We understand that this blog is outgrowing in size, we decided to break it up into chunks of posts. AI-based automation is here to stay, for all the good reasons, with a higher intrinsic value. While there is no denying that most companies entrust manual methods to catch fraudulent travel expense reports by reviewing 100 percent of them every single time, the process can be cumbersome and labour-intensive. Also the employee’s trust factor is shaken every time they are brought under the scanner. This said when the travel manager pores over hundreds of sample of reports, it is still likely that violations can fall through the cracks.
Tripeur, our end-to-end corporate travel management platform, can turn every report inside out, do it faster, and identify violations humans could barely find. We leave no stone unturned in catching unusual patterns and habitual bad behaviour. Tripeur goes the extra mile in confirming acceptable vendors and merchants, meeting participants and tracking down suspicious meal.As discussed in the previous blog, though most travellers are not marked by risky behaviour, it makes real sense for companies to implement AI to ferret out the good travellers, do away with manager approval of their expense reports and avoid reimbursing them by default. AI, in any case, can still capture out-of-policy expenses should such travellers deviate from the designated policy. It is not about overlooking the risks, but reducing the friction.
Similarly, AI can group offending travellers on the basis of their risk levels and respond in view of that. A quick run-through of the historical expenses can help create template emails in accordance with the violation. The objective is to appreciate the differences between a repeat offender and a new travelling employee with no track record or long-time traveller without any prior offenses. Because one cannot come down hard on an offender, the system could trigger a more stringent note and send it to repeat offenders with a copy of the same to the manager. Machine learning can learn like humans do and also teach them. An efficient expense reporting system can tweak its automated email indicating which part of the travel policy has been violated with the relevant link to the travel policy. Don’t reprimand the travellers; better educate them is the core idea of the overall exercise.