How to treat your road warriors like rock stars

Life on the road can be hard.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a rock star or a corporate road warrior, the novelty of travel soon tarnishes to a dull routine of travel/hotel/work/repeat.

Small frictions – like being unable to respond to the unexpected, hitting a card limit at the worst possible moment, or simply losing a receipt – can be a major source of heat and unhappiness.

“This wouldn’t happen to Metallica or Elton John,” you can almost hear them say … from yet another sterile but familiar hotel room.

And, it’s true. There is a way to provide your internationally mobile field staff with rock-star levels of support. Centtrip supports over 500 of the world’s top music acts (including Elton John, Coldplay, Adele and most of the UK’s biggest global stars). We also provide services to over 1,000 superyachts, to film and TV production companies, to charter aviation businesses and other organisations with internationally mobile teams.

Here are three ways we can help treat your road warriors like the rock stars they are.

Empower your people to face the unexpected

It takes a lot of money to fly people around the world, so you want them to be as effective as possible, whatever they face. That could be a cancelled flight, a last-minute change in itinerary or even a laptop failure just before that critical presentation.

If your expenses policy requires individuals to use their own money and claim it back later (“pay and pray”), that can cause problems. They may not have space on a personal card for an unexpected expense, or they may simply baulk at paying out several hundred pounds in the hope of claiming it back later.

If they’re several time zones away, phoning head office to check isn’t really an option. 

The Centtrip prepaid Mastercard has uniquely high balance and transaction limits – tailored for rock star requirements – meaning you can set the budgets you need to empower road warriors to be effective … whatever they face.

Real-time, anytime responsiveness and control

Even touring rock stars require support.

The Centtrip app lets you manage multiple, separate, travellers wherever you are. You have real-time, anytime access to transaction reporting and the ability to top up cards (in any of 15 currencies on a single card) from a single login on your phone.

“If there’s an issue, I can top up an individual card, or make a payment, from my mobile phone. That makes me more responsive and it’s also less intrusive on, say, a Sunday morning. Things happen incredibly quickly during the filming period and having the fluidity that Centtrip enables is incredibly beneficial. Using Centtrip has been a revelation.” – Gareth Jones, Financial Controller and Production Accountant on Sky Atlantic’s Little Birds

That means you can see exactly what’s happening, as it happens, moving currencies to meet your team’s needs. You could ensure your top salesperson gets the last plane out of Sydney while you finish up your morning meeting in London.

You can also lock and unlock cards from the app – handy for those lost card moments.

Reduce the admin burden

Rock stars and road warriors both hate paperwork.

Using a prepaid card and app combination like Centtrip’s makes admin easy. Its easy receipt capture and tagging keeps your records accurate, too.

Road warriors don’t have to gather all those scraps of paper for the inevitable, post-trip, expense claim nightmare: lost receipts, forgotten reasons, unclaimed tax. And, they avoid the risk of landing out of pocket.

At the same time, finance benefits from real-time and tailored reporting, accurate, timely coding and no large, vague T&E accruals to unwind. Centtrip integrates with the leading finance software, so you also reduce time wasted on manual posting, reconciliation and payments.

Transaction costs are lower, too. By holding multiple currencies on a single card, you avoid the foreign transaction fees that a bank would levy. You control exchange rates, too. You choose when to exchange currency balances and, when you do, the rates are both low and transparent.

The Centtrip prepaid Mastercard

That’s just three of the advantages that our clients in music, marine and other industries enjoy.

If you’d like to discuss how Centtrip could support your organisation, please get in touch today.