Smart spend, smarter decisions: CFO playbook for transforming travel & expense

Corporate travel is back. As global business activity surges post-pandemic, Deloitte’s 2024 Global Travel and Expense Report reveals a 14-15% year-on-year growth in corporate travel expenditure. Yet, for CFOs, this resurgence is a double-edged sword. While revived travel signals economic confidence, it also resurrects an age-old operational headache: managing the labyrinth of employee expenses, compliance risks, and inefficiencies that drain resources and obscure financial visibility.

At the recent CFO100 Conference in Mumbai, an industry expert, Sudheendra Bharadwaj, Senior Solutions Consultant, SAP Concur, dissected the playbook for transforming Travel & Expense (T&E) from a cost centre into a strategic compass.

The burden of the bottom line
Travel and expense management has long been relegated to the back office—a tedious, reactive process plagued by manual data entry, policy breaches, and delayed reimbursements. Over half of companies report issues with fraudulent or non-compliant expense claims, while employees grumble about archaic systems that demand hours of form-filling. One survey found 60% of finance leaders now prioritise automation to curb these pains, alongside demands for mobile-first tools to streamline reporting. The stakes are high: unchecked T&E spend can account for up to 10% of a company’s operational budget, yet many finance teams still lack real-time insights into where, how, or why funds are being deployed.

From compliance to competitive edge
The evolution of T&E systems tells a story of gradual, if uneven, progress. Early solutions digitised paper trails but remained siloed from broader financial ecosystems. Today, the rise of AI and predictive analytics is transforming expense management from a cost-control exercise into a strategic lever. Modern platforms now automate up to 70% of administrative tasks, using optical character recognition (OCR) to instantly parse receipts and machine learning to flag anomalies—from duplicate claims to incorrect currency conversions. Mobile apps allow employees to book travel, log expenses, and receive policy nudges in real time, slashing submission times by 40% and reducing errors.

For CFOs, the prize lies in the data. Integrated systems offer granular visibility into spending patterns, revealing which departments overspend, which suppliers inflate costs, or which travel policies clash with employee needs. One multinational found that revising its hotel booking rules—after analytics showed frequent policy overrides—cut costs by 12% without denting staff satisfaction. Real-time budget tracking, meanwhile, allows managers to approve or redirect funds before trips begin, aligning spending with strategic priorities.

The AI frontier
The next leap forward is predictive. AI-driven tools now forecast travel costs, optimise booking choices, and even pre-empt compliance breaches by cross-referencing historical data with live market rates. Chat-based assistants can orchestrate entire trips—flights, hotels, approvals—via natural language commands, while integrated APIs sync data across ERPs, HR systems, and tax platforms. Such innovations aren’t just about efficiency; they reshape employee experience. Firms using AI-augmented systems report 54% faster travel bookings and higher satisfaction as staff reclaim time once lost to bureaucracy.

A new strategic playbook
For finance leaders, the message is clear: T&E is no longer a back-office function but a lens into organisational health. Companies that treat it as a strategic priority report staggering returns—up to 630% over three years, per industry analyses—by marrying cost control with agility. As global expansion accelerates, scalable systems ensure new offices inherit pre-tuned policies, while real-time data aids scenario planning for volatile markets.

The challenge lies in implementation. Success demands more than digitising old processes; it requires reimagining T&E as a driver of culture and insight. CFOs must champion tools that balance control with empowerment, using data not just to audit, but to advise. In an era where every dollar and every minute counts, the travel budget is no longer a ledger to manage—it’s a compass to guide.