Companies around the world spent more than a year in survival mode, demonstrating resilience and innovation to overcome the pandemic. During that time, employees' expectations of the employer and customer service expectations have changed. The time has come to reinvent the business for the future while still moving forward with the changes. For finance teams, one of the most important challenges is travel and expense management (T&E).
Driven by the pandemic, corporate spending trends changed as supply chains changed and rebalanced. Eighty-one percent of supply chain executives say the pandemic has been their organization's biggest stress test. By equipping remote offices, business travel expenses now account for only 33% while general item stores almost 24%. Along with the new spending categories, new payment types have been incorporated with a huge increase in contactless transactions.
The pandemic also added various levels of uncertainty to travel and expense management with travel restrictions at work remotely, supply chain disruption, changes in business priorities, and disruptions in business models. The safety and duty of protection of employees are now more important than ever, as the risk of negative consequences is much greater. New types of expenses are now required that include testing, quarantine costs, and even vaccine costs.
With all the emerging trends mentioned above, it's clear that companies need to reinvent travel and expense management (T&E). What are some of the challenges ahead? How will companies have to adapt their T&E management programs? In this whitepaper, experts from SAP Concur and Accenture discuss emerging scenarios affecting T&E management and highlight how technology can deliver better results. Download the document to learn more.