Travel Management Is A Rich Ore That Has Not Yet Been Excavated By Enterprises.

Although travel expenses have always been on the cusp of enterprises, this is an important controllable cost that enterprises can not neglect.

"For the European and American enterprises, travel is an important part of the financial statements. When the economic crisis or business problems happen, the cost of travel is also the first to be compressed." Wang Dan, a head of the purchasing department of a large multinational company, said that compared with Chinese enterprises, the understanding of travel management is still "half baked". With the deepening of internationalization and the increasingly standardized management of enterprises, the importance of travel management is constantly improving.

Double optimization of cost and efficiency

Truly comprehensive travel management is not a small economy, but a big optimization, not a single cost control, but a whole management upgrade.

To put it simply, travel management is the purchase, reimbursement and expenditure of enterprises to all aspects of the travel expenses of employees or customers, including air tickets, hotels, and even renting. However, it is a gigantic project for multinational enterprises with large business networks and frequent travel arrangements. For example, a large company like GE has purchased about 140 thousand tickets a year, or about 40 million US dollars in China in 2011, while Ping An Group's 2013 China Daily also showed that its annual travel expenses reached 334 million yuan.

As a global company, HUAWEI is also facing the same problem, so as early as 2004, HUAWEI It has established its own travel management department internally, which is also the predecessor of Huitong business. At present, the latter has become a wholly owned subsidiary of HUAWEI, handling the current domestic expenditure of HUAWEI 90% and 70% of the international travel expenses. Besides, its customers are also heavyweight enterprises in various industries, such as Sany [micro-blog] (7.44, -0.17, -2.23%), Roche, Ping An Group, Vanke and so on.

"Cost saving is the most obvious and direct effect of travel management," said Fu Yu, Minister of Huitong business travel service. HUAWEI has to make cost assessment every year for travel management, and the cost savings in 2012 is 70 million yuan.

However, the simple cost orientation has also led to many enterprises' erroneous travel management. The situation often encountered in domestic enterprises is that many companies think that travel management is a single transaction economy, for example, an airline ticket costs several tens of dollars. For this reason, employees should talk about the price of electricity everywhere, and input manpower to bargain. The return of ticket reimbursement also brings great trouble to the examination and approval. "The efficiency is very low, and it causes the backlog of the financial cost of enterprises, so they do not see the overall waste." Fu Yu said.

Therefore, a truly comprehensive travel management is not a small economy, but a big optimization, not a single cost control, but a whole management upgrade.

Wang Lu, general manager of Germany Jiahui International China, pointed out that these enterprises not only realized the saving of ticket prices, but also improved their efficiency by reducing the overall flow of travel. Labor cost 。

"For small companies, the purpose of travel management is to save fares and house prices, but for larger companies, more savings are more important in terms of overall cost and efficiency." Fu Yu said.

In fact, in some special circumstances, the latter role of travel management is more important. For example, when a sudden situation occurs, how can the enterprise solve the employee's travel safety and travel efficiency in a timely manner by establishing the relationship with airlines and local insurance institutions, which also tests the management level and crisis handling ability of the company. Fu Yu has dealt with this situation many times. For example, the volcanic ash in Iceland has affected the entire European flights. The general strike at the Frankfurt Main Airport in Germany "will affect many employee journeys, which requires an emergency rescue and handling measures; the larger the company, the more the demand will be." {page_break}

Balance of travel management

Concentration will bring greater savings. After unified management, there will be many places to be compressed and saved.

Although many enterprises accept the concept of travel management, it is difficult to achieve effective management. travel management 。

Fu Yu called it a science of procurement, administration and finance, which included how to provide high-quality resources to employees, which was originally responsible for procurement, including the quality service provided by the executive part to employees. In addition, it is necessary to have quick settlement and even reduce costs through the adjustment of the settlement cycle.

To achieve the above multiple effects, enterprises must first formulate a clear and comprehensive travel policy, including the selection of travel booking tools and suppliers, reimbursement system and process control, travel personnel on the way and what kind of support they need to reach their destination, including payment tools and data management.

Prior to these technical choices, the first principle is to determine the major principles of travel policy, that is, the purpose of travel management. "According to different company strategies, the direction of travel policy may not be the same. However, the general travel policy should take into account both enterprise management and a balance between cost control and employee satisfaction." Wang Dan said.

A small example shows that enterprises have a lot of hard work in balancing the relationship between them. For example, the policy of asking employees to travel together will undoubtedly reduce the cost of travel, but it violates the employee's travel preferences. Therefore, HUAWEI's practice is to encourage the poor travel policy in this respect: the employees who live together will have a reward of $5 per day.

In the context of the general direction of the travel policy, some minor adjustments are also necessary to enable them to cater for the changes in the external environment and the needs of the internal staff. For example, the GE's travel policy is to strictly enforce the minimum fare policy, but it will adjust the subsidy for the staff's meals according to the CPI changes and so on. At the same time, it will conduct a survey on the satisfaction of the staff and regularly trim and fine tune the travel management.

But for many Chinese enterprises, it is far from the finer management. "When we cooperate with large domestic enterprises, we find that we all attach great importance to this matter, but they are not guaranteed in terms of organization and process." Fu Yu suggested that enterprises with more than $10 million in travel expenses should have a manager of travel management, especially for making travel policies and analyzing travel reports.

However, for most Chinese enterprises, the travel management personnel are more "part-time" and do not have professional travel management experience, which brings the most fatal problem of a travel management, that is, it is difficult to concentrate. This is also a problem frequently encountered by Germany Jiahui international in the face of Chinese enterprises in the past 5 years. Wang Lu pointed out.

"Concentration will bring greater savings. After unified management, there will be many places to be compressed and saved." Fu Yu said.

First of all, centralized purchasing will save enterprises a certain cost. Generally speaking, if the personal ticket reservation of employees is 15% off to 10 percent off, then centralized purchase can reduce the discount to 25% off to 20 percent off or even lower. Only one ticket, the enterprise can save 10% travel cost in a year. In contrast, the effect of centralized payment is often ignored by enterprises. Wang Dan pointed out that if employees can use company credit card to settle accounts, enterprises can make use of the credit card's interest free period, and also can guarantee the company's cash flow level.