What Is Corporate Travel Management? A Complete Guide.

Business travel, aka corporate travel, is a necessity across companies of all sizes for business continuity and growth. In fact, the global business travel market is estimated to surpass $1.64 trillion in 2025. After all, employees need to travel for varied business reasons- events, prospect/client meetings, customer service, training sessions, etc. However, traveling brings its own set of chores. Planning itinerary, booking flights, accommodation, and transportation, and ensuring safety isn’t something listed on a corporate traveler’s job description. But all of it needs to be taken care of. This is where corporate travel management kicks in. 

All this while keeping travel costs in control, ensuring traveler safety during a journey, and helping with pre and post-trip costs/expenses reimbursements.

Core Pillars of Corporate Travel Management?

Managing business travel might seem like a simple task, but underneath, it is as tangled as spaghetti can get. Different functions of corporate travel management are intertwined, making it complex to manage. On a high level, there are 5 key components of business travel management—

Travel Policy Making and Compliance Program

Business travel policy conceptualizes rules and regulations defining the who, when, what, and how of corporate travel. For example-

• Who can travel business/economy class?
• Who can approve a business trip?
• Which vendors/suppliers can you book your flights/accommodation from?
• When can you book your itinerary?
• What expenses will be covered by the company?
• What would be the action plan for emergency response and duty of care?
• How will the reimbursements be handled?

Making a corporate travel policy is only half the battle, the other half is to enforce compliance of the same for all business trips. But not anymore. With tools like TripGain, companies are enabling their employees and travel admins to plan the itinerary while strictly complying with the organizational travel policy and sustainability goals.

Business Travel Cost Control

52% companies feel their business travel spendings will increase this year. However, a big responsibility of corporate travel management teams is to keep the trip costs in control. There are multiple ways to optimize for cost efficiency-

• Negotiate with your vendors and sign agreements for discounted bookings based on volume
• Encourage employees to opt for policy-compliant bookings
• Use travel expense tracking tools with data analytics capabilities to find cost optimization opportunities
• Use fraud detection features of smart corporate travel tools
• Invest in employee training to help them better use self-serving T&E management tools

Travel Itinerary Planning and Bookings

For business trips to be effective, companies need to be very strategic and meticulous about them. Corporate travel management involves planning an itinerary while keeping in view the traveler's productivity, experience, travel policies, duty of care protocols, and, of course, travel costs. Here’s a list of things that business travel itineraries encompass-

• Securing necessary approvals
• Planning policy-compliant trip 
• Obtaining a visa and arranging for any specific requirements like medical verification or vaccinations
• Booking flights, trains, cabs, hotels, etc.
• Traveler communication and support
• Supporting itinerary modifications without major cost implications
• Ensuring duty of care

Travel Expense Management and Reporting

Expense management in corporate travel ensures that business trips don’t overshoot the allocated travel budget of a company. It involves 4 major functions-

• Enforcing cost control measures
• Verifying expense receipts of corporate travelers
• Coordinate with the finance team for timely reimbursement of qualifying employee expenses as per the travel policy
• Tracking & reporting expenses to the leadership

Duty of Care

Companies must ensure traveler health and safety with pre-trip risk assessment, designing emergency response protocols, and providing on-field support for business travelers in case of health or political crisis. 

To ensure employee safety, corporate travel management teams adopt traveler tracking technology for real-time visibility into the whereabouts of an employee on a business trip.

People Who Drive Corporate Travel Management Workflow

Business travel catapults growth for a company. Under the hood, several key stakeholders make this possible. Depending on how a company approaches corporate travel management, the key enablers of business travel at any organization could include T&E software, employees, travel admins, procurement professionals, travel management companies (TMCs), and finance/HR teams.

Travel Admins

In large corporations, travel admin is a full-time role. In smaller companies where employees do not travel frequently, HR often don the hat of a travel admin. The scope of work for travel admins is highly dependent on the resources available for them to discharge their duties. 

For example, a travel admin at a large company is involved in travel policy development, compliance, and work closely with travel management companies for itinerary planning and booking, negotiating supplier rates, etcetera. However, at a relatively smaller organization (<100 employees), the travel policy is often missing, and hence, travel admins respond to business travel needs on an ad hoc basis. 

Travel Procurement Professionals

Mid-size and large enterprises with a high frequency of business travel need to rely on travel procurement professionals to:

• Identify, assess, and onboard the right travel management companies aligned with the travel policy and budget goals.
• Work out agreements with suppliers for discounted corporate travel rates to ensure budget goals are met and costs are in control.
• Add modern travel and expense (T&E) tools to the organization’s stack for streamlining corporate travel management—from trip approval to itinerary planning and expense reporting.
• Assess vendor performance and adapt accordingly for better quality of service and cost efficiency.

Travel Management Companies

Large enterprises with a very high frequency of business trips, rely on external corporate travel management teams, often referred to as travel management companies (TMC). 

• TMCs take care of vendor negotiations, supplier content sourcing, itinerary management, travel policy compliance, and duty of care on behalf of your company. 
• Modern TMCs are tech-savvy and provide self booking tools (SBTs) to companies to expedite the travel approval and management process. SBTs integrate well with an organization’s human resource management system (HRMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to make travel arrangements seamless.

Finance & HR teams

Travel management isn’t a creative job, but it is crucial for business growth and impacts the bottom line significantly. 

• Finance and HR teams play a crucial role in ensuring that a company’s travel programs yield maximum ROI. 
• Finance & HR teams help shape a company’s travel policy, budget allocation, compliance roles, and sustainability targets.
• They proactively help in mitigating travel and expense fraud risks.

