Employees still want to work from home as the pandemic comes to an end. Here's what this means for travel and expense management.

• The era of remote work and hybrid offices arrived in 2020 and is here to stay.
• In response, finance teams must adapt their expense-management processes.
• Innovative spend-management technology is the solution to overcoming seismic changes across the business landscape.

The pandemic has transformed homes into offices and forced fundamental changes on many business processes – especially when it comes to spend management.

As companies adjusted to a newly remote workforce over the past year, many questions arose, such as: How can finance teams better manage their company's expenses? How can they get better visibility into spending in real time? How can employees efficiently make purchases from anywhere?

Most importantly, which fintech tools can help make this all happen? After all, it's those tools – as part of an end-to-end spend-management platform – that give finance teams an advantage in quickly and effectively responding to changes.

Remote work, of course, has been a huge change, and it seems destined to become permanent: In a Global Workplace Analytics survey of more than 2,800 office workers, 76% of respondents said they wanted to continue working from home post-pandemic. The movement has triggered a structural shift in how companies will want to approach strategies around payments and expense management.

To keep pace, finance leaders must take action. Implementing the right tools can help them control and monitor travel and expense (T&E) costs, change and communicate policies, and adapt to whatever changes lie ahead. Here are some tips.

Create transparency in policy

While employees need to familiarize themselves with standard T&E guidelines (for hotels, airfare, car rentals, etc.), they also need to know how policies apply to expenses beyond travel.

These policies are more important than ever, since the shift to remote work has created a raft of new expense types, like faster internet services, at-home office equipment, and even food delivery. Employees must know which – and how much – of these expenses meet the criteria for approval and reimbursement.

But 2020's fast-changing expense landscape caught some companies by surprise. Business Travel News reported a year-over-year increase in spend violations of about 207%, which it attributed in part to first-time corporate spenders and their confusion with limits and policies.

When the rules aren't clear, managers and finance teams have to enforce policies after the fact – an inefficient process that causes frustration for everyone involved. Creating and communicating these policies – especially as they evolve – will help finance teams adhere to budgets, reduce headaches, and cut the time needed to review expenditures.

Set parameters around spot purchasing

An estimated 40% of a company's direct-spend activity comes from spot purchasing, according to Basware. These purchases (made "on the spot") could include everything from software subscriptions to gifts for clients.

It's a complicated category; different employees could require very different items, and the need to buy each asset could crop up suddenly. Employees want the flexibility to act without lengthy approvals, while finance teams want seamless processes that let them control the spend.

The key to both is automation with smart tools. TripActions Liquid™, for example, removes the pain of traditional spot purchasing and allows remote admins to create parameters that automate approval processes on one central dashboard. Admins have control over pre-approved budgets, expiration dates, renewal frequencies for subscriptions, and more. This solution allows employees to make fast purchase decisions while remaining in line with T&E policies.

Enable preset policy controls to reduce fraud

Having preset policy controls in place is also crucial for helping finance teams reduce fraud. Expense reimbursements account for 19% of total fraud in the US and Canada, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Often, fraud occurs because employees aren't aware of the policy or don't have the time to look it up.

But using technology to set parameters empowers employees to do business on behalf of the company within set boundaries. And tighter controls help minimize fraudulent activity and out-of-policy transactions, which results in a better bottom line.

Adopt tools that provide visibility in real time

The power of a fully integrated travel and spend-management platform like TripActions provides finance teams with the ability to capture rich data across the entire payment cycle. On-demand insights provide an accurate view of company expenditures across multiple categories, from vendor negotiations to exception reporting and forecasting.

Having real-time visibility into this data allows companies to act, adapt, and adjust with every transaction, in order to make intelligent business decisions wherever their employees might be. It's part of a powerful platform that will give companies a substantial advantage as the business world continues to evolve.

See how TripActions Liquid can transform your spend-management program today.

This post was created by Insider Studios with TripActions.