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The question small to midsize businesses need to ask themselves is not how much a travel and expense management solution costs, but how much it saves. Because if you¡¯re not watching every dollar, euro, or yen when travelers hit the road, you may be losing money.

But maybe you have money to waste.

If not, because you¡¯re in business and you have to keep an eye on spend, you may want to consider what the IDC MarketScape mentions in a recent report: Moving from spreadsheets and manual expense reports to a new breed of ¡°born in the cloud¡± T&E management software vendors.

Let¡¯s take a look at what that move actually means.

Where are we going?

No matter where your business is headed or where employees are working, it¡¯s your responsibility to take care of your people. And after the abrupt disruption the world just went through and the recovery we¡¯re all going through, employee safety is absolutely paramount.

What does this have to do with seeing and saving what you¡¯re spending? Nothing¡­yet. But we¡¯ll get to that soon.

It does have a lot to do with T&E, because if you don¡¯t know where your travelers are, it¡¯s fairly difficult to protect them. If, on the other hand, you can instantly access their itineraries and track their credit card spend, you can find, reach, and if the situation warrants, retrieve them.

Doing your duty of care is difficult without this type of data, and your business isn¡¯t going to get very far without it.?

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Do we have money for this?

Again, it all comes down to seeing what you¡¯re spending, because you can¡¯t control what you can¡¯t see. But with the right tools ¨C and a real-time view into your travel and expense data ¨C you can actually control what¡¯s going out the door.

Visualize that for a second. Picture what it would be like to see spending by category, vendor, cost center, team, employee, and any number of other slices, and imagine what that would mean for your ability to cut costs, spot savings, shine a light on hidden spending, and add a little muscle to your negotiating arm when you¡¯re chatting with vendors.

And as long as we¡¯re stretching our imagination, let¡¯s think about automation and analytics. If bookings and charges are automatically captured and categorized, and dashboards help you manage everything from compliance and accruals to budgeting and forecasting, could you ease some of your worries about what¡¯s on your books, what¡¯s in the bank, and what¡¯s going out the door?

In the end, the real question is simple: How do you not have the money for this?

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Could we get more done?

Which would you rather do: Your job, or a bunch of paperwork that your job demands of you?

It¡¯s the same for your travelers. They¡¯ve just spent six days on the road, but before they can say hi to their kids, they need to account for the $8 latte they had at LaGuardia. And because they¡¯re frazzled, they accidentally enter $80, and now we¡¯re in trouble. They¡¯ll waste more time correcting this mistake, and you¡¯ll run the risk of spending more than you should. ?

This is not the work that propels your business to the head of the pack.

Give your employees a simple app that makes booking and managing business travel a lot more like leisure travel ¨C erasing paperwork, auto-filling expense reports, and the like ¨C and you¡¯ll give your people more time to do the work that matters. And again, with the right T&E solution in their hands, all of the data goes directly into your hands.

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So how do you get there?

Productivity, safety, cost control ¨C they¡¯re all tied together, and there¡¯s room in your budget for each of them; there has to be, or there may be little less room for success. But how do you make it happen?

IDC answers this and other important spending questions in the IDC MarketScape Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled SMB Travel and Expense Management Applications 2019 Vendor Assessment. You¡¯ll also see why they named SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ a leader. And you¡¯ll learn what to look for when considering a T&E management system (everything from integration and data security to automated workflows).

It¡¯s a fairly quick read, but one you cannot afford to miss.