As the world of work continues to shift to hybrid models, businesses are adapting to new expense management solutions. American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), the world’s leading B2B travel platform, recently released findings from a survey of over 1,200 finance leaders from the UK, USA, France, and Germany, conducted by Neo, Amex GBT’s integrated travel and expense management platform. The results revealed that hybrid work models and the current economic landscape have significantly impacted how large businesses approach to travel and expenses (T&E).
The survey found that over 90% of respondents said the new working models had affected their T&E process in some way. Two of the most significant impacts were more scrutiny on expenses and more rapidly made claims at 41%. Most finance managers (69%) expect increased fraudulent claims due to the current economic situation.
Despite the changes, T&E is still viewed as a necessary cost by 57% of respondents, with 40% seeing it as a critical enabler to their company’s growth. However, cost-cutting is now a high priority for businesses, with 76% of finance teams agreeing that expense policies could be used to cut costs without cutting travel.
Large businesses are turning to advanced digital solutions to improve the accuracy and reliability of expense management. A staggering 89% of finance decision-makers trust AI to support T&E management, with 34% even trusting it to detect issues without human intervention. The majority (65%) of respondents expect T&E to become intervention-free.
The top two reasons finance managers would be swayed to change T&E management are a better employee user experience (nearly a third) and faster end-to-end processing time (26%). A sharp focus on employee engagement is also clear, with over a third of respondents (36%) claiming it is one of their highest priorities for 2023, just behind cost control (45%).
Looking ahead, priorities for finance decision-makers are set to shift beyond cost savings. For example, 64% of respondents said the amount of carbon emitted during a business trip would be considered more important than how much it costs. Meanwhile, 71% agreed that using travel to strengthen relationships would also be more important than lower costs.
According to Sebastien Bardin, Neo’s VP of Product, “Businesses are not shying away from technology and integrated booking and expense systems to help them drive compliance in their travel programs. When finance teams invest in upgrading to integrated T&E solutions, they expect intelligent systems powered by AI and great user experiences to drive adoption. This is what we focus on every day at Neo.”
With the ever-increasing need for efficient and cost-effective expense management, AI-powered solutions may be the future of T&E. The full report is available here.
Written by: Jill Walsh
