Choosing the right business travel software for your small and medium business, or any sized business for that matter, is a difficult decision. With so many different business travel apps out there, choosing the right software for business travel is about understanding what your company’s needs are, where your shortcomings are, and what are the most important features that will make a difference in how you optimize and manage business travel in your company.
In many cases, you won’t have a budget for a travel manager, or it simply won’t be among your company’s priorities, especially if you’re just starting out. This is why we are laying out the top 5 business travel software for SMEs to make your life easier and help you decide what’s right for you. Keep reading to find out more.
So, how do I choose software for business travel?
The answer is, it’s not easy. Today’s business travel software is designed to be digitally-forward and self-service. We recommend creating a SWOT analysis to determine your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, to better understand where your needs lie in terms of business travel to make an educated decision.
What is business travel software?
Travel management software is a tool that is used by businesses to keep track and make business travel bookings. It helps streamline and manage end-to-end business travel. While there are a range of solutions that can help you optimize small business travel management, it’s important you have an idea of what you need and how complex your travel program is before deciding on the right software for you.
Best travel management software
Navan (formerly TripActions)
Navan is a business travel software company that offers smart corporate cards, spend, and travel management in an easy-to-use platform designed to save small businesses time and money. One of the features that distinguishes them from the rest of the software listed is their virtual and physical cards that have their spend policies directly built-in. Navan also automatically categorizes and reconciles expenses making expense management hassle-free through automation.
Lanes and Planes
Lanes and Planes is a business travel booking tool that allows you to manage travel and workflows, offering paperless travel expense reporting, travel service consulting, and a business travel app that allows you to keep track of tickets, sends you delay alerts and live updates, and In-App customer support. Lanes and Planes offers the ability to book an Airbnb directly from their platform, giving you the freedom to book the accommodations that best suit your needs. They are an especially important local player in Germany and the DACH region.
TravelPerk
TravelPerk is a SaaS (software as a service) software for business travel. They offer built in travel policies, centralized invoicing, travel and expense management reporting and VAT recovery, among other services. Another particularly interesting feature they offer is FlexiPerk, which allows you to cancel any flight, hotel, car or train at any time if you pay an additional 10% fee on every trip your travelers make. Given that taxes form the majority of the cost of domestic/continental restricted tickets and those taxes are most of the times refundable even if the ticket is not, this option provides a cost effective solution to companies with a high change ratio on intercontinental economy tickets.
TravelPerk states: “Small and medium-sized businesses like yours need flexibility from a travel partner. A traditional travel management agency cannot offer custom corporate travel solutions. Our travel platform stays as agile as your business and ready for any challenge.”
Egencia
Egencia strives to make travel management easy, allowing you to manage expenses, itineraries, and ensuring that your travel policy stays synchronized in order to remain compliant. In addition, they offer risk management options like traveler tracking to easily locate travelers, and inform travelers of any events that may impact their trip, as well as geographic risk indicators to assess and limit travel to risky locations.
One of their particularly innovative features is the Open Sync that links personal credit cards to expense systems, allowing for easy reimbursement reporting, as well as offering the ability to connect to different expense management providers to automatically send data.
GetGoing business travel software
GetGoing is a business travel software that is designed to make your life easier when it comes to business travel. The platform allows you to manage, optimize and save all in one place. Instead of booking car rental, trains, planes and hotels on a million different websites, with GetGoing you can manage all your travel needs.
It is a digital-first solution meaning that it’s easy to use for your whole team while at the same time there is also offline support from real travel experts when you need it. GetGoing differs from other platforms in the fact that it’s both an online and offline solution at the same time. Enjoy the ease of a digital platform, and the peace of mind of a travel agency so that you can empower your team, save time and money, gain more visibility and ensure safe and comfortable travel. That’s business travel, hands-on.
With GetGoing’s analytics and dashboards you can take charge of your finances, and with tax compliant invoices, you can be sure your finances are always in order. Monitor your performance, and optimize your time by automating your travel policy, so your employees can take care of what really matters. With travel safety regulations changing all the time, there’s no need to worry, our travel experts are there to help. The customer success team will help you use data and manage workflows with an easy, hands-on solution, that will make for a smooth travel experience. Smooth travel means happy employees, and happy employees are more productive. It’s a win-win.
GetGoing has all these features and more.
Schedule a meeting to find out what GetGoing can do for you.
