CFOs See Need To Better Manage Travel Costs

Managing travel costs is very important to 60 percent of 127 senior finance executive from Asia, Europe and the United States and less than half said their companies were managing travel expenditures well or very well, according to a CFO Europe Research Services survey released today in an Amadeus-sponsored white paper.

The survey represented a cross-section of industries, annual revenues, finance-oriented decision makers and geographies—with half of the respondents from Europe—and nearly 80 percent said their company's travel managers should focus on "immediate" cost savings, while 62 percent said "longer-term" cost savings should also be a travel manager focus.

Meanwhile, respondents said they don't only view travel management as a cost-saving function. Two-thirds of respondents said they wanted their travel mangers to help save employees journey time and 45 percent said they wanted travel managers to focus on employee productivity when booking travel.

The survey also examined the senior-level decision-making factors in implementing corporate travel technology and its perceived benefits to the corporation. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said travel expense reporting systems and online booking tools have medium or high cost-saving potential. Fifty-nine percent, though, said travel agencies have low cost-saving potential and perceive more benefits from agency services and operations.

The survey showed that greater cost-saving potential could be found in technology. Three-quarters of the surveyed executives agreed that integrating travel management systems with expense management tools is very important, but less than 20 percent are using integrated systems.

The survey also asked about the corporate travel benefits of such emerging technologies as social networking and mobile devices. Overall, these are viewed as service quality and operational efficiency benefits, but 25 percent said tools that share feedback on suppliers and travel experiences are drivers of cost savings.