A buyer's guide to corporate travel management software

GTOS, the Global Travel Operating System from Voraal, is one option you can put through the same process. It is built on operating experience across 100,000+ trips. The steps below are written so you can use them with any shortlist.

Step 1: Define the job before you name a tool

Write down the job in one paragraph. Examples of different jobs:

- “Employees need a way to book in-policy flights and hotels.”

- “Finance needs travel spend it can explain, in the month it occurs.”

- “We need policy, approvals, booking, spend and duty of care on one record, with a desk for exceptions.”

Those are not the same purchase. The first may be satisfied by an online booking tool. The third is the job of a travel operating system, which is what GTOS is designed to be. If stakeholders disagree about the job, no software comparison will settle the argument. Align on the paragraph first.

Step 2: Set criteria and assign owners

Turn the job into criteria and give each one an owner. Travel usually owns policy, the traveller experience and the desk. Finance owns spend, budgets, invoices and compliance reporting. People or risk own duty of care and access. Security or IT own sign-in, data separation and audit. A shared list is in the comparison guide and in security questions.

Do not let a single stakeholder score every line. A tool that travel loves and finance cannot explain is not a successful programme.

Step 3: Build a shortlist without a popularity contest

Shortlist products that actually do the job you wrote down. Exclude tools that only match the job if you add several unstated systems beside them, unless you are willing to run that stack on purpose. Be honest if you also need a TMC or an in-house desk; that belongs in the job, not as a surprise in implementation.

This guide will not tell you how many vendors to invite. It will tell you to use the same script with each of them.

Step 4: Run a demo as a test, not as a tour

Ask every vendor, including us, to show:

- A traveller search in which policy is visible on the options.

- An approval, including an out-of-policy route.

- What happens after approval, including automatic issuance if they offer it, and a desk path if they offer one.

- Where the cost appears for finance, and how receipts or invoices attach.

- How duty of care is shown for that same trip.

- How one company's data is separated from another's, and how roles work.

Bring your own policy and a handful of real routes. Labelled sample data is acceptable when your data is not loaded yet; a slide-only tour is not a test. For GTOS, that walkthrough is My Mobility, the Client Portal and Control Tower on one booking.

Step 5: Ask for pricing in a way you can compare

GTOS pricing is in USD and available on request. We do not publish a rate card, because programmes differ by size, volume and modules. When you request pricing, from us or from anyone else, include headcount, trip volume, markets, and whether a managed desk is in scope. Ask what is included, what is optional, and what is early access. For Voraal, Avunzo is designed to connect content to your own channels and is not yet live on production; early access is available on request. That kind of boundary should be explicit in any quote you compare.

GTOS is built to scale to 1,000+ employees per client. Public figures on this site are in USD; the product can record spend in more than one currency.

Step 6: Decide, then keep the criteria

After you choose, keep the job paragraph and the criteria. They become the scorecard for the first ninety days of a programme, even though we will not invent a target metric for you here. If you want to run this buyer's guide against GTOS, book a demo and arrive with the job written down.