The business travel landscape is definitely in a state of flux, continuing its metamorphosis at an unprecedented pace. Following on from Amex GBT and very recently Navan, it's TravelPerk's turn to contribute to this transformation. The travel platform is doing away with this very name by simply renaming itself Perk. "His name is Perk. Just Perk" mischievously sums up the platform's founder, Avi Meir. More than just a makeover, according to Perk's managers, who assure us: "This rebranding marks a major step in the company's transformation, with a broader mission: to eliminate shadow work, the invisible, time-consuming tasks that put the brakes on productivity, from booking travel to entering expense reports, coding invoices and managing internal approvals".
1700 billion dollars a year
Behind-the-scenes work: that's the target set by Perk for this "brand transition". The "invisible and time-consuming tasks" identified by the platform include, unsurprisingly, entering expense claims, coding invoices and managing internal approvals.
And to shed more light on this behind-the-scenes work that needs to be lightened, Perk commissioned a study from Forrester Consulting. The study quantifies this work in six markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and France. According to the authors of the report, this behind-the-scenes work costs some 1,700 billion dollars a year. For a single employee, these tasks account for 7 hours a week, and 11 minutes of concentration each time they try to get back to their real work. According to the same study, in the French market alone, the cost is 99.2 billion euros a year, and the workload 4 hours a week per employee.
So the course has been set. The question is how to lighten the load. To meet this challenge, Perk is launching a new platform that will integrate travel and expense management "into a single, seamless experience". And - of course - "natively optimised by AI". Perk promises to automate 67 % of the most frustrating non-essential tasks. Whether it's booking travel, entering expenses or managing supplier invoices. Visit MICE is also targeted, at least in part: the organisation of internal events is also included in the new platform's functionalities. According to Perk's management, "Unlike existing fragmented solutions, Perk offers a unified, global experience, where rules are defined once and then applied automatically across the enterprise".
"Perk changes the game
For CTO Robin Smith, " Perk is changing the game. By bringing travel and expenses together in one intelligent, AI-native platform, we're giving businesses the power to automate it all and give time back to their people. For me, this moment is about much more than technology. It's about continuing to build thoughtful, scalable and sustainable solutions, and doing so with the same brilliant, curious and human team that has been growing alongside me for over a decade ".
On the occasion of this small revolution, Perk's CEO and co-founder, Avi Meir, said: " Over ten years ago, we started by taking the friction out of business travel. We then realised that these frustrating little tasks were not limited to travel: they were everywhere. To really solve the problem, we first had to measure its scale, and the figures surprised even me. How can a company of 1,000 people afford to lose 7,000 hours a week to behind-the-scenes work? With Perk, we're giving companies back this lost time so that they can concentrate on what really matters. "Avi Meir promises.
Perk is looking to the future with a clear sense of ambition, having passed the $300 million mark in annualised revenue and opened two branches in Boston and London. And Perk's boss warned on Tuesday that he clearly had no intention of stopping there. " You may not believe me, but we've got some other BIG announcements coming up in a few days' time... "Avi Meir announced on social networks. To be continued...
