A smoother ride, with Grab for Work

RIDE-HAILING company Grab has launched its latest service Grab for Work, a free transport expense management platform for corporates. And it's bringing with it a message: Grab means business.

The service, targeted at MNCs (multinational corporations) and SMEs (small and medium enterprises) across South-east Asia, notably those whose employees regularly commute for work, offers a more productive and efficient way to manage an organisation's transport spending.

It is a web portal to which all business rides booked by employees via the Grab app will be synced automatically and in real-time. Using the portal, human resource or finance executives will be able to track and analyse employee travel and cash flow, and set the right transportation policies.

So long paperwork With Grab for Work, gone are the days of employees having to manually safekeep hardcopy taxi receipts and declare each claim post-trip, and administrators having to meticulously review handwritten trip details and dispense individual reimbursements.

Following each trip, e-receipts with trip details will be sent directly to the employees' work inboxes, ready for submission. At a glance, administrators will be able to view comprehensive trip information from employee name, team, pickup and drop-off locations, to purpose of travel, travel time and payment mode - rendering trip expense reimbursement a breeze.

Big Data and policies With paperwork out of the way, companies can focus resources on serving their customers and on business growth, of which productivity is a big determinant. Through analysing employee travel pattern (ie, Big Data), companies can boost productivity by enforcing fitting ride policies that will streamline the transport expense management process.

For instance, companies can regulate when and where employees can claim for business travel (such as for business meetings and late-night rides only), as well as modes of payment to fit their claims process. These can include corporate credit cards, the employee's personal credit cards or debit cards, and even cash.

Why ride with Grab The Singapore-based ride-hailing company says that it has the largest fleet of vehicles in South-east Asia, comprising bikes, standard taxis, private cars, executive cars and 6 to 13-seaters. Grab adds that prices for GrabCar - its private car hire service - are competitive, transparent and come with a fixed fare guarantee, effectively maximising the company's cost savings.

To sign up, companies simply create an account on the Grab website, and add their employees to the group. Employees book their rides via the Grab app as per their routine, and through a tagging feature, mark those as business rides to separate them from personal rides. Grab for Work is currently a free service.

Satisfied clients Grab for Work is fully integrated with Concur, a Washington-based expense management platform and a SAP company. Existing Concur users who book rides via the Grab app will enjoy faster expense reimbursement, as their Grab e-receipts will be automatically synced to Concur, removing the need to scan and upload receipts.

Since its May 31 launch, Grab for Work has been used by over 150 companies across South-east Asia. These include Singapore's restaurant reservation startup Chope Group, mobile app development firm Rainmaker Labs and Park Hotel Group, Indonesia's virtual assistant startup Yesboss, as well as Malaysia's national carrier Malaysia Airlines.

Grab for Work is available to corporate customers in the six South-east Asian countries that Grab operates in - Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. In Indonesia, companies can opt for the monthly direct billing option, where they issue company codes to employees, and are invoiced monthly for business rides.

Find out more about Grab for Work at grab.com/work or register your interest here: https://grabco.typeform.com/to/llyMYn