Marne Martin
At times, even alongside growth and change - or CrowdStrike outages - our industry and companies reach an inflection point that drives changes in strategy, product and operational processes. You see this with the embrace of new types of AI and machine learning to make information gathering, productivity and learning faster. Innovation can come from even more angles to increase customer delight, resiliency, and technology adoption that make expense management a business enabler in AP automation and payments across travel and other types of spend. At Emburse, we are driven by the ambition and domain expertise to go beyond buzzwords in the market to continue delivering the innovation and end-to-end digitalization that makes our world better. Our “why” is to drive increased traveler satisfaction, compliance, and cost savings for customers.
Great businesses and leaders can "see around the corner" to spot inflection points in their business before they happen or as they are happening. These inflection points bring competitive shakeups, but also additional growth opportunities. Today, Emburse is at that inflection point, and I’m thrilled to share more with you as we go on this journey to bring even more innovation to life.
The first and most exciting part of this is unveiling our vision for a new era of corporate travel and expense management. If you visit us at the GBTA Convention in Atlanta, you’ll see that we’re now firmly embracing the entire business travel ecosystem.
Eliminating the status quo
We believe that the status quo in corporate travel and expense management has gone on far too long. This is especially true for mid-size and large organizations that have been severely limited in their choice of integrated T&E solutions. This has led to organizations either having to choose a slower-moving legacy vendor that has stymied innovation and delivers a poor user experience, or go with best-of-breed solutions for different areas of the T&E experience.
We’re certainly proud of our heritage as a leader in expense management and business travel, but we’ve also heard from our customers that they want the same level of service, user experience and - most importantly - innovation throughout the integrated T&E process as business travel is a source of both great benefit as well as cost. We also see more and more demand around the broader distributed spend with remote employees, payments needs, and flexibility matched with appropriate controls. All this is what allows our customers to know that they’re getting the most value from their travel program, controlling costs and delighting their travelers - and will continue to do so for years to come.
Watch the video here.
Our vision
Through years of industry-leading innovation and some smart strategic acquisitions, we’ve already delivered an unparalleled experience for business travelers, and we’re always hungry for new ways to innovate.
Modern business travelers expect a seamless, intelligent, automated, and mobile-centric experience at every stage of their journey. This starts with a pre-approved virtual card which covers the whole trip and ensures all spend is within budget and policy - or greater integration to a traditional corporate card. When a trip is booked, data automatically syncs with the expense solution, as well as the individual’s travel companion app. If a hotel room or airline ticket drops in price, it’s automatically rebooked, and the new cost is reflected in the expenses. During the trip, all purchases can be paid for using a virtual card, which also syncs with the expense system. All of this means that when a traveler gets back home, they can just relax with their family and not have to worry about endless hours working on expenses. This is the highly automated, intelligent and fully integrated vision that we’re striving to achieve to delight every stakeholder in this process.
Announcing Emburse Book
A journey starts with a need, intent and approvals. We’re proud to unveil our upcoming travel booking solution, Emburse Book. Emburse Book will provide travelers with a high quality, user-friendly solution for booking flights, hotels and ground transportation. It will integrate directly with the Emburse Chrome River expense management solution, as well as the world’s first fully customizable corporate travel management app, Emburse Go. It also will benefit from assuring the best price post booking with Emburse Reshop.
Companies that choose to mandate pre-approvals for employee travel can also make it simple for finance and department leaders to easily issue virtual cards for bookings and on-trip expenses, knowing that all plans are within policy to not only create a more seamless and automated process, but also give organizations even greater ability to control spend and increase visibility and also providing them with a greater opportunity to maximize rebates.
Watch the video here.
Once travel plans are made through Emburse Book, complete itineraries and reservation data will automatically appear in their expense report and Emburse Go app. Should a lower price become available for either a flight or a hotel room, the traveler will automatically receive a notification that it has been rebooked, and revised itinerary information will flow directly into the traveler’s Emburse Chrome River Expense and Emburse Go.
Taking the hassle out of expenses
We’re also announcing a major step forward in the way that travelers use our expense management solutions. Emburse Chrome River Expense is already a product that leading companies all over the world and multinationals use to make their businesses better and stronger. We were already leaders, and will be automating the expense process even further than today. Think expense management, reimagined, that travelers who use virtual, pre-approved, Emburse Cards during trips for meals and other expenses along their journey will automatically know that all expenses are within policy, taking the guesswork out of expenses. After snapping a photo of their receipt, Emburse Chrome River Expense will automatically match it with a card transaction, ready to submit. And because it’s guaranteed to be in policy - approval is automated.
Emburse is also making expense management smarter by filling in the gaps where travelers may have missed an opportunity for reimbursement. If a traveler takes a flight but doesn’t include a rideshare, or mileage for getting to the airport, they’ll be prompted to check for and submit a missing expense.
A single, unified brand
You’ll also see that as part of this new vision, we’re changing some of the names of our solutions. This enables our customers to more easily identify and choose the solutions that work for their organization, as well as providing a more consistent brand experience.
As you will likely know, TRIPBAM joined the Emburse family almost exactly 12 months ago, and already hundreds of Emburse customers are driving down the cost of travel through its solutions. As of today, TRIPBAM is being fully integrated into Emburse. The award-winning TRIPBAM Reshop is now Emburse Reshop, TRIPBAM Contract Audit has become part of Emburse Audit, and TRIPBAM Hotel/Air Intelligence is now Emburse Benchmark. If you are paying too much for your travel and not using Tripbam, now Emburse Reshop, the time to change that is now.
This renaming also highlights the continued integration of TRIPBAM’s solutions into the Emburse product ecosystem, which gives our customers even greater cost savings opportunities.
The Future… Emburse Travel 2.0
While I’m incredibly proud to unveil our short- and medium-term plans, what we have coming down the pipeline in the months to come is even more exciting, and could lead to a seismic shift in the way that organizations book, manage and expense their travel. What we’re internally calling Emburse Travel 2.0 (we can’t give the game away so need to be a bit cryptic with the name at the moment!) is currently in development, and will be a radical new solution that will give our customers unprecedented levels of control in their T&E program, while providing business travelers increased choice and flexibility.
If you’re at GBTA this week, I’d love to chat with you at booth #4241 about the future of T&E as we see it. I’m very excited to outline this new direction, and I hope that our customers and partners will share this level of enthusiasm. Great times are ahead for Emburse - I hope you’ll come along for the journey.