The efficiency and convenience of working with business trips depend on many factors. but first of all on the tools us and the organization of document flow. It is important that this process is properly organiz – from the implementation of travel policies to the preparation of reports. In large companies. bringing order to business trips and automating the process allows you to save up to 30% of the travel budget.
We will tell you how the organization of business trips was automat at the Velesstroy company using a corporate portal.
Why automate the business travel process
Velesstroy is a Russian company. one of the leaders in the construction of facilities for the oil and gas and electric power complex. industrial and civil construction. EPC contracts and design. The company’s construction sites are scatter throughout the territory of the Russian Feration. The specific nature of the field of activity and the wide geography of projects require regular business trips to construction sites. The budget for travel expenses is not elastic. constant monitoring of limits and optimization are requir.
The process of arranging business trips was traditional:
The employees themselves or the department secretaries responsible for this process organiz and arrang business trips. the HR department and accounting department provid personnel and financial document flow. They collect papers. ran through the offices. issu money on account. and now the employee is ready to go to the site. It may seem that with well-coordinat work of departments. there can be no shortcomings and sources of savings in this process. In fact. each stage of the process can carry potential risks of increasing travel expenses not relat to the increase in the value of the trip. At the same time. it is impossible to quickly assess the quality of travel budget management. especially if there are many trips and they are regular.
For companies that spend more than 1 million
Risks can be transferr to a contractor – a classic or specializ business travel agency. This allows you to save time. since agencies will independently select tickets and recent mobile phone number data book hotels along the route. provide closing documents and reports. You can save money thanks to direct contracts between agencies and carriers and hotels (bypassing global booking systems). and get benefits through participation in corporate loyalty programs.
The S7 Profi program offers cashback of up to 7% on business trips at the expense of companies. For a client with the initial Start status. the cashback will be 4%. With monthly expenses from 50 thousand rubles. you can get up to 24 thousand rubles in annual savings. rubles per quarter on flights. there is the S7 Corporate program. It offers special conditions. including a discount of 5 to 8% on air tickets.
Velesstroy’s service contractor is Aeroclub. one of the major players in the Russian travel tech market and an IT platform for automating business trips. Its IT solutions allow building an effective travel process from the trip initiation stage to end-to-end analytics and financial reporting.
Thus. by automating the process of organizing business trips. the customer:
- ruces the time spent on selecting tickets and booking;
- stores all employee business trip documents in one place;
- shifts its own and external risks to the intermiary;
- buys tickets and hotel rooms at a lower cost;
- receives cashback and bonuses for united states business directory participating in corporate loyalty programs and access to all data and analytics at any convenient time.
How to arrange a business trip in Bitrix24
In 2021. we implement a corporate portal into the company’s work. Later. the customer came up with the idea of creating a business process for coordinating business trips on the portal by integrating Bitrix24 with Aeroclub and 1C. Now the process looks like this:
- A company employee initiates a business trip. independently fills out or instructs a responsible person to fill out a form on the corporate portal.
Bas on the value of the “Service Registration” field. the person who should purchase the services is determin. The same user receives information about the approval/rejection of the application at different stages of approval. Approving managers are select from the organizational structure bas on the employee’s affiliation with a particular department. If the manager is not on site. the trip can be approv by his deputy. personal assistant or superior manager.
After all approvals are complet. the business trip data is transferr to Aeroclub via the service API. Information about employees is transferr as part of the integration with 1C ZUP. The container contains identification data: person (xml_ID). business trip and service provid by Aeroclub.
On the Aeroclub side. the user logs in to the Personal how do i buy on whatsapp? Account. where tickets. vouchers. hotels. etc. are purchas
Business trip processing business process diagram
For top management. the scheme looks a little different and immiately begins with the purchase of tickets in the Aeroclub Personal Account.
Process templates also depend on where the employee is traveling from and to – from the company’s central office to the project or from the project to the central office.
The relevant department. the Coordination and Transfer Department. monitors compliance with travel policy. If purchases do not comply with the policy rules. a process for changing the business trip is launch. For example. they may offer to change the dates if cheaper tickets can be purchas during this period.
Making changes to a business trip
Changes may be requir not only when the coordination department has notic excessively luxurious accommodation or flight conditions. but also in the event of other reasons relat to work issues: it is necessary to stay late or leave early. include another object in the route. illness of an employee. family circumstances. force majeure. etc.
For this purpose. two scenarios were envisag:
- Changing travel dates on the B24 side;
- Change of dates on the Aeroclub side.
The first process is launch manually: by clicking a button on an element. the employee gets to a form where a certain set of fields is available for iting. After changing the dates. the corresponding BP is launch. Depending on the conditions. there may be/are no approvals. rejections. etc. As a result of the business process. new data is sent to the Aeroclub. and in 1C:ZUP – a task to change the order.
In the second case. the user independently changes something in the Aeroclub. and then a specially creat agent picks up this data and almost always the process goes without approval.
You can make changes as many times as you like. but up to a certain status.
Peculiarities of the business travel process and integrations
During the development of the business process. we encounter a number of difficulties and limitations.
- There are several stages of approval that correlate with the roles of the approvers. who are at different levels of the hierarchy. For example. approval must be obtain not only from the immiate supervisor. but also from:
- the curator of the project where the employee is going;
- project manager (changes places with the curator if the employee is not from the central office);
- administrative director (if traveling abroad);
- functional director (if an employee. for example. from the transport mechanization department. moves between projects)
- The CEO or his asistant (in some cases).
- The approval procure and route is bas on the organizational structure. You ne to go through the entire chain and find all these managers in it depending on the position and place of work of the person being sent on a business trip. But the peculiarity is that the structure has 1000+ departments and more than 5 thousand people of administrative and management personnel alone.
On the one hand. the task is made easier by the lack of ne to drag all employees from 1C:ZUP to B24. On the other hand. a driver or a welder do not work in CRM. but they have to move between projects and therefore ne to arrange business trips. For this purpose. the business process provides for the participation of a responsible person who can arrange a trip on behalf of the person being sent on a business trip.