Telecom expense management firm Valicom announces a webinar “Telecom and Wireless Management: The 5 Questions You Should be Asking.” The webinar will encourage telecom and financial managers to look at their telecom and wireless management program with fresh eyes, to see if it’s up to the task. The webinar will be held Tuesday, November 13, 10 a.m. CST.
MasterCard today introduced the latest enhancements to the MasterCard® Smart Data offering, including its Web-based expense management and business intelligence solution, MasterCard®smartdata.gen2™. These updates help enable companies of all sizes to better manage their business and increase cost savings through unsurpassed visibility and access to comprehensive spend analytics.
As more mid-sized companies do business on a global scale, they join larger multinational corporations in needing access to consolidated, detailed expense data that can be seamlessly integrated into their ERP and accounting systems. At the same time, small business owners need a solution that simplifies expense management and allows them to focus on running their business.
A YouGov study of over 1,000 UK business travellers – commissioned by travel and expense company Concur – has revealed that although the vast majority (83 per cent) currently making use of mobile apps on the road agree it improves the experience, nearly 2 in 5 people (39 per cent) that travel regularly for work are not using them, including 11% who don’t have a smart device.
The most popular tools used by UK business travellers who do use mobile apps on the road are maps like Google or Bing (with 90 per cent using them always, often or occasionally) and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (with 60 per cent using them always, often or occasionally). Map apps help business travellers quickly find hotels or meeting venues, while social networks allow them to stay abreast of the day’s news or keep in touch with friends and family back home.
However, there are other apps that can make a business trip quicker, easier and more relaxed that travellers are currently missing out on using. Surprisingly for example, whilst just under one in five (18 per cent) business travellers surveyed agreed ‘the stacks of expense reports to be completed on return’ was a major business travel pain point, over three quarters (76 per cent) of app-using business travellers have never downloaded or used one to help manage their expenses quickly and efficiently whilst on the road.
By: Evan Selleck, GeekWire
Redmond-based Concur is best known for helping business travelers manage travel and entertainment expenses. Now, with the addition of Trip Maximizer, the company is looking to go a step further, helping sales professionals locate and communicate with clients.
Here’s how the new Trip Maximizer service works: The user inputs their initial travel plans into the Salesforce Sales Cloud, and then is shown recommendations for prospective sales opportunities during the trip. Once the traveler decides to add a sales opportunity to their trip, it takes a few clicks to add it to their itinerary, which is then added to their connected calendar. The idea is to remove the need for a countless number of emails, as well as remove the need to go back and forth between separate applications.
Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), today announced the publication of new research reports from its Financial Management research practices.
Business expenses related to travel and entertainment (T&E) encompass 8% to 12% of the average organization’s total budget, forcing executives to implement next-generation strategies and solutions for driving down operational costs and improving visibility in both processes and spending. Automation and T&E expense management tools have proven to drive tremendous value from a complex spend category that grows more strategic in nature each year. However, for the average organization, shifting from a manual program to technology-fused processes may result in unwanted corporate headaches as solution selection project managers survey the vendor landscape for an ideal enabler.
The T&E Expense Management Solution Selection Guide is a handbook for organizations that are embarking on the solution selection journey to replace traditionally-manual capabilities or move to an updated technology platform. This report will help guide those executives tasked with leading a solution selection program on the necessary components for building an effective team and understanding the technological landscape of travel and expense management solutions.
To obtain a complimentary copy of this report, made available in part by Certify, Concur, and expensewatch.com, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410182&cid=7964&camp=2.
