Channel Mentor IT Solutions: Anchoring Hassle-free Travel
K.U. Girish Rao, MD An Information Technology and Services firm from the outset, Channel Mentor IT Solutions has made long strides in automation of business processes. It assists its customers in identifying opportunities for redefining their processes and leveraging their deep expertise in them. The company brings advanced automation solutions to make the processes faster, more efficient, and audi table. Its portfolio of products is focused on corporate travel management, customer management, and channel management. Recently, the firm has set its foot on managing education institutions to leverage its expertise to provide a smart and efficient automation product.
An often overlooked aspect about an organization’s treasury department is its unplanned and profligate expenditures with respect to travel. While pay roll and product development retain the bulk of the disbursement, companies usually don’t put enough emphasis on managing their travel expenses. The travel expenses lie hidden amid the miscellaneous tasks such as managing travelling employee, approver, cash desk, travel desk, travel manager, finance and accounts, and ERP. As these pile up, it spikes up the operational costs dedicated to travel. Channel Mentor offers an appropriate solution for this issue rescuing clients who fall prey to over sight or plain ignorance.
TravelGrid is a dedicated solution offered by Channel Mentor that works in simple terms as a travel guide. It takes control of the process from the word ‘go’ with the presence of checkpoints at every major step. The striking feature of the solution remains its hassle free and paper freeness. The companies who suffer from surfeit of budget on corporate travel specifically rerouting of tickets, buying bulk tickets, ticket cancellations is taken care of by a smooth over ride with TravelGrid.
A glistening example showcasing Channel Mentor’s prowess is the impact it had on a large software company. The blue-chip firm in question is a multi-location global corporation with almost 15 offices spread across the world. The company is engaged in providing software as a service and BPO operations, for its overseas clientele.
With over 20,000 employees in its operations, nearly 25 percent of the employees need to indulge in business travel for various work related activities which costs the company INR 350 million.The process that resulted in such heavy expenditure involved manual intervention at every check point like handling of agency bills, travel policy compliance, processing of visa requests. This manual handling of car hire and agency bills led to numerous disputes adding to the cost to the company. Additionally, the software firm had no process in place to monitor last-minute cancellations while the traveler’s preferences and special instructions had to be relayed personally. Post the implementation of TravelGrid, the solution not only addressed the issues faced by the software firm, it also provided them with useful additional features. The benefits included automatic booking of flight, car, visa, and accommodation, insurance, etc. Further, the solution allowed for eleventh hour modification of flight plans and more importantly a detailed history of booking and cancellation was available online for print, helping in expense settlement. The firm was offered with a centralized action plan that could track and trace repeat offenders of cancellations and helped in holding them accountable. On the whole, the firm’s efficiency improved dramatically as all the stakeholders spent 30-80 percent less time on the travel process.
Channel Mentor has managed many such projects in the past where it has helped businesses achieve improved efficiency. In the coming years, Channel Mentor aims to be ranked among the Top 5 software companies in the world and ‘ensure TravelGrid is a highly reliable, cost saving, time saving and process based tool’. It further plans to repay the faith laid on them by delivering robust and reliable processes, development methodology, tools, training, customer interfaces, product implementation management and project management.
With over 20,000 employees in its operations, nearly 25 percent of the employees need to indulge in business travel for various work related activities which costs the company INR 350 million.The process that resulted in such heavy expenditure involved manual intervention at every check point like handling of agency bills, travel policy compliance, processing of visa requests. This manual handling of car hire and agency bills led to numerous disputes adding to the cost to the company. Additionally, the software firm had no process in place to monitor last-minute cancellations while the traveler’s preferences and special instructions had to be relayed personally. Post the implementation of TravelGrid, the solution not only addressed the issues faced by the software firm, it also provided them with useful additional features. The benefits included automatic booking of flight, car, visa, and accommodation, insurance, etc. Further, the solution allowed for eleventh hour modification of flight plans and more importantly a detailed history of booking and cancellation was available online for print, helping in expense settlement. The firm was offered with a centralized action plan that could track and trace repeat offenders of cancellations and helped in holding them accountable. On the whole, the firm’s efficiency improved dramatically as all the stakeholders spent 30-80 percent less time on the travel process.
The company brings advanced automation solutions to make the processes faster, more efficient, and auditable.
Channel Mentor has managed many such projects in the past where it has helped businesses achieve improved efficiency. In the coming years, Channel Mentor aims to be ranked among the Top 5 software companies in the world and ‘ensure TravelGrid is a highly reliable, cost saving, time saving and process based tool’. It further plans to repay the faith laid on them by delivering robust and reliable processes, development methodology, tools, training, customer interfaces, product implementation management and project management.
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