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As part of a recent research, most managers and travel budget owners for small and medium businesses cited managing costs as the primary goal for 2014. The methods companies use to achieve this goal, vary widely within the SMB segment. The travel spend for companies in this group range from less than $2MM in annual US booked travel to $12MM on the high end.
Most SMBs struggle with the same challenges – lack of internal resources to manage T&E, no dedicated travel manager, missed supplier relationships and a general cookie-cutter travel management program setup by the travel agency, if one exists at all. The best of breed companies may have better control on travel spend with elaborate procurement strategies and internal resources that manage the company’s travel program and spend carefully. These resources typically report to the CFO, thus offering the finance office full visibility into spend.
Visibility-of-travel-expenses
The reason that travel management as a concept is a challenge for SMBs is because there are many factors that drive a company’s travel strategy: travel patterns, international vs domestic, company culture, senior management’s support, business focus and others. Regardless of the status quo, it is never too late for a company to manage its travel and T&E processes more efficiently.
“I don’t believe there’s a company out there that can’t benefit from some level of a managed program,” said Directravel president Sam DeFranco. “When a company feels like there’s a lack of control of their spending and they only have basic expense processes in place, their antenna should be up.”
Several SMBs were focused on getting the right tools and processes in place in 2014. One was in the midst of “designing and implementing a full-scale travel management program,” while others were planning to implement a robust automated expense-reporting system as soon as possible in 2014.
In the various SMBs, even with senior management support, a planned travel policy, TMC relationship and T&E expense reporting solutions in place, companies reported ongoing challenges with compliance. Several of the companies reported their greatest travel management challenge today was to get travelers to comply.
“At larger companies, you’re dealing with a multitude of people that touch T&E,” said DeFranco. “At one company alone, you could have a travel manager, a director of procurement, a director of purchasing, expense management, HR and a risk manager. Inherently, the SMBs simply do not have the same infrastructure, so to compensate for that, the travel management company account manager essentially becomes an extension of the customer.” One company highlighted the biggest travel management challenge as “achieving objectives with limited resources.” It’s a position in which many managers in the small and midsize segments find themselves.
What are your challenges when it comes to managing travel and travel related expenses? What are your goals for 2014? Let us know in the comments below.
Reference: BTN, "BTN's 2014 Small & Medium Enterprise Report, Apr 15, 2014"
Carlson Wagonlit did a survey in November 2013 of 970 travel managers worldwide including 270 in North America. From the respondents, they found the top secondary spend categories that were critical to additional cost savings. Here are the results, with the top being ‘Roaming fees’ and the lowest cost savings coming from ‘Public transportation’ & ‘Parking’.
Spend Categories
How does this compare to your company’s cost savings on secondary travel spend categories? Send us your comments….
CFOs across various businesses are increasingly paying more and more attention to the rising airline fees. Amadeus and Ideaworks estimate 2012 worldwide airline fee revenue at $36.1 billion which is estimated to be a 11% increase over 2011! TravelNerd put together a report and found that U.S. airlines changed more than 50 different fees since January 2012, in some cases fairly large changes. Here is a quick summary of the analysis by them –
36 out of the 52 fee changes are direct fee increases, with the remaining changes predominantly a result of:
Bundling / unbundling of fees (e.g. instituting 1 fee for priority boarding and seating or instituting 2 separate fees for priority boarding and seating that were previously bundled into 1 fee)
Increasing fee price ranges (e.g. Spirit changed its premium seat fees from $25-$75 to $12-$199)
Redefining fee policies (e.g. Allegiant kept the same fee price of $50 for overweight bags 51-70 pounds but changed the fee policy to apply for bags 41-70 pounds)
28 out of the 52 fee changes are related to baggage fees, 19 changes are related to service fees, and 5 changes are related to in-flight fees
Despite Spirit’s infamous $100 per carry-on bag fee, the majority of fee increases were within $5-$10
18 out the 52 fee changes are attributed to Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air, ultra low cost carriers (ULCCs) notorious for charging fees
Lastly, a small ray of hope comes from United Airlines, who reduced its overweight bag fees from $200 to $100 for bags 51-70 pounds and from $400 to $200 for bags 71-100 pounds
For the full report, see the original article here. (Thank you TravelNerd for this research!)
