Optimising business travel management: the 4 archetypes

‍The archetypes

Traditional

This is travel management as it was initially conceived: everyone in the organisation funnels all their requests directly to a travel agency via call or email. The travel agency acts as a quasi-manager, providing basic reporting on travel spend, typically in the form of monthly invoicing. There is limited oversight on travel bookings; in the best case, the travel agency rudimentarily enforces your travel policy. If you're looking to tailor your travel policy to address the rapid changes caused by the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, make sure to check out our Travel Policy Template.

Single travel organiser

Similar to the traditionalists, simple control seekers want to funnel travel requests through one source; however, they rely on internal resources as the primary conduit (e.g., office manager, travel manager, senior executive assistant). By doing so they aim to exert more control over travel compliance. The internal resource themselves then tends to use a travel agency or traditional tools (e.g. Expedia). In most organisations, the simple control setup was added to a traditional model to instil greater discipline on managing a growing travel budget.

Everyone for himself

In such organisations, managing travel is secondary to other company objectives. Everyone can and should manage their own travel with best intentions in mind. There is typically no/very little oversight. Travellers use digital & public platforms (e.g, Expedia, Skyscanner, Booking.com) to book travel and claim expenses thereafter. You’ll often find fast-growing start-ups and SMEs in this archetype.

Digital SaaS

For companies in the Digital SaaS archetype, travel management has gained operational importance. The organisation implements a travel agency’s digital booking tool, which typically provides additional controls (e.g., policy compliance, validation) and reporting. Employees are encouraged (and sometimes mandated) to book for themselves via the booking tool, but often leak to public sources (e.g. Booking.com) when the tool is unsatisfactory.

Capturing additional savings without compromising your business

Upgrading to a Digital SaaS model that has an easy-to-use, fit-for-purpose tool can unlock significant business travel savings without jeopardising your business. Well-designed booking tools do a few things very well:

1. They deliver an exceptional booking experience so you can de-centralise the booking process, but maintain high in-tool booking rates
2. They encourage cheaper travel by incorporating best-practice travel policy strategies directly into the platform and having low, transparent rates
3. They have simple, easy-to-set-up, and effective administrative controls
4. They enable seamless integration with your accounting software, automating your travel accounting

All of these features work hand-in-hand to boost the productivity of your administrative team and travellers, provide an extra level of safety for travellers, and reduce travel spend.

How each travel management type benefits by upgrading to the right Digital SaaS tool

Everyone for himself to Digital SaaS

20-25% potential savings by

1. Promoting compliance with your travel policy
2. Automating your accounting integration and improving employee productivity
3. Encouraging travel avoidance when not necessary

Single travel organiser to Digitial SaaS

15-20% potential savings by

1. Automating your accounting integration and improving employee productivity
2. Promoting compliance with your travel policy
3. Encouraging travel avoidance when not necessary

Traditionalists to Digital SaaS

10-15% potential savings by

1. Promoting compliance with your optimised travel policy
2. Reducing/eliminating traditional agency fees
3. Automating your accounting integration and improving employee productivity

To see how and where your company might save, we developed a self-assessment tool that benchmarks your travel spend vs. similar companies. For additional insights on how to unlock savings check out our blog on how to smartly cut travel spend by 30% without jeopardising our business.

There are also self-management solutions such as the Invityou platform from the company Corpo'Events, which offers an integrated technology to manage your own professional corporate events: an all-in-one tool allowing the organization professional events, follow-up with statistical data and personalized support.

Other related articles you might like:

• Introducing Fairjungle's Covid Travel Reboot Kit
• The 4 archetypes of travel policies
• 8 best practices for defining a Covid-19 travel policy
• How to optimize the price of your ticket by being more flexible

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