When it comes to business travel, saving time and money is a top priority for many assistants. Melissa Hirst, marketing and PR manager at CT Business Travel, shares just how easy it can be to arrange business travel effectively
The life of a PA is, to say the least, varied. From providing administrative support to arranging meetings, events and travel, all the while managing demanding diaries and handling correspondence of all types, a good PA wears many hats. Because there is so much to do in a day, time is precious to any PA and so anyone in this role must have excellent time management skills. In some cases, though, the ability to prioritise your workload and manage your time will unfortunately, only get you so far.
One duty that often falls to PAs, and can be extremely difficult to effectively control, is business travel. There are many factors that can affect the arranging of a business trip, sometimes sending a PA back to square one. Depending on the organisation, PAs are often responsible for arranging the travel and accommodation of one or several directors, or in some cases the entire company.
“The first step towards streamlining business travel, including the time spent arranging it, is to speak to your superiors about introducing a policy to make sure that the process is properly managed.”
Managing and arranging business travel requires excellent organisational skills, if left unmanaged, it can be a real drain on your time. CT Business Travel, a corporate travel specialist, recently published a white paper that identifies just how much time businesses (and PAs) can spend when arranging travel, and it’s usually several hours on a single trip.
There’s a lot to be done before a trip can be finalised and an itinerary can be handed over to the travelling employee or director. First, you’ll need to research any potential travel risks or disruptions to make sure it’s safe for the employee to travel to the destination. Then you’ll need to make sure that proper approval has been obtained for the trip, as well as all necessary employee travel documents. Once you have everything you need, you’ll need to scout multiple websites for the best air or train fare, entering relevant dates and traveller information into each of those sites to reveal rates. Then the whole scouting process needs to be repeated to arrange for accommodation, any necessary transfers and travel insurance.
Included in CT Business Travel’s white paper, ‘The Hidden Costs of Unmanaged Business Travel’, is a case study which focuses on a client who was spending up to three hours booking a single business trip. That’s nearly half the day gone spent organising just one business trip. Just think of the other important tasks on your to-do list you could have checked off in all the time spent organising travel.
According to CT Business Travel, it’s not unusual for a business to be spending upwards of three hours arranging just one business trip. But not all hope is lost – it is possible to streamline the booking of business travel and make it less of a burden on your time. After the client in the case study was introduced to the appropriate processes and booking tool, their booking time was drastically reduced to an average of just ten minutes per trip.
The first step towards streamlining business travel, including the time spent arranging it, is to speak to your superiors about introducing a policy to make sure that the process is properly managed. A clear plan that outlines everything concerning business travel, ensuring everyone understands which booking avenues are approved and the appropriate methods for arranging travel, can go a long way in making the entire process a lot more manageable.
A travel policy should outline who is responsible for business travel. For example, depending on the structure of a business, a PA may not be the only person who could take responsibility for travel. Other organisations place the responsibility for arranging business travel on each employee, who must adhere to the policy when organising their own trips. The policy should also make it very clear what the travel budget is, who should approve all bookings before finalising, and outline the appropriate suppliers and booking methods.
This will all help to ensure that a business saves time and money when it comes to business travel, and more importantly, decreases the burden on PAs who are responsible for the process.
To download the full white paper from CT Business Travel and find out more about overcoming the hidden costs of unmanaged business travel, simply click here.
