Here are five resolutions that even the busiest Office Managers will be able to keep in the new year.

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