{"id":2525,"date":"2016-03-28T18:57:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T18:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/?p=2525"},"modified":"2022-08-03T07:00:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T07:00:46","slug":"successfully-developing-and-implementing-an-effective-travel-expense-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/2016\/03\/successfully-developing-and-implementing-an-effective-travel-expense-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Successfully Developing and Implementing an Effective Travel Expense Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

While it is important to have a well-designed process and system for the Travel Expense function, without a strong policy that properly balances the needs of both the company and the traveler it becomes difficult to have a successful program.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there is no universal policy that will work for every company.\u00a0 In fact, it is quite challenging to even have a company-wide policy when dealing with multiple geographic regions and unique local requirements.<\/span><\/p>\n

A recent Peeriosity PeercastTM<\/sup> featured a major consumer products company with global operations and over 40,000 employees.\u00a0 In 2014, the company had 24 unique travel policies, many of which were conflicting, ineffective, and unenforced.\u00a0 In addition, they had little in the way of compliance reporting, as well as sub-optimal use of preferred travel agents and booking tools.\u00a0 After performing some analysis regarding this situation, they determined that there was a USD $3 Million estimated savings opportunity by implementing a global travel policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Q1 2015, they began their journey to design and implement a global travel policy.\u00a0 One of the first steps they took was to benchmark with other major corporations to determine how other companies had structured their policies, after which they created the first draft of the policy for review by members of their cross-functional teams.\u00a0 As shown in the chart below, there were two primary stakeholder<\/a> groups that they were working with.\u00a0 The first had an employee focus and the second a financial focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once the feedback from the two primary stakeholder groups was incorporated into the draft, it was then sent to the senior leadership team for their review.\u00a0 The company is currently awaiting that feedback and will then develop a formal change management\/communication strategy, update the system configuration as needed, and develop a governance strategy\/process prior to rolling it out later in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the lessons learned to this point in the project include the following:<\/span><\/p>\n