Significant Improvements To Travel Program Announced

To UConn faculty, staff and employees: We are pleased to announce significant improvements to the University’s travel program for the Storrs and regional campuses. We are exploring solutions for UConn Health that will be part of a later phase. These new changes will be phased in beginning this July and fully implemented by January 2020: […]

To UConn faculty, staff and employees:

We are pleased to announce significant improvements to the University’s travel program for the Storrs and regional campuses. We are exploring solutions for UConn Health that will be part of a later phase. These new changes will be phased in beginning this July and fully implemented by January 2020:

  • Key Travel is our new travel management partner, replacing Sanditz Travel Management once a full transition has occurred.
  • Concur, a travel and expense management software program, used by many of UConn’s peers and aspirants, will be implemented.
  • The University is also deploying a travel credit card (TCard) program. TCards will be used for expenses incurred while travelling and will be integrated with an employee’s Concur profile.
  • University Business Services will now support travel requests and bookings, with Accounts Payable supporting travel expense & reimbursements.

Key Travel, which is used by over 350 academic and research institutions, will offer a complete and seamless travel experience for UConn employees, including weekend and after-hours support by Key Travel employees and full integration with Concur.

Through Concur, the University will now have better insight into the travelers’ locations through “Duty of Care” functionality.  This functionality will assist the University in supporting employees when they are traveling in an area affected by an emergency, tragedy or a disaster.

These changes will also help us reach goals in the areas of compliance, efficiency and transparency. For example:

  • There will be the requirement of preapproval for all out-of-state, overnight travel by an employee’s next level supervisor. Without preapproval, travelers may not be reimbursed for their expenses.
  • There will be better tracking of who is authorized to serve as an approver or approver delegate, and a prohibition of the same person submitting reimbursements and approving them.
  • Concur will help reduce overall travel and expense costs through better data analytics and process efficiencies.

As with any new system, we recognize and understand that this will impact many of you, which we believe will be in a positive way.  We will be offering training sessions for those that will use Concur and Key Travel on a regular basis.

We would also like to thank many of your peers and colleagues who make up the Travel Advisory Group and Business Process Subject Matter Experts team.  Their critical participation has helped inform and capture our business needs, redefining UConn’s exciting new Travel Program!

Sincerely,

 

Scott Jordan

Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer

 

John Elliott

Interim Provost