Caught between the operational imperatives of the teams and the responsibility of bringing the company’s strategy to life, the local manager has become the essential link in the travel and expenses process. On a day-to-day basis, it is they who decide: is this trip really necessary, or is a video call enough? Is the total cost in line with the expectedROI? What impact will it have on the employee and the business? In addition to these trade-offs, there are now CSR and safety requirements: should we really take the plane or prefer rail in terms of carbon footprint and duty of care? This traveller-cost-carbon triangle turns the role into a balancing act… and operational reality all too often ends up catching up with good intentions.

Between a strategic compass and emergencies on the ground

In theory, the local manager is theguardian ofthe strategy: he or she validates the need for the trip, arbitrates the costs in terms of TCO (ticket, hotel, transfers, unproductive time), applies the CSR rules (priority to rail < 4 hours, comparison of CO₂ emissions) and ensures safety compliance via the official channels. In practice, there is a discrepancy: this expected role frequently turns into validation “at the click of a mouse”, sometimes delegated to an assistant, due to a lack of time, consolidated information and genuinely applicable rules.

Why the role breaks down into a mechanical click

First reason: vagueness. Policies are long, scattered (intranet, SharePoint), updated without notification and unevenly read. The result: local habits, subjective checks, disparities in treatment and insidious distancing from the common strategy. In this context, a manager spends on average≈ 20%of his time looking for information instead of making decisions. Second pitfall: obsolete or inapplicable rules (the famous €60 hotel ceiling in Paris…), which generate an inflation of exceptions and circumventions. The third pitfall is governance. Because it is sometimes necessary to be “important” in order to validate, decisions are taken too far up the ladder, moving away from the context on the ground and becoming either blocking or permissive by default. And at the end of the chain,time pressure imposes its own standard: get the employee moving as quickly as possible, even if it means cutting back on the quality of upstream and downstream control.

Taking back control thanks to digital technology and AI

The way out is to automate,integrate and equip. Firstly, automate everything that does not require human judgement. In expense claims,60-80% of lines are compliant (‘in policy’) and can be auto-approved if the tool is set up properly; in value terms, auto-approval can cover 70-85% of expenditure, which frees up the manager to concentrate on the15-30%of exceptions where the stakes are high (significant discrepancies, ROI, security). Next, activate AI to detect anomalies and fraud (duplicates, suspicious receipts, out-of-period spending), push compliance nudges at the right moment and score transactional risk: fewer errors, less time wasted, more consistency. Finally, make the policy readable and executable by integrating it into the tools (OBT/T&E): explicit rules on bleisure, classes, pricing choices, dynamic ceilings indexed to the market; settings that guide employees and filter out inappropriate behaviour upstream, so that the manager no longer has to do the ‘first sorting’.

Giving managers a cockpit… and meaning

To make decisions quickly and effectively, the manager needs a cockpit that aggregates, at a glance, the key information about a request: is it compliant? is it necessary? how much does it cost (full TCO)? what is the CO₂ impact? what is thelevel of risk (safety/duty of care)? Escalation workflows based on thresholds(cost × risk) then make it possible to grant an auto go when everything is green and focus managerial attention on the cases that require it. There remains one decisive point:meaning. While70% ofteam commitment depends on local management, this role cannot be reduced to an administrative rubber stamp. They must be the bearers of the company’s objectives –CSR/Scope 3,cost control, safety(ISO 31030),fair treatment– which presupposes a real effort in training and awareness-raising. A manager who is propelled into the role of ‘validator’ without explanation will interpret the approach as an additional burden or an additional control. A decision-maker who is equipped with the right tools understands the objectives, arbitrates fairly and improves both performance and the employee experience.

Moving from “clicks” to decision-making tools

It is not the role of the local manager to become a bottleneck or a “clicker” by default. Bydigitisingthe rules,automatingwhat they don’t need to do andequippingthem with the right information at the right time, we are restoring their true role: arbitrating according to strategy (CSR, costs, safety, well-being), coaching teams, ensuring compliance and making execution more fluid.

If you are considering your travel policy, tools or processes,Odyssey can help you: audit, strategy, sourcing, implementation and change management – for faster, fairer and better aligned management decisions.