For this week’s opinion piece on a recent procurement related article, I’m going to dig into a piece from Procurement Magazine, with the title “Procurement and the big reset in Business Travel and Expense”.
The basic premise of the article is, perhaps quite obviously, that business travel is going to change as part of the new, post-COVID normal. It goes on to look at how procurement leaders’ expertise can help to make data driven decisions when it comes to business travel and expenses. This will help businesses adapt to new corporate travel management strategies.
Procurement technology will impact work trips, but in a different way
The article draws heavily on a webinar from procurement software provider TripActions, who are very much focused on travel and expense management for enterprise procurement teams. Growth of procurement technology to manage travel and expense (T&E) spend is a big part of the technological drive post-COVID, in terms of how procurement teams can leverage technology to optimise their T&E spend.
How is business travel changing?
While I agree with the general sentiment of the article, I do feel that procurement technology can play a different and somewhat bigger approach to be able to reduce or at least optimise the business travel that we undertake in the post-COVID world. If we can take a positive from the draconian restrictions imposed during the pandemic, it has to be that a lot of travel for run-of-the-mill project and team meetings is unnecessary.
On the other hand, it has clearly been shown through the strong bounce-back of in-person conferences that a lot of people still really do value travel for business networking. This is even more important for prospecting and business development. Speaking to a few exhibitors at virtual conferences during the pandemic, it’s abundantly clear that virtual booths and online prospecting doesn’t really work for high ticket products and services.
My own painful experience of 2020, trying to cold sell procurement consultancy virtually when I couldn’t physically travel, also felt like almost 12 months of banging my head against a brick wall.
So, where is business travel going, and will we travel less?
Why business travel will still be necessary
First of all, I strongly believe that having important business negotiations face-to-face, or meeting warm business prospects in person to close the deal, will continue to be vital.
Likewise, I think it’s also been conclusively proven that virtual conferences will never fully replace in-person events.. It’s great that they offer the opportunity to attend events virtually that otherwise wouldn’t be possible due to cost of travel. Hybrid conferences are here to stay.
Anyone who’s attended one though will confirm that virtual attendance doesn’t cut it when it comes to networking. This, despite huge advances in the quality of the platforms and hosting capabilities of the organisers.
How can procurement technology drive cost savings in business travel?
Secondly, some of the more generic business travel that historically we would have done may no longer be necessary, thanks to technology. One such example, which can have a massive impact for sustainability, is inviting key suppliers to a big annual kick-off meeting. This can now realistically be done online, thanks to a vast improvement in the technology and platforms to host these type of events.
One such example is the events platform Supplier Day, which helps to facilitate and manage all of the back-end organisation for virtual corporate events.
This effectively puts on an in-house virtual “conference” with the supply base as attendees. It thus avoids the need for hundreds of key vendors to travel to a physical event which is essentially a PR and strategy exercise, rather than 1-on-1 meetings.
Why digital procurement technology will reduce the frequency of in-person meetings
The final example of how procurement technology can help reduce the need for business travel is through more intuitive, more collaborative, real-time project management platforms.
In the past, as a best case you would have most likely managed projects through MS Project and SharePoint. More often though than not, project management would default to email, weekly phone conferences and perhaps monthly or quarterly meetings.
Recently, there has been an explosion in these project collaboration platforms coming onto the market. They can enable you to manage very strategic investment and innovation projects virtually. Not only that, it also enables you to perform regular supplier relationship management actions virtually. Decision making and reaction times are subsequently much faster than they would have been in the past.
Historically, you may have been reliant on a face-to-face quarterly business review (QBR) to facilitate decision making and issue resolution. Real time project management and collaboration platforms enable you to update files and project plans virtually in one single space.
By replacing email or clunky technology such as SharePoint, it speeds up delivery and decision-making. This can reduce the frequency for in-person meetings because there are fewer bottlenecks or misunderstandings caused by lack of regular verbal communication.
When we consider the overall business travel spend, this one is likely the biggest contributing factor to how your business can significantly reduce costs. In-person conferences and key business negotiations are a small piece of overall travel spend. Day-to-day operations and project management drive a much bigger impact.
Examples of how digital procurement tools will reduce travel spend
Here at ProcurementSoftware.site, we’ve been keeping a close eye on this type of technology. There are numerous different examples depending on which type of collaboration platform you’re looking for.
If you want to check out the full list of platforms, you can do that here:
Below are just 5 examples, to give you a bit of a flavour of what’s out there.
| Technology Platform | Location | Core industry sectors served | Key Competencies | Markets served | Target customer size |
| Procurence Meercat | Poland | Automotive, Transportation, Renewable Energy | NPI, R&D, Performance tracking | Europe, North America | Mid-market, Enterprise |
| Acada | UK | Retail, financial services | Project collaboration, Performance tracking | Europe | Mid-market, Enterprise |
| Suppeco | UK | Aerospace, Defence | Innovation, R&D | Europe | Enterprise |
| Kodiak Hub | Sweden | Industrial manufacturing, pharma | Supplier Relationship Management | Europe, North America | Mid-market, Enterprise |
| ProcurementFlow | Estonia | Energy, Construction, Machinery | Project collaboration, Idea-to-PO | Europe | SMEs, Mid-market |
To learn more about any of the above, just click on the links in the table to view their listings in our Software Directory.
I’ve also embedded the podcast episodes with each of their Founders below if you’d like to have a listen to their interviews.
Conclusion
So, while it’s not in doubt that COVID has changed business travel beyond recognition, I don’t necessarily believe that T&E procurement technology will be the key driver of change.
Rather, I believe that other types of procurement technology will have a bigger impact when it comes to how we approach business travel and drive the overall spend down. How we manage our business relationships with suppliers and stakeholders going forward will be key in determining the “what” and the “how”, when it comes to our spend on business travel.
