98% of Italian companies have started the digitalisation of business travel. But what are the phases of the organization most entrusted to these tools?
The business travel sector, although not completely interrupted, has been significantly slowed down by the pandemic years. Today is however the right time to take stock of the ways in which business travel is managed in the pre-covid era, but above all to take advantage of the collective sense of restart to take the first steps towards a new approach to business travel management: more digitalised and therefore efficient. So the first question we ask ourselves is the following: at what stage is the digitalisation of company processes in terms of business travel?
Recently the "Travel Management and process digitalisation" event in Padua, organized by AITMM in collaboration with Travel for business, AirPlus and Best Western, took stock of how payment platforms and systems available to companies have evolved and transformed companies dealing with employee travel. This demonstrates how management software has effectively entered into the dense mesh of company procedures even when it comes to business trips.
In particular, digitalisation in travel management is concentrated in the central phases of the process of managing a trip; we are talking about payments and reporting. Booking has also now become a practice to be carried out nonchalantly online, and many companies have immediately adapted their offer to the new request methods.
But what is the current picture of the digitalisation of business travel management?
From research by the Business Travel Observatory, some interesting data emerged regarding the relationship and openness of Italian companies towards software and system integration, such as payments made with other technologies during the management process . The first data is decidedly encouraging: approximately 98% of Italian companies have started a process of digitalisation of business travel management. The main activities carried out with tools of this type are booking and payment. 61% of companies book travel services through digital tools, 23% use self-booking tools or B2C sites, 13% use an online booking tool and 65% use a travel agency.
Moving on to the subsequent stages of travel management, 86% use electronic payment tools to complete the purchase while 66% of companies use credit or debit cards referring to the company account to reduce employee reimbursement procedures . Instead, 67% found an advantage in managing reporting with digital tools. Where technology still seems to be missing is in the control processes upon returning from the trip.
Alma Travel's digital solutions to optimize business travel management processes
Among the companies that aim to expand the offer of software intended to streamline bookings, the first phase of the business travel management , there is certainly Alma Travel. An industry leader in personalizing business travel since 1972, the company remains ahead of the curve even in this digitalized era. In addition to providing its consultancy service as experts in business travel, Alma Travel has created AlmAPP, a mobile App to digitize the entire process from booking to post-trip reporting. It is a customized tool that allows you to centrally manage employee travel requests and integrates 100% with the company's management system for quick and timely control of travel costs.
The booking interface is simple, responsive even from mobile devices and environmentally friendly, as it no longer makes it necessary to print paper documents. Thanks to Alma Travel's management tools, companies can process all the information from corporate travel, improving decision-making processes within the company. Alma Travel pays particular attention to the environment; for this reason, in addition to making the traveler aware of the quantity of CO2 produced by the chosen vehicle, showing it when requesting a trip, it provides detailed reports on CO2 emissions.
Therefore, if the business travel sector is recovering, business travel management must also raise its level of efficiency, providing increasingly high-performance solutions from the point of view of efficiency, digitalisation, data management and "last but no least” of sustainability.