Travel is associated with relaxation. What about a business trip? A large dose of responsibilities and an equally large dose of stress. Unfortunately, the multitude of tasks is not only related to the purpose of the trip, e.g. meeting with a client, but to the organization of the trip itself and formalities. For this reason, employees are unable to fully focus on the most important task, distracting their attention into a million side cases.
DISTRACTIONS IN THE AREA OF BUSINESS TRAVEL
According to KDS research, as many as 88% of employees manage travel expenses during their work. Are you one of them? Focusing on settlements and filling out documents leads to neglecting current tasks. Either a distracted employee does not have time to perform the remaining duties, or he does them partially. In this situation, it is not only the employee who suffers, but also his supervisor and, in consequence, the company. The enterprise thus wastes its best asset, which is people.
What distracts the employee? Even before departure, travelers spend many hours looking for the right means of transport, accommodation, then buying tickets and obtaining permission. These activities already cause unnecessary stress on the traveler and take up working time. The most distracting, however, is the pile of papers that accompany the employee all the time during the trip (for a one-day trip, it is at least 5 receipts confirming the expenses). The traveler must make sure to collect all invoices and receipts, but what’s more, not to lose them at a later stage. Because a lost receipt is unrecovered money. With such a number of documents, it is also easy to get confused – which receipt is private, in what situation did I make this expense and whether it complies with the company’s rules?
The subsequent settlement of expenses is also time-consuming and problematic, i.e. describing, filling in documents, specifying the method of payment, completing dates and times or mileage. Settlement of business trips is done in spreadsheets, which turns this task into a very laborious process. Expense settlements that consist of amounts in different currencies are also tiring, because some of the activities have to be repeated several times.
BAGGAGE OF NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES
The most common feeling that accompanies employees while performing the above-mentioned duties is frustration. It often goes hand in hand with weariness and a sense of wasting time. Many people are also accompanied by the pressure related to responsibility – settling a business trip is a difficult process, which is why the employee, handing over a set of documents to the accounting department, prays that everything will be correct. Because if a bug has crept, the traveler is doomed to spend the next hours working with papers. In case of a mistake, accountants also suffer, as they must play the role of “nitpickers”. Due to the lack of an appropriate system, employees must repeatedly prove to the employer that everything was done in accordance with the rules applicable in the company.
Reluctance to perform tasks leads to abuses – despite the more frequently adopted attitude of honesty (71% KDS survey), among employees there are people who are willing to fill in documents for their benefit. To this end, they inflate mileage or fees for services for which they did not receive a receipt.
However, the most important problem that results from the imposed duties and frustration is the main purpose of a business trip, which becomes blurred along the way. Employees associate trips with their subsequent settlement, which prevents them from focusing fully on the project. The whole burden of duties and distraction leads to jeopardizing the most important goal of a business trip, and getting rid of distractions allows you to achieve the goal in a faster and easier way.
FOCUS ON THE ESSENCE
The current situation is a result of different needs: the available systems respond to the problems of either employees, or enterprises. There is no solution that would integrate these requirements and offer a universal way to satisfy interested parties.
However, meeting the needs of each party seems to be simple: first of all, getting rid of unnecessary paperwork, introducing electronic document circulation and process automation (e.g. e-invoices, e-archives). It is enough to take a photo of the receipt with a smartphone and the employee does not have to worry about the collection of papers with which he travels. To reduce the risk of error and thus the frustration of accounting and the traveler, automatic calculations should be introduced that will relieve those involved in the process and give back valuable time. Additional minutes for current tasks will also be gained by completing data in a mobile application. The implementation of a set of compliance rules into the system will reduce stress and increase transparency. The icing on the cake is the online integration with business travel agencies and ERP systems.
So one system is enough, but with a holistic approach that connects all needs within an invisible network to integrate them into a whole. A solution that saves time, but also relieves the head by getting rid of numerous responsibilities. Only in this way will a calm employee be able to go on a business trip and take care of the most important thing: business.
