News Releases
Travel Managers Can Gain Deeper Insight Into Travel Spending by:
- Mandating employee use of corporate cards with a widely accepted provider
- Implementing a travel dashboard to manage data from multiple sources
- Using insight distilled from a dashboard to effectively manage travel programs
DENVER, COLORADO--(Marketwire - Aug. 23, 2011) - GBTA ANNUAL CONVENTION - The pace of business travel is expected to continue its steady increase with the amount of data overwhelming travel managers. BMO Spend & Payment Solutions, a division of BMO Financial Group (NYSE:BMO)(TSX:BMO), offers corporate travel managers three best practices for getting the most out of data on travel spend, to help more effectively manage travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses:
| 1) | Mandate corporate card usage for all employees. When the flow of travel spend data is robust and consistent, it becomes more meaningful and easier to track. Requiring all employees to use a corporate card for travel expenses instantly makes spend more transparent. Additionally, corporate cards are often triggers for vendors to provide richer data than usual on an expense, providing even more insight. Select a provider whose cards offer superior acceptance, making it easier for your employees to put more travel purchases on their corporate cards. | |
| 2) | Manage information overload with a travel dashboard. While the lack of detailed data on airline, hotel and other costs can make it incredibly challenging to make informed decisions about expenses, the opposite is often also true. An overwhelming amount of data from multiple sources,-- including travel management companies, online booking tools and vendors,-- can inundate travel managers. The new challenge becomes effectively consolidating and filtering this vast amount of data, then turning it into actionable intelligence. Taking advantage of a travel dashboard tool that correlates the wealth of information available gives travel managers complete visibility into spend. | |
| 3) | Leverage data insight to shape your program. Data alone does not provide the intelligence travel managers need. In-depth spend analysis and reporting tools, available through travel dashboards, enable companies to consolidate huge amounts of data from many sources and generate intelligence from that data. That information can help: | |
| • | pinpoint potential areas for cost savings | |
| • | provide leverage to effectively negotiate with vendors | |
| • | monitor out-of-compliance expenses | |
Terry Wellesley, Executive Managing Director, BMO Spend & Payment Solutions, commented, "You can only control expenses you can see. To gain better spend visibility, a comprehensive approach to looking at travel expenses is needed. By combining a widely accepted corporate card with a powerful travel dashboard, valuable insight that benefits the bottom line can be available instantly."
About BMO Spend & Payment Solutions
A division of BMO Financial Group, BMO Spend & Payment Solutions is a leading commercial card and payment solutions provider in North America. BMO Spend & Payment Solutions' products are widely used by corporations, non-profit and government-sector organizations to manage, control and gain better visibility into their commercial spending and payments. For more information, visit http://www.bmospendandpayment.com.
About BMO Financial Group
Established in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, BMO Financial Group is a highly-diversified North American financial services organization. With total assets of $413 billion as of April 30, 2011, and more than 45,000 employees as of July 6, 2011, BMO Financial Group provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and solutions.
BMO Financial Group:
Ralph Marranca
(416) 867-3996
Ralph.Marranca@bmo.com
http://www.bmospendandpayment.com/index.html
Corporate Ink:
Dan Carlson
(617) 969-9192
dcarlson@corporateink.com