Can Virtual Reality Help Eliminate Your Corporate Travel Expenses?

All of those things are perfectly valid arguments, for now. But putting supplier and customer in the same room does not have a long-term sustainable future. Technology is making 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 calling them into a meeting 15 minutes to three hours away, making them wait for no reason other than “because they can.” and then send a deputy to do the face-to-face part. That is the arrogance of the mother, and that kind of company will not change. The time spent, of course, will be reflected in the invoice…

But for more enlightened customers 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’s good to see the whites of your eyes; to see if they are the kind 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 technological timeline, where what was once a novel is now mere commonplace. Who would have thought that we could communicate electronically via email? But we do. Who remembers the now outmoded ‘allow 28 days for delivery’ on mail order products. But we did.

Careful use of travel expense management software will show how much money a business is spending to put their representative in the same suit as a customer. But time spent on regular travel is a burden to the individual stuck in the metal tube at 50,000 feet, a burden to a company’s productivity, because if they’re traveling they’re not being as productive as they could be, and to the planet. , we are just absorbing fossil fuels and dirtying the atmosphere. Comparisons of relative CO2 emissions between cars and airplanes are a red herring; both release more greenhouse gases than not making the trip.

And does that mean there has to be some kind of personal connection; some feeling that a supplier puts before you dismisses it out of hand, maybe now would be a good time to look long term; and from that different perspective, maybe you see the concept in a different light.

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