Center Survey: OBT Use, Policy Awareness Low Among SMEs

Expense management provider Center found "a weakening grip on travel compliance" among small and midsized companies in its annual Expense Management Trends Survey, which tabulated responses from more than 200 finance and accounting professionals in the United States.

The survey results indicated low usage of corporate booking tools and awareness of travel policy among respondents. Respondents in the survey said only 18 percent of employees use only corporate tools to book and manage their travel, and among respondents that have implemented corporate booking tools, they said 61 percent of employees still book from off-platform consumer sites.

Just under 90 percent of respondents said they have a written travel policy, but about half of respondents identified lack of awareness of the policy as one of the biggest challenges for their expense program. More than 30 percent similarly said lack of compliance with expense policies was a top challenge.

At the same time, three-quarters of respondents said they have increased corporate card distribution, which Center said coupled with off-platform bookings could lead to "higher spend leakage and fragmented data collection."

Few respondents said they have plans to cut business travel spending in the next one to three years, with 97 percent saying their spending would stay the same or increase in that period. "Midmarket companies are planning to invest significantly in business travel next year, and the gap between corporate tool offerings and employee booking behavior highlights growing challenges in centralizing travel management," Center CEO Naveen Singh said in a statement.

Respondents in the survey trended largely toward the smaller end of the SME market, with 56 percent of respondents spending between $100,000 and $499,000 per year on business travel. A quarter of respondents spent at least $500,000 per year on business travel

 Center's 2024 Expense Management Trends Survey