As vaccinations roll out across the globe, business travel will inevitably begin to return. It’s clear that it will take a different form than what we’ve all previously been used to, whether it relates to the overall employee experience or the value that organizations expect travel to deliver. With Zoom meetings now being the norm, employees will also need to make informed decisions on travel - whether to travel and, if it is necessary, how to travel.
One unintended benefit of the pandemic-induced travel shutdown is that it has given corporate teams the opportunity to do a complete reset of their approach. This doesn’t just mean reviewing vendor contracts to leverage the slowdown to negotiate a better deal or tweaking the expense policy. It means a wholesale, holistic overhaul of every aspect of business travel, to optimize value, be more sustainable, minimize wasteful spend, and give the safest, most comfortable experience to the travelers themselves. Having deep, accurate and timely insights into how, where, and when employees are booking travel as well as making in-trip purchases is critical to achieve any of these. And this is where Emburse enters the equation.
This is why I’m incredibly excited about two new acquisitions that we have announced this week - Roadmap and DVI. Roadmap has created an incredibly elegant mobile solution that enables organizations to curate all aspects of a corporate travel program into a single, fully-integrated and customizable experience. DVI has raised the bar on travel analytics, and empowers organizations to optimize their travel programs by unlocking the potential of their data. These two companies offer amazing solutions on their own, but combining them with Emburse’s expense solutions will give our customers an even more powerful, safe and user-friendly experience.
In Roadmap, we see a very exciting opportunity for organizations to provide a solution that makes it easier for users to do any travel-related activity or access any necessary data within a single app. This could be anything from booking an Uber to learning about a trip’s carbon footprint. Making it easier to book and expense all different aspects of a trip in a powerful, consumer-like app will help to minimize out-of-channel and out-of-policy spend. In addition, it will allow organizations to provide detailed, localized duty-of-care insight and messaging, which will be critical as international travel recommences.
With DVI, we will be able to provide powerful, travel-specific analysis capabilities to our Emburse Analytics solution. DVI’s unique differentiator is its ability to accurately tie together booking, card and expense data. In addition to core travel costs, such as flights, hotels, and car rentals, DVI enables organizations to see a complete picture of spend, including items such as meals, ride-sharing and incidentals. This data can also include location data. This will help department heads, corporate travel leaders and finance teams to get far more comprehensive accurate and granular data in real time. With this insight, organizations will be able to make smarter decisions about vendor negotiations and policy compliance. In addition, it will help teams create more informed and realistic expense policies, which in turn will increase traveler satisfaction and reduce the number of policy violations.
These two acquisitions will help Emburse customers to equip their teams with the tools needed to make the return to business travel smoother and more employee-friendly. But I see this as just the beginning of what we can achieve together. DVI and Roadmap both bring with them an excellent team of innovators, so I’m incredibly excited to see them grow the Emburse platform, providing even more benefits to existing customers and augmenting our existing solutions.
Humanizing work has been our philosophy from day one. We’re laser-focused on creating smart technology solutions that enable people to spend less time on tasks that take them away from things that really matter. As companies around the world reassess their travel programs, we’re working to keep delivering on our mission and supporting a new era of business travel. And to DVI and Roadmap team members, welcome. We’re delighted to have you here.