The wealth of benefits offered by corporate cards
to both employees and employers has expanded
exponentially in recent years, because new
technology has facilitated tremendous progress
across multiple aspects of business travel.
From booking arrangements to expense reconciliation
and reporting, from travel insurance to communicating
with colleagues, the rise of wi-fi access and mobile
applications for booking, payment and connections has
revolutionised the corporate-card universe.
This has helped to boost the practice across Asia, with
banks in Singapore, for example, reporting double-digit
growth in take-up of commercial cards in the year to July
2014. According to one survey, sales volume on
commercial cards has doubled in the past four years, with
higher take-up and sales volume expected to continue
increasing into 2015.
For employers, this trend has increased the
user-friendliness of corporate cards, improving the
prospects to capitalise on corporate discounts through
volume purchases and frequent-flyer programmes, for
example, together with the benefits of increased visibility
of company spending: If you have more complete access
to the details of employee spending, you can judge more
accurately what is effective, and where economies can be
achieved.
New, more powerful IT tools can mine corporate card data
to analyse spending patterns and suggest new efficiency
measures, detect anomalies and identify savings. From an
employer’s accounting and audit point of view, this is a
quantum leap forward in user-friendliness and improved
oversight that has never been possible before.
Beyond the advantages offered to business travellers,
more employees are using their corporate cards to
simplify business-to-business transactions such as office
supply or IT equipment orders, or for routine payments
such as to courier companies.
Smartphone apps have been especially instrumental in
popularising this kind of card use, engaging users in
special offers and rewards. “It is a lot to do with
convenience,” says Chris Rogers, Singapore-based
director of market development at the Collinson Group
customer management consultancy. “Card companies
are thinking about more areas where their corporate cards
may be used in a business environment, such as flowers,
office equipment or IT supplies. They have begun to do
deals with companies like Microsoft, for example.”
Beyond smartphone apps, card companies are moving
into the digital age in other ways as well. The growing
popularity of cashback sites like SpendandCollect.Asia
has attracted corporate card providers, as they try to
capture online spend. Some have partnerships with
online providers of everything from flights to taxi
bookings, helping to make business travel as seamless
and stress-free as possible, while routing the majority of
spend through the corporate plastic.
Many executives who have cars waiting for them at their
destinations find they never have a need for cash. They
simply put all their spending through their corporate card
and enjoy the perks of card membership. Perks vary
between brands of cards, but could include flight
upgrades and/or a point-based reward menu that is
earned from total card spending. More and more, card
companies are also extending invitations to exclusive
events such as private gallery tours, restaurant openings
and access to high-end clubs. Through these perks the
card company is helping the cardholder become even
more successful, as they offer excellent networking
opportunities not available to the general public.
In fact, just as in the fashion and retailing industries, the
Internet’s ability to facilitate a customised consumer
experience is having a tremendous impact. For example,
Tony Goodwin, chief executive of global recruitment
agency Antal International, chooses airport lounge access
even when he is flying economy class, which he typically
does on short-haul flights. “This is an innovative benefit
which I’ve enjoyed,” he says.
He and his fellow executives like to take advantage of the
bonus schemes available to card members, such as air
miles and entertainment offers. “I think they work,” says
Mr. Goodwin.
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New online systems that enable a company to
reconcile expenses with payments from anywhere in
the world, in a simple and easily accessible format,
have reduced the stress of business travel for
millions of executives.
In Asia, this is more acute than elsewhere in some
respects, given the dramatic disparity in languages,
traditions, security regimes and technological development
between countries. Employing successful strategies to
reduce time spent waiting for transport, queuing to
exchange cash or reserving a good hotel or restaurant can
make the difference between a successful or
not-successful business trip in Asia.
“People are influenced by all the benefits corporate-card
companies offer, even if they don’t necessarily use them,”
says Richard Koch, head of the card payments policy unit
at U.K. Cards Association, an industry body. “They’re
competitive differentiators.”
And as the opportunities grow for retail and service
companies to create links with corporate-card
companies, the sophistication and imagination of offerings
is bound to increase and improve. Just as your computer
now seems to know what you’re interested in, with online
ads popping up for hotels in a place you’d like to visit,
corporate cards are likely to begin doing the same,
adapting specific offers to specific companies or even
individual users.
It’s a whole new world of corporate opportunity, opening
doors from Beijing to Borneo.
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