More insidious than the image of deserted airport terminals at the height of the health crisis, the picture of expense accounts in Covid times is no less striking, symptomatic of an exceptional context. To grasp the importance of the changes that have been underway for over a year, Jenji has therefore embarked on an unprecedented exercise for the start-up: the publication of a half-yearly index dedicated to the evolution of theExpense Management.
For this first edition, Jenji is focusing in particular on the business travelThese figures confirm the paralysis observed for many months. " COVID-19 has stopped all travel worldwide, including business travel. Professionals have had to adapt and switch to virtual meetings. "note the authors of the study. According to the index, the fall was as high as 95% in the airline sector in terms of expense claims made, with the rare plane journeys being reserved for company directors, according to Jenji. In addition, 80% of companies have not made any expense claims relating to flight bookings since the start of the crisis, according to the index.
Although more accessible in terms of Covid's time, the train still has a heavy impact. Half of the companies surveyed by Jenji spent only 10% to 15% of their usual booking volume. Nevertheless, there has been a marked improvement since last March: according to the Jenji index, almost a third of companies (30%) had already returned to their pre-Covid rail spending volume by spring.
many professionals now travel a lot in a day and very often exclude overnight stays
As for the hotel industry, according to the authors of the index, " for companies still booking, the volume is around 15% at pre-pandemic level ". What's more, contrary to what might be imagined for tomorrow's business travel, the Jenji index estimates that " many professionals now travel a lot in a day and very often exclude overnight stays (even today, despite a slow recovery from the crisis) ".
With this first index, Jenji is also pointing the finger at the forced acceleration of digitalisation. For the authors of the report, the conclusion is clear: " Companies have accelerated their digitalisation strategy by three to four years. Customer relationship management, supply chain management and internal operations have all been rapidly adapted. The management of professional expenses has not gone through this transformation. ". The figures bear this out: while the balance between paper and digital receipts had been stable since 2017, at a ratio of 83% / 17%, the balance of power has suddenly shifted. Jenji now describes a balance of 78% of paper receipts, compared with 22% for digital receipts.
Physical meetings have been replaced by virtual platforms and plane tickets by Zoom or Teams subscriptions.
At the same time, this Jenji index confirms, if confirmation were needed, the unprecedented proportions taken by the teleworking. And above all, it tells us what this means in terms of transforming the company internallyand employees' new relationship with expense accounts. While the volume of business expenses has been falling for over a year now, the number of active users is said to have increased significantly - and surprisingly - to the tune of +22%. To put it plainly, expense accounts, which were very often restricted to mobile professionals, have become widespread within teams, whose homes have had to be equipped to enable teleworking. " Their nature has changed completely, and in the space of a few weeks has gone from business travel to IT expenditure. Physical meetings have been replaced by virtual platforms and plane tickets by Zoom or Teams subscriptions. ".
