American Express Global Business Travel has expanded the
functionality of its mobile app to include the Neo travel and expense
management suite.
As long as a client uses the Neo integrated solution,
travellers can now use the Amex GBT Mobile app to capture and report expenses.
The functionality also allows them to finalise and submit expense reports while
travelling, which the travel management company says can save them time and
increase productivity.
The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) and machine
learning to scan photos of receipts for data to complete expense reports and
automatically link them to the trip in progress. The app can also scan PDF
receipts imported from emails.
Raksa Ouk, GBT’s vice president of digital strategy,
commented: “Our goal is to create solutions that help our clients travel with
more purpose, eliminating inefficiencies wherever possible.
“This means giving them the power to manage all the phases
of a business trip from the tool they use most on the road – their mobile
phone. To do this, we combined the great booking and real-time travel
assistance features of the Amex GBT Mobile app with the convenience and speed
of the Neo expense capability.”
According to the TMC, Neo was developed to meet the demands of the complex financial regulatory landscape of Europe and was recently granted certification to deliver digital expense management services in Spain. The full Neo solution is available for GBT customers around the world, including the US and Canada.
GBT has added a number of features to Neo since acquiring
its parent company KDS in 2016. More recent enhancements include a new display
feature that shows complete airfare attributes for comparison in Neo’s booking
tool and the ability for travel managers to flag hotels or chains that meet
certain environmental standards using a green badge listed in search results.