India Business Travelers Gain New T&E Management App

IT servicer Wipro inked partnerships with 20 fulfillment firms to launch its new travel and expense management app that creates an entirely paperless corporate travel experience.

According to reports, the firm launched its new mobile application that takes care of everything from booking taxis and flights to expense report submission features, an all-in-one service that Wipro said aims to offer e-commerce experiences to business T&E management.

The company has also partnered with ride-sharing firm Uber, integrating its service into the Wipro app.

“Travel management as a service is one aspect of saying how a back office process has to become digital,” said Wipro Senior Vice President and Head of Business Outcome Services Anurag Srivastava. “It’s not about the app alone. You’re looking at a shift in the back office process model. If Uber can be used by you shouldn’t the enterprise be thinking about using it?”

The service, Wipro said, stems from its own high-volume corporate travels. Reports say Wipro employees take 250,000 trips a year, each involving up to 30 bills to be submitted and invoiced. The firm noted that it currently has a team of 700 employees to process these receipts, but with the new app, that unit could be scaled down to just 20 people.

Altogether, the solution reduces corporate costs by 40 percent, according to Srivastava.

The app is in beta within the corporation and also has some trial customers, reports say. The company did not note when or if it plans to roll out the service nationally.

Going paperless and digital in T&E management could save companies billions of dollars, according to recent research. According to a study by PayStream Advisors, the world’s companies still depend on paper-based T&E management systems, and 80 percent of A/P teams are unaware of how much this is costing them. The research found that the average cost to process a single, paper-based expense report is $26.63, a figure that decreases to $6.85 when companies migrate to automated systems.