A Mobile Customer's Experience - Travel on the Go With SAP Travel OnDemand

[Former Member]

I am Corby Brendle – Practice Director at UST Global.  We are a proud client of SAP and happy to have implemented SAP’s Travel OnDemand solution integrated with GetThere. 

I am a heavy business traveler and this is my user experience with Travel OnDemand and GetThere.

Day 1:  Wednesday

Good News, I just got a call from a customer confirming the go-forward green light for a project I have been persuing.  I have to go to Chicago next week to meet the client team and have our kick-off.  I’m going to be using our new SAP Travel OnDemand system integrated with GetThere online booking for the first time.  I’m excited because our old system and the process was cumbersome, time consuming, and overall just painful.  I’ve heard great things about this new system and I’m excited to see if it is as good as I’ve heard.  Hummm..  Where to start?  I believe I just click here to get started. … 

I need to get this trip approved quickly.  I’m a pretty picky traveler and hate middle seats and I know this is a popular route. It looks like this SAP approval form is pretty simple to use.  Is this all I have to do? Just enter the trip destination, identify the project the trip is associated with, where I’m going, when, and plus the trip amount? 

That seems easy enough  --   I’ll submit and see what happens.

30 Minutes Later

Wow, I just got a trip approval email from SAP saying my manager has (already) approved it.  Now I can go book the trip.  I used to have to wait until our travel team sent me a few options and we would go back and forth until I hopefully ended up with the flights I had indicated on my initial trip request. 

I now see a new status in SAP Travel OnDemand “Book Trip” - I’ll click here. 

This is cool. 

I see in GetThere my trip location and dates are already there. It looks like other online travel sites I have used many times.   I can choose the flights that best fit my schedule and the hotel that the customer recommended.  It is nice to know have control of my travel. This is much easier, too. 

Thursday A.M.

After getting my morning coffee, I’m logged into our company network to do my morning email review.  I see that I have an email from Virtually There.
That was a feature we had with our old system that gave me a consolidated travel itinerary. I guess they were able to keep the features of our old system travelers liked.  Nice!!
I have an app that consolidates all of my travel plans into one site.  I just forward this to myemail like I have in the past. Cool!!! 

Monday A.M.

I’m at the airport and about to try to use this cool new SAP Travel OnDemand app to capture personal expenses I incur during this trip. This was such a painful process before.

.

I charged my taxi ride to the airport.  It looks like I can take a picture…

Okay, now hmm, expense type - taxi, the taxi amount, the date is already there and done.
Wow.  Then I simply attach it to my expense report. 

Awesome!! I don’t have to keep all those paper receipts and try to determine which one was for what later on.  I looked like a pack rat of little pieces of paper before.  I’m liking this. 

 

Wednesday A.M.

I have been taking a picture of each expense at each meal during this trip.  It has taken me no time at all to record them.  So far so good.  Seems too simple to be true.  Things are going great on my project kick off too.  I’m done a day early.  I get to go home a day early.  I believe I can make a change to my flight
through the system now.  Let’s try.  I see there is a 6:45 direct flight.  I’ll take that.   It really is easy. 

Wednesday 9:45 P.M.

I just got home.  Here is the final expense I need to add to finish my expense report - the return taxi.  Okay, it looks like all of my expenses are added.  Could it be this simple?  I think all I do is submit.

 

Okay here I go… I think I am done.  Oh, my wife is going to be so proud. I normally whine and make a big deal about what a pain it is to file my expense reports and she is always on me about getting reimbursed, so we can pay the credit card bill and not out of our own pocket. 

I’m not kidding, it used to take me at least 45 minutes to pull everything together and enter my expense reports. 

Here, I have an email already saying it has been submitted to Samantha for approval.  Cool. 

Thursday 10:15 A.M.

I just got an email from SAP saying that Samanatha approved my expense report. I guess she was able to see my receipts and details and approve my expense report without questions to me.  She usually has questions for me - she is very detailed. 

All in all I am delighted with this process. 

To take control of your travel - register here to attend the SAP Travel onDemand webcast and learn how to manage your travel and expenses.

SAP Travel onDemand: How UST Global runs SAP to manage travel expenses like never before

Date - Wednesday | October 31, 2012
Time - 10:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Duration - 60 minutes

Travel expenses are the second highest controllable expenses after payroll expenses. However, businesses like yours are able to take control of their business travel expenses, reduce travel expense management costs, increase travel policies, compliance, improve travel vendor discounts, maximize credit card remittance, discounts, and help get reimbursed faster for business travel with SAP Travel OnDemand.

Come hear Corby Brendle, Practice Director of UST Global, share why they chose SAP Travel OnDemand to help reduce corporate travel expenses by 11.6% of hard cost savings and run their business like never before. With the addition of the SAP integrated GetThere Online booking tool, they recognized an additional 15% savings in total travel cost without reducing actual travel.