The foundation of successful travel programme management has always been some form of policy. Better compliance to the travel policy can mitigate risk and also deliver a significant return on investment.

More mature travel programmes are moving away from traditional sourcing and are creating strategies towards cost avoidance. The challenge for all organisations is to be able to capture and validate the savings that better compliance can offer.

Business processes, workflow, communication, reporting and the utilisation of technologies all form part of a successful compliance strategy.

Knowing exactly what is being spent is essential in order to capture complete data and gauge the full impact of compliance to the travel policy. If only a percentage of spend is captured via your agency tools and processes, your visibility is limited, as is your capacity to analyse, identify gaps and have an impact on compliance.

Non-compliance can result in the loss of future discounts, especially in relation to airline programmes. Consistent monitoring is essential to stay on top of a corporate programme and ensure you can maintain future leverage. A key influence on compliance within travel management programmes is pre-trip approvals.

For years companies have seen solid results from mandating compliance. But the world is changing and so are travellers. It’s about controlling spend, but not necessarily the people doing the spending.