With markets opening up and the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, the transition back to working from the office and reestablishing what seemed like a long-forgotten routine may be a bittersweet sentiment to some and inevitable to most. Being physically present in the office and the (re)start of face-to-face meetings begets a need to move around much more, a stark change from taking a few steps from our bedrooms to makeshift home offices for Zoom meetings.
The return of physical workspaces
Recent conversations with clients from the Oil & Gas industry have revealed that it is especially true for those in this industry. For many employed in this space, this means going back to the routine of frequent physical meet-ups with their clients. Particularly, with the Singapore government’s latest allowance for a larger group setting of up to 10 people and the return of up to 75 percent of employees back to office, our clients’ have seen a significant increase of movement from their offices based here.
For employees in the Oil & Gas sector that have a higher need to move around for business purposes (such as the Sales teams), an individual corporate credit card is usually issued. Possibly integrated with the company’s global expense management system, these cards are utilised for all corporate expenses, such as local transport, international travel and client entertainment. The administrative process of consolidating such expenses by the individual come month-end is no doubt a tedious one. One study noted that it takes 20 minutes on average to file an expense report and costs companies close to 3,000 hours a year correcting errors in these reports – valuable time that could be spent on more revenue-generating activities.
Saving time by removing tedious processes
Recognising the inconvenience of expense management for our clients, GrabForBusiness works with oil & gas companies across the region to automate and simplify such processes for all Grab-related corporate spends on transport, food delivery and courier services available on the Grab app and corporate web-booking tools. Once a company has set up a corporate account and have onboarded their employees, some of the benefits they will start to see include:
- Enabling employees to tag their business transactions on the Grab app under the organisation’s profile, rather than their personal account
- Strong governance framework through policy-setting, spending limits and employee grouping that manages cost and services enabled to employees
- Payment through the corporate credit card instead of a personal credit card or cash
- A consolidated statement at the month’s end of the individual’s corporate transactions instead of multiple receipts. Companies will have visibility over these as well, ensuring transparency by both parties and optimizing the reporting of all transactions that Finance teams may require
The period of confinement caused by the pandemic had given us time to reflect on how we want our reimagined work-life to be, and this adjustment back to some sense of normality is a good time as any to implement a better version of our old routines.
If you’re looking for ways to implement this within your business, leave us your contact details and we’d be happy to have a chat.
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Brendan Chai – Regional Key Account Manager – GrabForBusiness
