Business Travel Tools
Jetting off in the name of business travel can be fun and exhilarating. Taking your place on the plane next to someone who paid for their ticket with their own money has a certain feeling of privilege attached to it. You’re important. You’re here because your skills are needed. You’re here because your career is going well.
As good as all that feels, you soon have to get to work. The hotel WiFi isn’t going to know what’s hit it! Joking aside, working from a foreign location brings its challenges. Today, we’re going to look at some essential travel business tools you need to make the dream work.
Cloud-based Style Guide
Whether you’re preparing work for online publication or using your trip to collect media (e.g., video, photos, etc.), you need access to a cloud-based style guide – see brand identity guidelines for ideas.
Where you and your colleagues have instant access to shared media, your creative process will benefit. With a centralized multimedia style guide (also known as brand identity guidelines) forming the backbone of your online creative efforts, you can collaborate on creating or repurposing media in real-time, meaning less of your business trip is wasted with email replies that say something like, “Thanks for your message, I’ll get that work over to you when I’m back in the office next week”.
Invest in an online store of multimedia brand identity guidelines and be ready to tackle any multimedia project from home or abroad.
Expenses Software
Your business trip shouldn’t cost you a thing. Sort of. What we mean is that any necessary expenses such as taxi fares, tickets to work-related events, and meals, shouldn’t result in you being out of pocket. What you need is expenses software.
Expenses software is an essential business travel tool because you will run into costs without realizing it. You can either pay for your expenses yourself or claim the money back. All it takes is the presence of mind to pull out your camera phone and take pictures of receipts using the expenses app. Simple, really. Many market-leading apps also offer integration features that allow you to connect your expenses report directly to other booking apps, meaning your data is centralized and ready for handover at any time.
Itinerary Software
If you’ve never experienced professional itinerary software, you will be astonished at the level of in-depth attention to detail that can be achieved.
Once you sign up and agree to allow the software access to your apps, a scan will be completed that looks for bookings, times, and dates. From your email to any other apps to which you wish to assign permission, the software will make a list of everything you’ve got coming up. It’s sort of like having a personal assistant whispering in your ear not to forget the call with your manager at the end of the day next Tuesday.
Flights, accommodation, car rentals, and more. Itinerary software will gather and plan it all out for you, leaving you time to get on with sampling the hotel buffet.
Read more: Things you need to know about sending invoices
