Can Virtual Reality Help Eliminate Your Corporate Travel Expenses?

All of those things are perfectly valid arguments, for now. But putting the supplier and the customer in the same room does not have a sustainable long-term future. Technology makes it redundant. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Of course, it’s fair to say that some companies like to show how much power they have over suppliers by summoning them for a 15-minute meeting three hours away by car, keeping them waiting for no other reason than ‘because they can’, and then sending a attached to do the face-to-face part. That is mere arrogance, and that type of company will not change. The time invested, of course, will be reflected in the invoice …

But for the more enlightened clients, there is a recognition that time is not just money, it is also finite. Sure, a personal connection is vital. Before a contract is awarded, it is good to see the whites of your eyes; to see if they are the type of people you would like to do business with. But after that, meet once a year, maybe, and the rest of the time rely on technology. And why wouldn’t you. We live in a technology timeline, where what was once a novel is now the commonplace of the mother. Who would have thought that we could communicate electronically by email? But we do. Who remembers that “please allow 28 days for delivery” is now out of date on mail order products? But we did it.

Careful use of travel expense management software will show how much money a company is spending to put its representative in the same suit as a client. But the time invested in regular trips is a loss for the individual stuck in the metal tube at 50,000 feet, a loss for the productivity of a company, because if they are traveling they are not being as productive as they should be, and for the planet, we are simply absorbing fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere. Comparisons of relative CO2 emissions between cars and airplanes are a red herring; both spew out more greenhouse gases than not making the trip at all.

And does that mean there has to be some kind of personal connection? some sentiment a supplier puts out before you throw it out of hand, maybe now is a good time to take a long-term view; And from that different perspective, you might see the concept in a different light.

Squinting into the past, it would once have been unheard of to correspond electronically, exchanging messages back and forth faster than can be explained, but today we take it for granted.