An interesting survey by the Travel Leaders Group has found that company policy has almost as much influence as cost in whether or not business travelers fly in first or business class.
In analyzing year-over-year business travel bookings, 80.3% of the surveyed indicated that their bookings are on par with, or better than, last year. In 2011, this figure was 83.5%. From these figures, it may appear that corporate travel bookings have slowed since last year. But they are still strong, considering that the number is still >80%.
The data is based on responses from 269 US based travel agency owners, managers and travel agents who indicated that 50% or more of their portfolio consists of business travelers.
More and more corporate travel managers are paying more attention to make life and travel easier for their corporate travelers. They understand that frequent business travel has an impact on travelers’ personal health, productivity and affects employee’s willingness to remain at the firm. Many travel managers indicated that they were dissatisfied with the way their companies address the impact of business travel on travelers. Concerns about traveler’s health and willingness to stay at the firm weighed heaviest, followed by safety and productivity. Carlson Wagonlit (CWT Solutions Group) put together a study that discussed key stress triggers for travelers.
Here is the synopsis –
“What emerged from this survey is that the 33 stress triggers studied can be grouped into 3 main categories (which are not mutually exclusive), based on the way they impact a traveler:
1. Lost time: situation in which work is difficult or impossible (e.g. Flying economy on long haul)
2. Surprises: when an unforeseen event occurs (e.g. Lost or delayed baggage)
3. Routine breakers: inability to maintain one’s habits (e.g. Unable to eat healthily at destination)
The main stress drivers reported by our respondents all have a “lost time” component and fall into at least one additional category (surprise and/or routine breaker):
Lost or delayed baggage [79/100]
Poor Internet connection at destination [77/100]
Flying economy on Medium/Long haul [73/100]
Delays [72/100]
Furthermore, we observed significant differences in the stress perceived by the different demographic groups we studied. For example: Women report on average four points of stress more than men (on the most stressful factors, defined as scores above 60/100).
There is a cumulative effect of stress with increased travel frequency. A difference of four stress points is measured between frequent (over 30 trips per year) travelers and occasional travelers. Frequent travelers are more skilled at tackling surprises, but more distressed by “lost time” events. There is a high correlation among the demographic groups segmented by job seniority, age and trip frequency, creating similar patterns of perceived stress. For respondents living with a partner, traveling during weekends and long stays (over 3 days) generate an additional 8 points and 4 points of stress respectively compared to those living alone. The same effect is observed when comparing respondents with and without children. This research lays the groundwork that will enable us to build an overall measure of stress and to assess the corresponding productivity impact on an organization. Our ultimate objective is to provide recommendations to tackle the hidden costs of business travel.”
2012 was a slow year due to political and economic uncertainty. But according to the GBTA, travel spending in 2013 should see a modest growth.
GBTA forecast a 4.6% growth in 2013 to $266.7B, mainly due to international outbound travel. “While companies will approach the first half of the year with some caution, pent-up demand to get back on the road should hopefully fuel accelerating growth in business travel spending through the end of 2013,” said Michael W. McCormick, GBTA’s executive director, in a release.
Key elements for growth are:
International travel spending is projected to rise 5.9 percent
and
Group travel spending is forecast to gain 5.2 percent
In 2012, U.S. business travel spending was ~ $254.9 billion, according to the report sponsored by Visa. This spending increase from 2011 was mainly due to rising cost of airfares, car rentals and other travel services.
Here is a great article from Mashable about 5 common travel problems how to solve them with technology. (Thank you Mike Murphy!)
“Although business travel is on the rise again, companies are expecting employees to wring even greater efficiency and productivity from their business trips. Unfortunately, even the most seasoned road warrior can run into hurdles when traveling for business…..
