Saru Kaushal, vice president and general manager, Global Corporate Payments, American Express explains how corporates can streamline their travel expense management
While travel and tourism is one of the largest and growing sectors in our country, corporate travel segment has also seen significant growth in the last few years. Your insights on the scenario?
Indian travel and tourism industry has grown significantly due to a combination of factors like rising income levels, higher aspiration levels among younger generations, diverse tourism offerings and favourable policy changes by the government to promote tourism.
Business travel has contributed considerably to this growth, in fact according to GBTA, business travel is around US$ 33 billion market in India which is expected to grow at the rate of 12 per cent through 2019.
As business travel grows, expense management solutions will play a critical role in ensuring control over cost management and seamless synchronisation of processes while making business travel effortless and convenient for employees. In fact, amalgamation of expense management solutions, travel credit cards, mobile and internet technology, etc is going to contribute greatly in the evolution of business travel segment in the future. It will help companies to implement practices to increase cost efficiencies in the long term.
How can Business Travel Account (BTA) help both companies as well as travel agents in driving efficiencies at both ends?
American Express’ Business Travel Account is a virtual centralised billing, reconciliation and payment solution that is specifically devised to manage travel bookings for large companies effectively. It helps through savings on process costs that are related to reconciliation of travel expenses and helps companies strengthen expense management.
BTA is easy to implement and can be aligned to the travel agency that the company is using, at no cost to the organisation. It also provides the facility of extended payment terms of an average of 36 days as against the 15 day billing cycle followed by most travel agencies; and a monthly billing system for air travel expenses that reduces administrative burden of doing travel reconciliation twice a month.
American Express Business Travel Account product is a win – win implementation for travel agencies too as it improves cash flow and ensures incremental savings on account receivables and dunning costs for the agency. Agencies can do “Pass Through” of air ticket costs with international airlines and for non “Pass Through” transactions get funds from American Express within seven days. This would be a significant cost saver in comparison to extended credit periods that are sought by corporations directly from travel agencies.
What kind of solutions should companies adopt for their corporate travel expense management? How can companies streamline their Travel and Entertainment Expenses (T&E)?
Large and mid-sized companies have different requirements and they look at expense management solutions to cater to their respective needs effectively. Large corporates should opt for solutions that bring in process efficiencies and give them enhanced control in their current business environment. It should enable them to control costs across their national and global operations, particularly during challenging economic times. Mid-sized companies should look for solutions that help them manage their growing expenses while simultaneously helping them save costs. Companies should wisely choose expense management solutions that can help them to control their expenses and grow their bottomlines.
Travel and Entertainment (T&E) expenses are the second largest controllable expenses after salaries and benefits. In today’s highly competitive business environment, companies should focus on introducing effective travel and entertainment expense controls. This is particularly important when companies want to keep their cost base as low as possible.
In the current economic environment which is highly competitive companies in India need to introduce travel and entertainment expense controls. This is particularly important when companies want to keep their cost base as low as possible. As a global leader in payments, AmEx works with businesses to help them find the expense management solutions that can best meet their needs. American Express Corporate Services, which includes the American Express Corporate Card and Business Travel Services, can help them in saving time and money, improve compliance and negotiate better deals with suppliers.
Tell us about Amex Corporate Meeting Card. How can it help companies manage their business meetings and events expenses?
American Express Corporate Meeting Card helps companies track, analyse and improve their meeting and event spends. Irrespective of the number of attendees, American Express Corporate Meeting Card streamlines the payment process of company meetings and provides separate meeting expenses for more accurate analysis and tracking. The card can also be used to book flights and has a host of other benefits that include online account access, baggage and business travel accident insurance and 24×7 global assist among others.
What is your advice to corporate travel managers vis-a-vis expense management?
The role of the corporate travel manager has become very important in recent years, especially for large companies. Corporate travel managers play a significant role in ensuring smooth business travel for employees. It is not an easy job since while they have to manage budgets, they also have to manage people, be it employees or vendors. One of the important jobs of the travel manager is negotiating with service providers. One should keep in mind that getting the lowest rate may not work in all scenarios. It is also necessary to ensure the quality of the service for a comfortable travel experience for the employee. So, one needs to balance both aspects- best rates as well as good quality while negotiating a deal.
Corporate travel managers should always be updated about new tools, trends and technology in the business travel management segment. It is an evolving sector and one should be aware of new efficient processes and changing requirements of employees.
You comments on data breaches – questions around the security of the payment sector, including its methods for storing and protecting client data.
American Express takes security very seriously and we use 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. This means that when you are on our secured website the data transferred between American Express and you is encrypted and cannot be viewed by any other party.
