T&E Best Practices: Optimizing your Travel and Expense Strategy [Downloadable Guide]

The travel industry is up and running again, with recent data from OAG showing that scheduled plane capacity is 150% higher than it was two years ago, and only 18% shy of scheduled capacity figures pre-pandemic. These figures mean one thing: airlines are using this return to travel to ramp up their prices.

In the midst of soaring inflation rates, CNBC has observed that airline travel prices are up 25% in the last few months alone. As a result, company leaders are coming to Concertiv to devise sustainable strategies in order to save money on their business travel.

Concertiv’s new eBook, Insider Travel and Expense Strategy: Policy Do’s and Don’ts for Today’s Business Travel, discusses post-pandemic trends and illustrates how you can create a cost-effective travel strategy for your company.

In this eBook, you will learn how to:

• Analyze the critical trends impacting travel and expense strategies this year
• Reveal the nuances of best-in-class travel policy based on client insights
• Highlight the gotcha’s that can waylay even the best laid policy plans
• Detail the communication and employee experience considerations that help ensure widespread T&E program adoption

Excerpt below:

T&E Best Practices: Optimizing your travel and expense strategy

By definition, your T&E policy is designed to manage expenses: laying out company expectations for employees while they are on business trips, as well as covering protocols for client meetings, in-office or remote expenditures, etc.

The policy should also explicitly outline your processes, including:

• How to book travel
• Submission and reimbursement timeframes
• Preferred rates with vendors (flights, hotels, rideshare, food delivery, etc.) offering discounts
• Which expenses will be reimbursed (at which levels – coach, business, leadership team exceptions, etc.)
• Fraud prevention (both intentional and unintentional via explicitly detailing which expenses are reimbursable)
• And more...

But that’s just the pure policy side. T&E strategy in today’s market must also balance several significant – and often competing – priorities: a rising focus on the bottom line, a sincere need to see clients, prospects, and partners face-to-face to ensure EOY growth goals are met, as well as the literal care and feeding of your firms’ most visible talent.

Here are just a few of the scenarios finance and strategic spend operations teams face right now:

• After years of zoom fatigue, in-person events and meetings are getting scheduled at a record pace in 2H22, and finance teams are facing heavy pressure to re-open their event spend war chests.
• At the same time, inflation and general economic uncertainty are putting a giant focus on the bottom line, with the Wall Street Journal recently decreeing VC and PE firms are rapidly focusing more on operating margins, even at the expense of growth.
• You might have also heard we’re in the midst of the “great resignation” – or whatever new tagline SHRM and the media have applied to the fact that 20% of US workers have changed jobs since the beginning of the pandemic, and an estimated 46% more of US employees are currently considering career changes, according to Microsoft.

“The experience of travel is deeply personal. And it’s important to remember that, in addition to saving money, your T&E policies must also support your top talent while they’re out in the field, whether that’s on a conference floor, or at a last-minute pitch to save a deal or handle an escalation.”

Find the Complete Insiders’ Guide to Travel: 2022 Edition Here

It’s time to develop a modernized T&E strategy to meet your firm’s future travel needs. Download our eBook today to learn post-pandemic policy strategies to reign in your travel spend without sacrificing employee comfort.

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