With corporate travel spending on the rise, travel-related technology getting smarter every day and millennials entering the workforce, the onus is on businesses to deliver sustainable value in T&E in 2019. Keeping this in mind, Happay conducted a benchmark study to determine where along the curve Indian companies stand till 2018 in terms of being ready to deliver this value.

1. How will T&E Expense Management
shape up in India in 2019:
Trends & Predictions
Findings from Happay’s CXO Benchmark Report 2018

2. SIX T&E TRENDS & PREDICTIONS : 2019
1. Great Employee Experience (EX) And
Greater Mobility In T&E
While businesses made considerable progress in terms of managing T&E
data in 2018, user experience, was to a large extent, neglected. Despite the
widespread penetration of mobile devices and desktops, merely 12 percent
and 27 percent of the companies reported that they permit employees to use
these devices for travel requests and expense claims.However, we expect this
to change in 2019. Mobility will be one of the most-desired capabilities of
expense management solutions. As BYOD and company-provided mobile
devices become increasingly common, employees will be able to submit
expense reports quickly in the same instant that they receive an invoice, and
track approvals via mobile apps. There will be greater reliance on the auto-
extraction capabilities of T&E apps – these will include OCR, import of data
directly from email inbox and SMEes, integrations with travel apps such as
Uber and Ola, and integrations with TMC solutions.
2. Death Of Partial Automation In T&E
21 percent CFOs from our Benchmark report cited that their biggest concern
with their current systems today was the manual nature of the claims
process (including data entry, submission of hard copies of receipts and
vouchers, and physical policy checks and reconciliation). The report also
found that 33 percent of the companies were still grappling with GST
compliance due to a lack of digital transformation of expense management,
particularly T&E. Complete and end-to-end automation of the T&E process
will not only address all these concerns but will also significantly reduce
unnecessary hassle for employees and finance teams – thus enhancing
end-user experience.

3. 3. Effective Regulation Of Expense Frauds
With AI And ML
One of the most serious and challenging issues that companies faced in
2018 is the misappropriation of funds. According to international studies,
one out of every five expense reports is fraudulent in nature.Surprisingly,
about 49 percent of CFOs interviewed in our benchmark study were
unaware of this – though the number is expected to reduce considerably
over the next year to just 33 percent. 2019 will demand greater monitoring
and regulation of expense management, making it as transparent as it
should be time and cost-effective.With AI-powered automated T&E solutions,
companies will be able to automatically monitor, track and approve
expenses, with compliance and discrepancy-related issues being
immediately flagged and weeded out. AI-powered and automated systems
will ensure transparent, error-free processing.Eliminating fraud is a
journey – with just the first step of automation, companies will soon be able
to effortlessly identify and track large numbers of claims and receipts,
ensuring corporate compliance, preventing duplication and saving millions
in lost revenue.
4. Real-Time Expense Management And Faster
Data Recovery
Audits are often very painful for many organizations. Besides the difficulty of
facilitating the task itself – right from recovering past data to getting hold of
accountable people – there’s the very real stress of waiting to find out
whether or not everything is in order.Many CFOs in the Happay study
revealed that their finance departments found it challenging to retrieve the
previous year’s expense data during audits. In fact, 55 percent of the CFOs
stated that recovery of past data was too time-consuming and people-
intensive.
SIX T&E TRENDS & PREDICTIONS: 2019

4. 5. Convergence Of Booking And T&E
Systems, And More Integrations
As user experience gains importance, streamlining different parts of the T&E
process onto one platform will also become important in 2019. With business
travel becoming increasingly common and frequent and many employees
booking tickets by themselves, there’s a significant opportunity to better
support it via integration of booking portals with related expense
management systems – such that employees are able to plan their trips,
book their tickets and report their expense claims from a single place. 2019
will also see more seamless integrations of T&E systems with Enterprise
softwares such as accounting, ERPs, HRMS, TMCs, etc.
6. Shift From In-House/On-Premise To Saas And
Cloud-Based Solutions
As the demand for more streamlined and centralised processes increases,
organisations will start switching to SaaS, cloud-enabled models that not
only automate, optimise and accelerate several functions but also ease the
burden on IT personnel. What’s more, these solutions can be deployed by
companies of all sizes, making it possible for nearly anyone to leverage their
extremely economical, customisable, scalable, accessible and agile benefits.
SIX T&E TRENDS & PREDICTIONS: 2019
On the other hand, 44 percent of CFOs with cloud-based systems/ custom
software, accounting packages and ERPs could retrieve historical data
within mere seconds. Thus, real-time expense management will not only
help control expenses but also ensure compliance and easier data
retrieval.