By JEREMY FINDLEY

IT'S NO secret that today's economic environment is forcing organisations of all sizes to take a hard look at their budgets. Finding ways to cut costs and streamline operations is a priority and it often means that organisations need to examine their business practices. Any new investments to help drive savings must be accompanied with a compelling return on investment (ROI).

Automating travel and entertainment (T&E) processes can result in up to 10 per cent overall reduction in T&E spending (according to Concur Client Success Metrics, August 2008).

Every year, employees spend billions on T&E on behalf of their organisations. Despite the fact that for most businesses, T&E is one of the largest areas of controllable spending - second only behind payroll - many companies still rely on multiple, disconnected processes to manage their T&E that are difficult to manage and extremely inefficient.

For instance, have you ever taken a business trip and then not submitted an expense report? Neither have I, but for some reason, booking business travel and then submitting an expense report are seen by most organisations as two separate processes. What sort of improved controls, increased efficiencies and ROI would result when the two processes are combined?

The beginning of every business trip starts with gaining pre-trip approval from management, then booking your business travel. This is an excellent area to consider using online tools instead of the 'traditional' approach in which employees ask their manager for approval to book the trip, and then call a live agent to get a flight or train, reserve a hotel room or rent a car.

While this process may be effective, it's not efficient. From the cumbersome task of manually gaining pre-trip approval to travel agency fees to lack of corporate travel policy enforcement, manually booked travel arrangements can cost companies significantly more time and money. Plus, they don't provide visibility into valuable travel data that online booking tools can capture and provide.

As most road warriors will attest, the business trip isn't really complete until the expense report is submitted and those out-of-pocket costs are reimbursed.

Again, in the traditional world, an inefficient, manual process stands between the traveller and his reimbursement. Paper receipts are gathered and expenses are manually entered into a spreadsheet - leaving substantial room for error or even fraud. Once the expense report is finally filled out, it can take weeks or even months for the traveller to be reimbursed.

And, throughout the whole process, the organisation likely doesn't have visibility and control into spending, and often lacks auditing and reporting capabilities.

Thanks to technology, what's considered the 'traditional' way to manage travel booking and expense reporting doesn't have to be a lengthy, expensive process with minimal control. In fact, solutions are now available to seamlessly automate the travel booking process with the expense reporting process - from the time travel is procured all the way through to payment and reporting.

By optimising this relatively simple, yet under-managed business process, automated travel and expense solutions drive down operational costs, control employee spending and deliver actionable business intelligence and rapid ROI.

The interesting thing is that employees - far from being intimidated or reluctant to adopt new processes and technology - actually embrace travel and expense automation because it makes their jobs easier and more efficient, and they are reimbursed much more quickly. By automating this process, the time to complete an expense electronically is twice as fast as manually completing an expense report (according to the Aberdeen Group, April 2008).

Moving to an automated T&E solution empowers employees to adhere to company travel policies, because they can easily book travel and file their expense reports from one system.

And, for organisations of all sizes, automating the T&E process reduces costs, from an increase in compliance, to reduction in spending due to better control, to shorter reimbursement times.

Plus, because some automated solutions are delivered on-demand with no software or hardware to purchase and little need for IT support, they can be implemented within a matter of weeks for very little upfront cost and reasonable monthly fees that translate into a very low cost of ownership.

Whether you see this uncertain economic environment as a mandate to drive down costs or simply as an opportunity to set your organisation up for quick success when the climate improves, one thing is certain. Smart organisations are using technology to control their entire travel and expense management process. Because for them, cutting business travel is not an option. But, reducing spending is mandatory.

The author is head of Asia-Pacific business development for Concur Technologies

This article was first published in The Business Times.