Business-travel recovery demands data-led budgeting

As organ­i­sa­tions adapt to the post-pan­dem­ic era, busi­ness trav­el is boom­ing again. In the first six months of 2022, com­pa­nies record­ed 82 mil­lion miles of busi­ness trav­el expens­es, almost dou­ble the amount record­ed in the first half of 2019, accord­ing to data pub­lished by Web­ex­pens­es.

“There’s been a huge bounce back in trav­el, so while the shape of work­ing has changed, people’s need to go and inter­act with peo­ple face to face hasn’t,” says the company’s CEO, Adam Reynolds. “Video calls have been a huge ben­e­fit to cer­tain indus­tries, but they are not a replace­ment for busi­ness trav­el.”

Often com­pa­nies may still use video con­fer­enc­ing tools for short meet­ings or intro­duc­to­ry calls but will revert to in-per­son meet­ings to close sales or for detail-rich con­ver­sa­tions where a more per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion style is bet­ter suit­ed.

“Video calls are fine for 20 or 30 min­utes, but, after that, your con­cen­tra­tion starts to drift a lit­tle bit, so when you’re doing some­thing that might last a cou­ple of hours, face-to-face is eas­i­er,” says Reynolds.

Hybrid work­ing has also brought a new lay­er of com­plex­i­ty to video con­fer­enc­ing. When some deci­sion-mak­ers are in a room togeth­er, and oth­ers are dialling in, con­ver­sa­tions can quick­ly be thrown out of kil­ter.

While com­pa­nies are eager to get back on the road to see clients, the tougher eco­nom­ic back­drop means organ­i­sa­tions need to be more effi­cient with their busi­ness trav­el usage. That also requires CFOs and finance teams to bud­get and plan more effec­tive­ly than they might have been able to in pre­vi­ous down­turns with­out access to dynam­ic data.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, finance teams would have pro­vid­ed fig­ures at the end of the month as a sum­ma­ry of what the busi­ness has done,” Reynolds explains. “Now we’re see­ing dynam­ic finance teams pro­vide an ongo­ing sum­ma­ry of their company’s posi­tion and what that looks like in the future. If the pan­dem­ic taught us any­thing, it’s that things can change at the drop of a hat, so you’ve got to have that dynamism in terms of under­stand­ing what’s hap­pen­ing right now and how to react to that.”

The pan­dem­ic also high­light­ed the need for CFOs and finance teams to embrace digi­ti­sa­tion and dis­pense with lega­cy paper-led process­es. “A lot of organ­i­sa­tions were com­ing to us and say­ing they can’t process their invoic­es because they’re com­ing in man­u­al­ly, and we’ve got no one in the office,” says Reynolds. “That’s a very sim­ple one we can prac­ti­cal­ly solve because that process can be digi­tised.”

Tech can also help organ­i­sa­tions be more effi­cient by automat­ing admin­is­tra­tive tasks such as fil­ing expens­es that delay peo­ple from doing their jobs, a par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent con­cern dur­ing a down­turn. A quar­ter of work­ers said they strug­gle to do their jobs effec­tive­ly due to out­dat­ed process­es and a lack of appro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy, accord­ing to Web­ex­pens­es’ Covid-19 Tech­nol­o­gy Report.

“Any­time an organ­i­sa­tion is ask­ing some­one to do some­thing that’s not help­ing them do their job is detract­ing from their poten­tial to grow or sur­vive,” says Reynolds. “If you’re sat at the end of the week for a cou­ple of hours doing your expens­es, that’s not what the organ­i­sa­tion real­ly employs you to do.”

Using expense man­age­ment and invoice pro­cess­ing soft­ware like Web­ex­pens­es allows busi­ness­es to auto­mate tasks and oper­ate more effi­cient­ly while also using AI tech­nol­o­gy to proac­tive­ly spot spend­ing trends and pat­terns more effec­tive­ly than some­one man­u­al­ly comb­ing through an Excel spread­sheet.

“We are a tool to help sup­port the finance team, not dri­ve the finance team,” says Reynolds. CFOs who are not embrac­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion are ulti­mate­ly putting their organ­i­sa­tions on the back foot at a time when they need to be agile and hyper-alert to shifts in the oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment.

“Any­one that’s not proac­tive­ly pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion is not ser­vic­ing the busi­ness as it needs,” Reynolds con­tin­ues. “What tech­nol­o­gy can allow you to do is free your employ­ees and har­ness them to do their jobs.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it bit.ly/3Uplo0O

As organisations adapt to the post-pandemic era, business travel is booming again. In the first six months of 2022, companies recorded 82 million miles of business travel expenses, almost double the amount recorded in the first half of 2019, according to data published by Webexpenses.

“There’s been a huge bounce back in travel, so while the shape of working has changed, people’s need to go and interact with people face to face hasn’t,” says the company’s CEO, Adam Reynolds. “Video calls have been a huge benefit to certain industries, but they are not a replacement for business travel.”

Often companies may still use video conferencing tools for short meetings or introductory calls but will revert to in-person meetings to close sales or for detail-rich conversations where a more personal communication style is better suited.