If you are in the travel industry and managing hundreds of people for accommodation as well as organization, you know having the right travel management tool is crucial for all these processes. These tools are also good for saving costs and ensuring employee & customer satisfaction.
Table of Contents
How to Start Finding Best Travel Management Tool?
In case you are a company whose staff members often travel for work-related reasons, we recommend to find a travel management software to make things easier and professional. The first option is more common tough.
Choosing the best travel management tool can handle your business travel to-dos. With so many moving components, it is actually difficult to follow and find the best trip at the best price, making sure your travel and follow spend rules while paying staff on time.
A small startup might have different requirements than a multinational corporation for assessing travel management tools. You may start with a software alone or you can So, you need to identify the key pain points in your current travel management process and look for a tool capable of solving your issues.
1. Research and Compare All Possible Options
Once you have a clear understanding of your needs, you can start researching the available travel management tools. Here it is important to look for a user-friendly interface, available customer support and a wide range of features. Because some of them may be good at booking and itinerary management while others might offer superior expense tracking and reporting.
Hence, it is important to compare these features side by side.
2. Considering Automated Booking System Optin
In ideal world, a good travel management system makes booking flights, hotels and rental cars with its automated system. It should connect you with various travel service providers. So that, users of this tool or app can easily search, compare and book their travel plans right within the app. Because this way of working an setup help all bookings stick to corporate travel policies and agreed-upon rates. While also digital systems are usually cutting down on the time and manpower for doing things manually.
3. Is Expense Management A Need for You?
If you want to manage expense management at the same time, then, an integrated expense management feature should be in travel management systems. In case you ask our opinions tough, having travel management and expenses in the same app or tool will surely streamline how travel process goes.
Because it gets easier for both ways. And users can snap photos of receipts, categorize their expenses,and create detailed reports all from the same platform. This feature can also speed up reimbursements while lightening the administrative load.
4. You Can Read Reviews and Feedback
User reviews and feedback can be your real world proofs for getting insights for performance and reliability. Yet, someone’s trash can be your treasure. Hence, you should better look for reviews from companies similar to yours in size and industry. And you should look at reliable forums or review platforms to at least try to eliminate fake reviews.
5. Looking at Pricing and Implementation Process: How Hard Is it to Deploy?
The cost of these travel management apps can vary significantly. So here, you must consider the return on investment. Also, you can consider the implementation process. A difficult application can cause disruptions and delays while you are looking for smoother process in the first place with buying this app.
6. Testing the Travel Management System Before Buying
Many travel management app offers free trials or demos. And you can and should take advantage of these to get a hands-on feel for the software. So in this way, you can check how easy the booking process is and whether the booking/management / reporting tools give you what you need.
Wrapping Up: KPI to Check Out for a Travel Solution
Assessment and selection
Ok, then you did your market research, created a shortlist of potential travel management tools you may work and assess each one in light of the features, procedures and difficulties your business faces. If you need an objective opinion tough, you can work with a travel management consultant.
The majority of businesses begin managing business travel with a basic spreadsheet. And after that, they gradually move to online tools. It is also smart idea to look at software scalability and adaptability in light of the your long-term goals. Such as more travels coming or travels in diverse geography.
Before Onboarding:
- Estimated Savings is one of these indicators and it looks at the potential cost cuts based on how similar customers have done.
- While compliance rate measures how many travel bookings stick to the travel policy for those similar customers.
- KPI of Service Commitment involves the promised response times for customer service. And this dimension also calculates how quickly issues get sorted out.
- Customer Satisfaction Score shows the average satisfaction rating from current users.
- Net Promoter Score is a bit different in calculation compared other common KPIs. Because it measures how likely current customers are to recommend the platform to others.
After Onboarding:
- How much you saved in real life? This reflects the actual savings achieved through negotiated rates, discounts and favorite suppliers.
- The Preferred Supplier Agreement Rates tough tracks how often travel plans are made with your approved partners.
- Compliance Rate indicator on the other hand looks at the number of travel arrangements following the company travel policy.
- User Adoption Rate is a critical KPI for either taking or leaving this software for good. Because this indicates the number of employees are using the booking tool.
- Last but most important indicator is Customer Satisfaction. Because this number indeed collects ratings and feedback from travelers. And it asks questions about how well the solution is working.
Conclusion
Choosing the best one among all different travel management tools is a strategic decision. Because it can have a lasting impact on your company’s travel management efficiency. If you pay attention to above mentioned points, you can select a good option for your travel system upgrade. And believe us, it will not only simplifies travel planning. Yet it will also contribute to your company’s bottom line and employee happiness for sure.
Writing, researching, and learning about project management and tech.
