Birmingham-based Click Travel is planning a move into expense management, ABTN can reveal.
The travel management company (TMC) will launch an automated expense management tool at the end of this year.
Simon McLean, Click Travel's managing director, told ABTN in an exclusive interview that the technology was being developed in-house by the TMC.
“We're taking the concept that we've done with Click in the travel domain, as in build technology that is specific for our clients, and bringing that into expense management,” said McLean.
“They're is a very tight link between our travel services and our new expense management offering.”
The TMC is currently trialling the new expense management technology with its own staff, said McLean: “We're taking feedback from them, ironing a few thing out.”
The model will be somewhat similar to that provided by companies such as KDS and Concur, which offer end-to-end automated expense management tools, although McLean was keen to point out that Click would have a “different take”.
McLean said travel and expense management are “very tightly correlated”, which made the move a logical one.
“It's a very natural extension of what we're already doing,” he said. “We've got a lot of clients who I'm confident are going to take it.
“Some of them have existing expense management systems that they are going to change, hopefully. A lot of others don't have anything right now. It's going to be their first experience of it.”
McLean added he sees expense management as “the next big driver of growth” for Click.
“It’s rapidly becoming more of a requirement. We see a lot of bigger tendors these days asking about expense management solutions,” he said.
“And we believe we can deliver it to smaller businesses, which are very resilient to expense management at the moment.”