We live at the forefront of Web 2.0 technologies. But we also face a number of economic uncertainties on a global scale.
These two factors place new demands on T&E expense management software because companies are struggling to do more with less. Margins are thin and there is no room for mistakes or waste.
Therefore, companies are trying to reduce their business travel expenses without sacrificing anything in the way they archive, manage and report their data. If anything, they are asking for more granularity, modularity, and control without increasing their IT overhead.
So this is what the ideal T&E software of the future should look like to serve an increasingly demanding and sophisticated customer base:
1) Multiple policy capability. Most companies today do not have a clear written business travel policy. Even when they do, their T&E software is often designed for a single “default” policy that applies across the board, from the CEO to the graphic designer in the multimedia department.
Excellent T&E software would allow managers to create different project accounts and then compare the expense reports against the different policies entered into the system. Why should the board chairperson limit herself to the same room or rental car assignment as the junior sales engineer who joined the company just a week earlier?
2) Open horizontal integration. The T&E software of the future must be able to manage not only expenses for meals, hotel, airfare and car rental as most traditional T&E systems do, but also other types of expenses, as well as expenses related to Internet and the web, rail and sea travel, training. expenses, professional fees and even medical expenses, etc.
The program must be open enough to accommodate each and every expense category without sacrificing any scalability or reliability.
3) vertical modularity. The ideal T&E software should be modular enough to allow managers to select their own level of vertical integration in managing their business travel accounts.
For example, at one end of the vertical integration spectrum should be only the T&E expense reporting and submission request.
On the other hand, the program should be able to connect with any hotel reservation or car rental program, or credit card module, on the one hand, and the company’s Accounts Payable or Payroll modules, on the other.
With software like that, a company would not have to pay for unnecessary modules, since the program does not come as a “take it or leave it” snippet.
Why, for example, should a company pay for an expensive hotel, plane and car booking module if all travel arrangements are already made in-house? If a customer wants only the basic T&E features, they should be able to get just that and save money.
4) Independence of the platform. The ideal T&E software should be platform independent. That is, it should be able to run not only on any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux), but it should be accessible with any device, from traditional desktops to PDAs and iPhones.
It must also be independent of the browser (IE, Firefox, Safari) so that it can be accessed via the Internet from anywhere in the world.
5) Zero local IT overhead. The T&E software of the future should eliminate the need to buy expensive software and hardware and maintain them locally. It should be necessary to download security updates or patches and there is no need to hire a highly paid team of engineers just to keep T&E servers running smoothly 24/7.
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution delivers on that promise by transferring all IT responsibilities to the vendor. So if the data security issue is properly addressed and resolved, an ideal T&E software such as a SaaS product will likely be delivered over the Internet.
6) Audit Ready Compliance Capability. We live in a post-Sarbanes-Oxley world in which all public financial institutions in the United States are required to document their business transactions. Since, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, company managers are personally liable for unauthorized and improper spending in their departments, they take the need for consistent, secure and systematic documentation very seriously.
Therefore, excellent T&E software should generate detailed reports showing which travel requests were approved or denied, when and by which supervisor based on what policy, etc.
7) Safe, unique and time-stamped labeling. You should also label each transaction (including T&E related email requests, expense records, faxed receipts, etc.) with a unique, time-stamped, encrypted code to prevent fraud and after-the-fact tampering.