A Guide to Help Travel Managers Succeed In a Challenging Job

Without a doubt, the travel manager’s plate is full: Ensuring trips deliver to the bottom line amid rising costs and pressure to improve efficiency. Providing the sustainable choices travelers, the company, and regulators want. Giving employees booking flexibility while making sure policy is followed. Addressing business traveller safety concerns – and knowing full well they might refuse a trip if they aren’t.

With the role’s evolving responsibilities, it’s little wonder 99% of travel managers expect their job to be more challenging over the next 12 months.¹ Our guide and other resources are intended to help meet the challenges, zooming in on key topics reflecting the recent change in travel and your role. From reporting to ROI, safety to sustainability, basic bookings to a multichannel world and other topics, the goal is to equip you with the information and tools to be ready for what’s ahead.

How to capture bookings and prepare for a multi-channel world

Capturing every booking is central to managing budgets, providing duty of care, and performing other responsibilities that go with your role. At the same time, the options provided to your business travellers can affect the employee experience and job satisfaction. New distribution strategies from a range of channels – TMC agents to online booking tools, API direct connects to supplier-direct sites and apps – expand the options but increase complexity.

You can hone your strategy by examining how business travellers book, what they think of the options, and how current suppliers and technology meet their needs. Concur Request lets you screen trips before they’re booked, and integrated travel, expense and invoice solutions provide a near-real-time view of spending. 

How to improve travel reporting and analytics

You’re not alone. Nearly every travel manager we surveyed – 98% – says inadequate data and analytics makes it harder to do their jobs, complicating the ability to set budgets, update polices, and ensure safety and compliance.²

A natural first step is gaining control of your company’s own data by connecting expense and booking data, collecting the right details from bookings and expense reports, and capturing supplier-direct bookings. Next, use turnkey reports and dashboards built into solutions or dig deeper with specialised solutions and services like Intelligence and the reporting specialists of Consultative Intelligence. 

LEARN MORE: Read the Dominate Your Travel Data eBook for ways to improve reporting, analytics, and control for your programme.

How to build sustainability into your travel programme

Nearly 2 in 5 travel managers – 37% – expect their company’s travel policies will change within a year to satisfy sustainability goals.³ Many employees worry about sustainability, too, with 23% willing to decline a trip over concerns about its environmental impact.⁴ Regulation is forcing change and accountability, with the European Union requiring organisations to report on travel omissions and the US and others moving in that direction.

For travel managers, policy and technology are tools to respond to the move to greener. Concur Travel can steer employees to responsible choices and let them see the impact of flights, hotels, and rental cars, while TripIt tracks the carbon footprint of their flights. Both help the company collect sustainability data for regulators and their own use.

How to bolster duty of care and employee experience

Many of us feel it – and 85% of risk professionals concur⁵ – that the world has gotten more dangerous in the past year. Employees recognise the high value of travel to their careers, but 91% would decline an assigned trip over concerns about health and safety, sustainability, or work-life balance.⁶ That’s a lot for travel managers to reconcile.

Making the process simpler and flexible from booking to submitting expense reports contributes to a better employee experience. Integrated solutions such as Concur Travel and Concur Expense provide that, with ExpenseIt capturing receipts and sending details to expense reports. TripIt Pro collects itineraries and provides neighbourhood safety scores, health advisories, and other details to keep team members safe before and during trips.

LEARN MORE: Get the Your Most Important Duty is Duty of Care tip sheet for ways to help fulfill your responsibilities by focusing on data, mental health, risk reviews, and other strategies.

What’s the ROI on travel solutions?

Whether it’s the cost of a single trip or the technology to support your travel programme, the company wants to know what it’s getting for its money. They can go hand in hand. Having better control and visibility into spending and travel details allows you to see the cost and effect of each trip while improving compliance and reducing risk through better duty of care. As for the bigger financial picture, companies using SAP Concur T&E solutions save more time and money than the competition and earn a positive return on investment within eight months.⁷ Those are numbers you can take to the corner office.

LEARN MORE: Download Measure Up: Tips for Demonstrating the Value of Travel Management to learn ways you can help make your case.

^{1, 3. Global Travel Managers Report, 2023}

^{2. SAP Concur Global Business Travel Survey, 2023}

^{4. Global Business Travelers Report, 2023}

^{5. Risk Outlook 2023, International SOS}

^{6., 7. Travel, Expense, and Vendor Invoice Management Study, Analysys Mason, 2022}