Business travel is back, and so are the familiar problems: expense reports built in spreadsheets, policies that change from one country or office to the next, travelers booking outside preferred channels, and finance teams that can't see where the travel budget actually goes. If you own T&E at a growing or global company, you already know that a patchwork of tools and rules won't hold up for long. A well-designed travel and expense program, supported by the right travel and expense program software, gives you control over spend without turning every trip into paperwork for your employees.
How to Build a Best-in-Class Travel and Expense Program, from SAP Concur, is a practical planning framework for travel managers, finance leaders and anyone asked to bring order to corporate travel and expense management. It shows you how to find the gaps in your current processes and policies, gather support from leadership, and build the vision and operating structure for one unified program.
Why a fragmented travel and expense program costs more than it should
Many companies technically have a T&E program, but it isn't aligned. Processes and reporting vary by region, data is scattered, and T&E managers spend their time chasing information instead of improving compliance, service and supplier savings. That makes it hard to spot noncompliant, excessive or even fraudulent spend, especially in lodging, air travel, mileage and entertainment.
The guide also looks at the less obvious costs. A limited view of suppliers weakens your position in contract negotiations. Employees struggle to get help when they need it. And an outdated or hard-to-find travel policy makes every other problem worse. You'll come away with a clear picture of where your own program is likely leaking time and money.
A four-phase plan for building a unified T&E program
The core of the document is a four-phase framework laid out on a timeline that, according to the guide, most organizations can complete in less than a year. Each phase builds on the one before, and the guide explains how running phases in parallel can speed up rollout.
After reading it, you'll be better prepared to:
- Assess your current travel operations and pinpoint why travelers go outside policy
- Restructure T&E roles into a single, focused team within your existing headcount
- Standardize travel, card and expense processes across business units and regions
- Turn unified spend data into decisions on suppliers, policy and traveler behavior
- Measure success through service levels, savings and employee satisfaction
The framework goes beyond cost cutting. It treats employee experience and duty of care as part of the program's value, and argues that the cheapest option isn't always the most cost-effective one. Travel managers are positioned as trusted advisers to the people they serve, not as enforcers.
Where travel and expense program software fits in your plan
Technology runs through every phase. The guide explains what digitalization should accomplish for your program: replacing manual data capture and approvals, giving employees mobile self-service access, building compliance rules into every transaction, and keeping travelers informed about report status and reimbursement.
It also covers how to bring scattered data together into a single source of truth, including direct supplier bookings that would otherwise stay invisible. From there, you'll see how dashboards, clearly defined KPIs, machine learning and advanced analytics help auditors and finance teams track trends by business unit, region and individual. That visibility supports smarter expense management, a tighter corporate card program and stronger negotiating power with high-frequency suppliers.
If you're building a business case for new T&E tools, these sections help you frame requirements around outcomes your leadership cares about: compliance, visibility, savings and productivity.
Download the full guide to get the complete four-phase framework, including the timeline, the actions behind each phase and practical direction on aligning stakeholders, standardizing processes, unifying data and keeping your travelers productive, safe and satisfied. It's a ready-made blueprint for planning your program and explaining it to the people who need to approve it.