TravelGrid:

Travel is often the third most important cost element after material and payroll. Companies engage significant manpower and manhours for processing business related travel and its accounting.It is easy to overlook this aspect since the associated costs remain buried under distributed heads ranging from the travelling employee, approver, cash desk, travel desk,travel manager, finance and accounts, ERP. Taken together,this can create considerable overhead burden on the company's operational costs. Also overlooked is the rework cost associated with corporate travel as travellers cancel journey, modify sectors, reroute tickets, buy bulk tickets under schemes and then try to accomodate all this in their accounting process.

Every large company have procedures for handling business related travel. There are control mechanisms in terms of forms to be filled in and approvals to be obtained. There are interfaces to external agencies like Travel Agents. Then there are accounting procedures that must reflect the trip expenses to appropriate accounting structure. All these activities add up to a lot of manhours for every trip made by an employee. It also means delays and wasted hours for follow ups. Besides, trip cancellation or trip modification further adds to the manhours lost in terms of rework. Add to this the cost of integrating accounts of multiple location into the company’s accounts. There are also a mix of centralized and decentralized operations. For example, each location would have location travel desk working in a decentralized manner. However their accounting transactions are consolidated travel agency-wise centrally. All these and more make Travel management a complex process that need a solution that can hide the comlexicity behind a façade of simple interactions for every user.

Channel Mentor's TravelGrid solution has made all such procedures and controls completely hassle free and paperfree.From the point a new indent for Travel is made in an on-line form, the system moves the indent through approvers in a smooth workflow. Mails are triggered at each point to appropriate roles. The expense report is populated in the background with ticket costs making the on-line expense report a breeze.

The TravelGrid system completely automates the following aspects for both domestic and overseas travel:

Travel Indents Approval of trip and tour advance Ticket bookings by Travel Desk (Air,Rail,Road) Invoice creation by Travel desk Approval of Invoices and payment control for tickets purchased Payment of travel advance to user's bank account Creation of Travel Expense Report Approval of Travel Expense Report by Approver Verification of travel vouchers Settlement of TE Accounting of expenses in ERP system and Generation of Management reports for monitoring and control

The system is Browser based and requires no client software. Entire accounting (Updation of ledgers etc) are posted by the web application into ERP through IDOC. Also user data is automatically replicated from ERP system for perfect synchronization.

The system smoothly handles the processes associated with cancellation of trip, Refund of advance, Cancellation of travel sectors, Modification of trip indent with new sectors etc. The system automatically handles the accounting procedures in the background.

In effect, TravelGrid not only enhances the user satisfaction manyfold but also pays back in very short period by

• Reducing wasted manhours in processing business travel related documents
• Removing the need for separate account handling for business travel
• Minimizing errors and rework substantially
• Enhancing the speed of approvals with automated workflow
• Greatly improved user satisfaction and comfort

• Visa request processing
• Travel insurance request processing
• Car booking request processing
• Accomodation booking request processing
• Guest House Inventory management and online booking
• Employee's online self booking tool