Traditional vs Modern Corporate Travel Management 

Corporate travel management has evolved in recent years. Today, every organization is trying to do more with less. Efficient enterprise resource utilization and travel cost optimization are the core priorities for enterprises. To unlock new efficiency, business leaders, including CFOs, HRs, and T&E executives, are turning to digital transformation to reimagine how they approach corporate travel management. To meet rising traveler expectations in terms of flexibility, experience, sustainability, etcetera, companies are proactively embracing cutting-edge business travel management software for T&E that gel well with the in-house finance and HRMS systems.

Tech-driven Corporate Travel Management 

Though slow, innovation in business travel management has been evolving in the past few decades. But now, with the increasing proliferation of AI and automation among TMCs and enterprises, corporate travel management is on the brink of a revolution- 

• Global Distribution Systems (GDS) monopoly is being challenged by New Distribution Capability (NDC)
• TMCs are increasingly going for AI-powered SBT providers
• Small and mid-sized companies are embracing self-booking unified T&E solutions

Automation & AI In Corporate Travel Management

Artificial intelligence-powered T&E solutions have simplified corporate travel management to a great extent. 91% companies are planning to invest in AI & ML in the next five years to improve T&E processes. It helps business travellers and TMCs make-

• Intelligent itinerary choices in compliance with travel policy and sustainability goals
• Ensures delightful employee experience by 
  
  • Automating trip approval time
  • Offering flexible booking options
  • Intelligent virtual assistants for traveler queries 
  • Real-time traveler alerts
• Adjust travel policies and programs in real-time to make them more aligned with the overall travel budget and business goals
• Automate expense verification and reimbursement processes
• Proactively perform risk assessments
• Automates reporting & analytics for budget optimization

Benefits of Business Travel Management

There are plenty of direct and indirect benefits of corporate travel management. As per industry research, effective business travel management could be crucial for employee productivity,  traveler convenience, business trip outcomes, travel costs optimization, and even in meeting ESG goals. Without a proper corporate travel management program in place, it could be an absolute nightmare to deal with the travel requirements. 

Cost Optimization

Your corporate travel management programs and partners can help crack a win-win deal with content suppliers (flights, hotels, and cab vendors) and provide you access to cost-efficient itinerary options. CTM program policy enforcement can also help your employees avoid last-minute bookings, which in turn saves a lot of money for your business.

Employee Productivity

With a corporate travel management program, a lot of business travel functions have standard operating procedures in place, thus, the cognitive load on employees is minimal. The cherry on the cake is that you also have a TMC partner to assist employees with their business travel needs. Besides, when you free your corporate travelers from the chores of itinerary planning and booking, they can efficiently channel their time toward reaping maximum value for your business.

Expense Management 

Employees don’t like delayed reimbursements. Finance and travel admins don’t like false receipts and non-compliant expenses. But both of these are the harsh reality in companies with a huge volume of business trips. A well-thought-out corporate travel management takes cognizance of these challenges and helps streamline expense tracking, verification, and reimbursement processes by identifying the right T&E tools for their IT infrastructure. 

T&E tools help your TMCs, travel agents, or employees to make policy-conscious booking decisions. Thus keeps your travel costs in control. Additionally, these T&E tools are equipped with optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning capabilities to process expense receipts in real-time and proactively flag any false receipts. These tools can also be configured to reimburse expenses to employees in real-time by integrating them with the organization's ERP tools and finance systems.

Challenges in Corporate Travel Management

Corporate travel management can be highly complex at scale. Navigating business travel management at enterprises could be tricky as traditionally it is infamous for being ridden with inefficiencies and lack of visibility into business outcomes, limited control over traveler experience, employee overspending, travel policy violations, and fraud mitigation challenges. But among all the challenges, technology integration and adoption is the biggest pain.

Technology Implementation, Integration, and Adoption

• T&E solution integration with existing enterprise infrastructure and ERP tools

Travel admins and finance teams are not tech-savvy beings. And enterprises have a very diverse range of in-house IT infrastructure. Some are in the cloud, some have on-premise infrastructure, and others have a hybrid-cloud-led IT infrastructure. Most T&E solutions are not designed for this diversity, and thus, companies struggle to seamlessly integrate OBTs or EMTs into their existing tech infrastructure. T&E solutions that come with off-the-shelf click-n-integrate solutions are a game-changer as they cater to these challenges.

• T&E tool training

Travel management stakeholders need to be trained and incentivized to use modern T&E tools. Without proper training, it is very tough to make the most of the T&E SaaS software. They will only use the tools when they are comfortable using them, and that’s not feasible without great learning and training material created around the T&E tools. So, always look for T&E solutions with amazing documentation coverage and a support team.

How TripGain Makes Corporate Travel Management Easy-Peasy?

TripGain is a savior for companies that are struggling with corporate travel management. It’s a T&E SaaS solution that fixes most of the challenges associated with corporate travel management. Here’s how we are doing it-

• Simplifying approval workflows
• AI-powered intelligent itinerary planning in less than a minute
• Help you manage your itinerary end-to-end, including flights, trains, cabs, and hotels
• In-built reporting and analytics tool
• Seamlessly integrates with your ERP and other enterprise tools for unparalleled visibility
• Features to foster travel policy compliance and sustainability goals
• Tools for efficient travel cost optimization

Visit TripGain to learn more or speak with our sales team.