How Covid-19 Impact Business Travel

Business Travel

Business travel is a big part of corporate life. However, it took a toll when the pandemic began, and many countries underwent lockdown. Companies had many of their workers work from home, and only essential workers were allowed to be up and about. What this means is that business travel is expected to be monitored on a largely extensive level due to the various and new challenges posed by COVID-19. Polls conducted towards the end of last year showed that companies aimed to decrease business travel over the upcoming twelve months or so. Many of them said that business travel would increase, while a smaller minority said that it would increase. A small group, however, also said that they didn’t know how the pandemic would affect the traveling, while an even smaller number of people said that it would remain unchanged.

Business travel as it is is considered a very vital part of corporate life. But due to the pandemic, face-to-face meetings have been replaced with virtual meetings like Zoom calls. While the effect of the pandemic seemed to be lessening and as there are vaccines now, certain companies started essential business travel again. But there are a lot of factors that need to be considered to do this.

Traveling and COVID-19

COVID-19 is a new virus that appeared in the year 2019, and due to how rapidly it spread, there were many challenges that companies had to face. Employees had to be laid off in many cases, and other employees were to work from home. This brought a lot of sudden changes that were a little difficult to deal with. Traveling for business, especially internationally, became hugely problematic as it was simply not allowed. This meant that people had to turn to Zoom calls and other such platforms to continue productivity even if they were at home. This meant that companies that were using an employee travel management system like Concur now made it a business expense management software without the travel bit.

When cases began to come under control, many companies began business travel, but with great cautiousness. This is because while some countries managed to get a handle on it, many others are still facing the brunt that has become worse with the current second wave that is ongoing. The availability of vaccines is another factor, along with the hesitancy to take the vaccine due to its newness in other people.

Handling Expenses

Working from home means that there are obvious costs like internet charges and such that come up with the new medium of working. Concur is an excellent business expense management software that allows employees to keep track of the expenses of the employees while keeping a check on the compliance of policies. What this means is that Concur can be used as more than just an employee travel management system. The very same features that made it so well-known and well-loved for travel and expense management are beneficial even when it comes to working from home.

There is clear visibility and transparency of the costs incurred, meaning that it is easy to keep a check on compliance. Employees can very easily upload their receipts and submit all of their expense reports while also keeping productivity on track.

Conclusion

While there may not be a need at the moment for a software for business travel, Concur helps your employees keep track of other expenses that have arrived from working from home. This software helps in both scenarios and works efficiently while allowing employee transparency with compliance to policies.