The critical role T&E Expense Management Solutions play as companies optimise T&E Expenses

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To stay competitive in a world with increasingly connected commerce, business travel is critical

Travel and expense (T&E) management is an important component for many companies. It is the second largest operational cost after employee payroll. Companies, especially small and medium ones, spend a large amount on business travel to expand horizons for business growth, networking, meetings, and more.

But, when it comes to cutting costs, T&E is the first area to get affected and this can hamper the growth prospects.

So, how does one travel for business without putting a dent on the budget? Happay took note of these challenges and created solutions to help companies manage their T&E.

“To stay competitive in a world with increasingly connected commerce, business travel is critical. Instead of cutting down on travel, it would be prudent for companies to manage these costs wisely and get the maximum impact for what they spend,” said Varun Rathi, COO and Co-Founder, Happay.

Expenses such as airfare, accommodation, meals, local travel expenses, etc., can impact your budget and it is seen that many companies lack control, have poor visibility into T&E spending, and go through daunting T&E claims that end up in poor planning and execution.

“To overcome these challenges, organisations need to recognize the critical role digital and automated T&E expense management solutions play. Happay’s automated T&E spend management platform digitises and streamlines processes from travel requisitions and approvals, to policy compliance and approvals to settlement, accounting integrations and MIS,” said Rathi.

This is how it exactly happens:
• Getting a system on-board: Happay manages paperwork and brings the existing process on its Happay system — right from the users, their roles and designations, approval hierarchy, expense categories, policies and workflows. Once the data is digital, companies have visibility in every aspect of the process.
• Assessing data: Afterwards, companies can start gathering data on the Happay system and based on this data, they can optimise processes further. Through data on Happay, companies can understand the expense reporting behaviour of employees, time lag between capturing expenses on the system and submitting expense claims, if employees are submitting expense reports at the end of the month or on a regular basis, the level of efficiency, etc.
• Real-time insights: Happay is a cloud-based platform and all the data is available in real-time on both the desktop and smartphone. Companies have complete visibility from planning to approval stages, business trips completed by employees, audit trail of all expenses and reports and settlement data at their fingertips.
• Raises red flags: The Happay system alerts both employees and approvers, in case of any expense violation policy. Companies can easily track violators, and then optimise policies accordingly.
• Cost control: Happay’s analytics and MIS reports help companies keep track of the top spenders in the company, top spend categories, most frequented cities of travel, top vendors used for travel bookings and more – all this data helps companies negotiate better deals with travel vendors and create more effective travel policies that consequently help reduce overall T&E costs.

With a digital and automated T&E platform, companies can gain 100 percent spend visibility and control, speed up their process cycle time by seven times, reduce paperwork by 96 percent, reduce leakage by more than 90 percent, and boost overall employee productivity.

Originally published in Moneycontrol.com

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