SalesTrip is a finalist in this year's Business Travel Show Disrupt Awards (
register here). Ahead of the final on Wednesday 20th February we hear from its founder and CEO Manoj Ganapathy.
When were you launched?
SalesTrip officially launches at the Business Travel Show this February. The company was founded late 2017.
How many people are working for the company?
We are a team of 15 people most of whom are industry veterans with decades of experience working for the likes of Salesforce, SAP Concur, Amadeus and BCD Travel.
Sum up what your company/product does in one sentence
SalesTrip is an all-in-one travel booking, ticketing and expenses management system on the world's largest customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Salesforce.
Why is it unique?
The system can measure the real ROI of business travel. Everybody who travels, whether marketing, sales, support, account management or senior management, all contribute to the growth of the business, directly or indirectly. It's important for businesses to understand the ROI for that spend.
With SalesTrip, you can measure the direct ROI of every single trip, against each customer or sales opportunity. In order to do this, you need a single system, not separate systems for travel, expenses, customers, business intelligence and more. Our product does this seamlessly, leveraging the power of Salesforce's extensive reporting capabilities that enable decision making based on real-time, actionable insight - not gut instinct.
What problem does it solve?
Travel has often been seen as a back office operation - an essential spend that nobody could directly relate to sales or company growth. We're driven to change that by attributing every business travel and expense to revenue. Customers should be able to ask questions like: 'How much do my employees spend on average to win a customer?', 'How is the win ratio affected by face-to-face meetings that require travel? Are the deals profitable?'.
With this in mind, organisations can use data to determine how much money they should spend on a given opportunity or at what point in the sales cycle, as they can see how much time and money has already been spent trying to win that business. In sales, there's a science to spending, and without it, organisations are spending money on the wrong prospects and losing control of their travel and expenses.
What markets is it available in?
In the UK, EU and US with our teams located in the US and UK.
What do travel managers like about it?
Business travel managers are focused on enabling their colleagues to do their jobs effectively. However, when negotiating supplier agreements, setting travel policies, tracking travellers internationally, and ensuring traveller well-being and safety, it's extremely difficult to consistently satisfy commercial, contractual and employee demands.
The system can help balance all these factors to deliver dynamic policies and practices that work for the whole business. It enables travel managers to transform travel and expense processes by automating time-consuming admin, increasing productivity, and proactively managing traveller well-being and safety. Not only does this reduce costs, it also allows businesses to see travel as an investment rather than an uncontrollable cost.
Why do travellers like it?
With SalesTrip, employees take back control and accountability for their own travel budget; say a percentage of the opportunity, customer or activity they are managing. Alongside this, no matter whether the travel booked is in or out of the booking engine, the policy can be easily managed.
The system also searches for travel in a revolutionary way. Instead of showing 200 pages of results with 75% of the irrelevant options, it does a door-to-door search that takes into account total journey time. Gone are the days of spending hours switching back and forth between booking sites and Google maps to determine whether you'll make the meeting on time.
What are your growth plans?
SalesTrip is focused on becoming the leading travel and expense management solution for Salesforce customers. Over the next few years, the product will expand to other platforms including Microsoft Dynamics and HubSpot, for example. Ultimately, there is an ambition for integration with all CRM platforms, helping customers measure the true ROI of business travel once and for all.