Returning to Travel? Four Reasons it is Important to Reconsider Your Approval Platform Now!
Your travelers are anxious to get back out in front of their customers but you still have concerns. A comprehensive travel policy and approval platform is vital – not just for budget compliance but to ensure your travelers are safe and instill confidence in your travel program. Travel policies are becoming increasingly complex and fluid, which puts a lot of pressure on you to ensure the correct approval process is in place.
Now is the time to reconsider your approval platform – here are four reasons why:
1 OK to Travel but Travel Safely
Slowly you are allowing your travelers to venture out. But, are they putting themselves in danger? Traveler safety is top of mind for organizations but everyone manages it a little differently. Trondent’s approval platform allows you to implement the security elements and evaluation process which best fits your objectives. Whether you are developing your own hot-spot ranking or using a risk management provider, Trondent’s Authorizer AI incorporates relevant risk data into your approval process. We integrate with your risk management provider to include country security, health ratings, and current outbreak data for every trip request. Not using a risk management partner? No problem. Authorizer AI can use your internal security rankings as part of the trip evaluation.
Approvers and security teams are alerted to any trip with an elevated risk factor – ensuring everyone feels more confident in upcoming travel. Our Artificial Intelligence-driven engine can also calculate a risk score for each trip request based on company-defined risk factors. This risk score can be incorporated into both automated and manual trip approval processes.
2 Travel with Confidence
Travelers might be excited to get back in front of their customers but how do they actually FEEL about traveling? Your organization is concerned as well. Travelers will feel more confident if they know their organization considered all the risks prior to approving a trip. Confident travelers also have access to the most up-to-date safety information – ensuring they are aware of requirements, screenings, and local regulations.
To mitigate corporate risk further, your executive team may want to capture the travelers’ official travel consent. Authorizer AI’s robust functionality includes an Attestation Email providing travelers with the latest information on their trip with links to all internal company travel resources. Before the trip is forwarded for manager approval, travelers ascertain that they read all pertinent information and are able and willing to travel. Leveraging artificial intelligence helps simplify the complexities of the approval process for all involved – travelers, approvers, travel managers, and travel agents, while optimizing its efficiency.
3 One Policy Does Not Fit All
Your travel policy is as unique as your organization. While essential travel is still essential, it now comes with a burden of new requirements and considerations. Your policies may vary based on traveler type, trip purpose and destination, or can vary by region. A travel policy that considers all these variables and more, is bound to be complex and require multiple levels of approval. One policy will definitely not fit all and neither should your trip approval platform.
You need a flexible and comprehensive solution customized to your organization’s unique travel needs. Complex policies include numerous dependencies to determine if a trip should be approved or declined. Manual review of these variables delays approvals, costs the company a significant amount of time and budget, and lacks consistency and accuracy. By leveraging Authorizer AI’s artificial intelligence engine, you can fully customize your approval process, create numerous workflows designed to minimize manual reviews and approvals, and assure a consistent and streamlined approach. When trip requests deviate from policy to an unacceptable level and human evaluation is required, Authorizer AI alerts approvers on the specific trip elements needing review or consideration. In addition, it provides approvers with other important information – such as available budgets –in real-time information, thus improving the speed and accuracy of the decision process. Trips, meeting corporate travel policies, are approved automatically – no need to burden approvers to review and act on every trip when a simple notification can be sufficient.
Vital to any successful travel program is the ability to review and act on historic data. You need to understand the violations that occur the most, who makes those violations, and address issues accordingly. Authorizer AI provides a number of standard real-time reports providing data on PNR status, missed savings, decision duration, decisions reached on timeout, out of policy trips and more while detailed Scorecard Reports include information on the booking and approval performance of each traveler and approver. You can schedule standard reports or run them as needed. Custom reporting is available to address any unique requirements. The reports provide insight into the behavior of your travelers, approvers, and the organization as a whole – allowing you to make well-informed and timely adjustments and elevate the efficiency of your program.
4 The Need for Scalability
With limited travel and while in the middle of a pandemic, your current approval process might work today. But, as more and more return to travel, the number of requests will significantly increase. Likewise, the complexity of variables in your policy can increase and change on a daily basis.
Authorizer AI allows you to easily and efficiently meet any increase in demand or change in travel policy. It is not practical to rely on approvers to stay up to date on policy restrictions. Leveraging artificial intelligence, Authorizer AI automates the approval process, while requiring managers to only act on requests deviating from policy at an unacceptable level. Authorizer AI is able to handle even the most complex travel policies and approval processes – making travel manageable again, and, since it’s is compatible with all GDS’s, OBT’s and TMC’s, allows you to implement one trip approval solution globally for a seamless experience and consistent outcomes. The platform is highly agile and gives you more control by implementing your policy changes quickly and as often as needed which results in improved accuracy, consistency, and overall efficiency and satisfaction for your travel program.