How real-time travel data can reduce your operating expenses

Finance professionals and business leaders face constant pressure to optimise budgets and find sustainable ways to reduce operating expenses.

While traditional cost-cutting exercises often look at macro-level line items, one of the most effective levers for modern organisations lies within their travel and spend management systems.

Historically, tracking expenditures occurred weeks after employees returned from a trip, leaving finance teams in a reactive position, reconciling past losses rather than steering future budgets. However, by shifting towards real-time travel data, businesses can transition from reactive to proactive operational control.

This article will give travel managers insight into how they can reduce operating expenses by using real-time travel data.

What is real-time data?

In the context of travel and spend, real-time data processing refers to information that is captured, updated, and made available instantly as transactions occur.

Instead of waiting for an employee to manually file a paper or spreadsheet report at the end of the month, a real-time system logs the entry the exact moment a corporate card is tapped or a flight is booked. This continuous visibility acts as a live financial dashboard for the business.

Real-time data is also a safety and duty of care consideration for businesses, helping those travelling for work to react to cancellations, weather disruptions, or other emergencies. 

Ways to reduce operating expenses using real-time data

Below are strategic ways that finance teams and business travel managers can leverage real-time data to control operating expenses.

Block out-of-policy spending

One of the primary ways to reduce operating cost expenses is to eliminate bookings made outside preferred channels or parameters.

When relying on backdated reports, out-of-policy bookings are only discovered long after the money has left the bank account. According to research from the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), roughly 19% of all travel expense reports contain errors or non-compliant entries, and correcting a single error takes an average of 18 minutes and costs companies up to £42 in lost administrative productivity.

By utilising Perk’s real-time travel expense data, travel managers can automatically enforce travel policies at the exact moment of search and checkout, which gives travel managers:

• Instant verification - the system checks bookings against predefined spending rules, automatically flagging or blocking out-of-policy options before payments are finalised

• Budget protections - managers can view department budgets in real time, preventing teams from overspending their allocations mid-month rather than spotting the deficit afterwards

Activewear company Fabletics utilised Perk’s travel management program and saved 60 hours a year by using real-time data and having a view of travel across the business. Use our spend management ROI calculator tool to see how much you could save.

Get the best value bookings

There are roughly 230 flights between London and New York every week, for example, meaning that choosing the right one at the right price and time can be overwhelming, especially when sticking to a budget.

And this is the same for hotels. There are reportedly around 153,000 hotel rooms to choose from in Amsterdam, alongside a short-haul flight from Europe.

The Perk platform leverages advanced algorithmic tracking, enabling travel managers to book competitive live rates for flights and hotels, booking those travelling for work the most cost-effective option.

Optimise previous expenses against future ones

With real-time data analytics, travel and finance managers can easily review what work travellers have spent and use this to make informed changes to budgets and travel policies. These expenses can be split out by category, so travel managers can truly see what needs changing.

Looking at mileage, flights, hotel bookings, and transportation separately enables managers to see exactly where spend is occurring and where there are opportunities to reduce expenses.

Link industry data to external insights

To truly understand how to use data to reduce operating expenses, leadership can look to data-driven operational insights across sectors. 

Third-party industry analysis repeatedly emphasises that transparency is key to managing business cash flows. A recent global benchmarking report from SAP Concur notes that organisations migrating to a single, integrated travel and spend management platform achieve an average 26% reduction in operational costs alongside a 47% increase in total workforce efficiency.

When systems communicate instantly, companies enjoy tighter fiscal controls without compromising employee autonomy on the road.

Use real-time data to reduce 'shadow work'

The financial impact of manual processing goes far beyond the face value of a ticket or hotel room. When looking to reduce expenses, businesses must account for administrative resource drain.

Perk's report into shadow work revealed that it costs the UK over £95 billion every year doing admin tasks such as manual receipt chasing, back-and-forth approvals and other ‘invisible’ admin tasks. 

• 18% of an employees’ time is taken on booking travel

• 17% is taken up by filing expense claims

• 45% of employees feel burnt out as a result of shadow work

Providing real-time travel data across teams fundamentally changes how a company operates. Travel requests and spend data are available together, instantaneously, meaning that managers can approve requests on the go with a single tap. 

Live real-time data analytics provide finance teams with up-to-the-minute reports on company overheads without building time-consuming, fragmented spreadsheets. Eliminating manual data entry allows travel and finance managers to save hours of administrative labor, which can be reinvested into higher-impact strategic tasks, effectively lowering overall operational overheads.

A 2024 report from SAP noted that companies using integrated travel and expense software made savings of 21%, leading to more efficient operations.

Turn data into action 

Transitioning from retroactive expense reporting to proactive management is no longer a luxury for business finance teams, it is an operational necessity. 

Failing to leverage live visibility leaves businesses exposed to costly policy leakage, budgeting blind spots, and hours lost to the endless stream of invisible tasks.

Prioritising real-time oversight allows financial leaders to capture immediate savings, maintain tight structural control, and eliminate the invisible hours lost to back-and-forth approval loops.

Perk’s platform enables managers to centralise spend management within its integrated platform systems, and businesses can transform travel from a volatile variable expense into a streamlined, automated asset.

If you are ready to remove the friction from work travel, eliminate manual receipt chasing, and reclaim control over your operational budget, sign up today for a free demo.