Saving 10 hours per week on travel management tasks

Who is Slido?

During events, presentations, and speeches, too many great questions go unanswered. Maybe there isn’t enough time, or maybe the audience member was too shy to ask. With Slido, audience members can participate in polls, ask questions, and upvote questions in a web-based app accessible from any device.

Founded in 2012, Slido has powered over 5 million+ interactive meetings, has 1.24 million+ customers and 160 million+ engaged participants.

The team has grown as well: with over 260 teammates in 26 countries, and with offices in four different locations in Europe and the US. Customer success managers regularly travel to help customers at big events; Slido has an average of 30 trips per month.

"A lot has changed for me since we started using TravelPerk. Now I have more time for the things I should be doing in my role - like planning company events and taking care of our office."

Martin Šramko, Happiness Manager at Slido

Booking trips for the team causes work interruptions

“I love helping my team,” says Happiness Manager at Slido, Martin Šramko. “Whether that means helping them be more productive, organizing our all-hands meetings, or improving our workspace to foster company culture. But, I don’t love getting stuck in operations tasks.”

Martin devoted about 10 hours a week to arranging travel for the growing team. Employees visit the headquarters in Bratislava from London, New York and San Francisco often. And, with hundreds of high-profile events to assist with, customer success managers are regularly on the go too.

“I had to switch all the time between my tasks to help people book their flights,” says Martin. “There were moments when I didn’t want to lose a good flight, so I had to book flights even from home, sometimes in the night. Since I have a family, this wasn’t the ideal solution.”

"We were trying to find a solution for how to get rid of unnecessary work and free my hands to do more important things."

Martin Šramko, Happiness Manager at Slido

The clunky travel management process affected the whole team

Not only was Martin bogged down with constant interruptions, but there were other issues with Slido’s travel management process as well. Travelers weren’t able to quickly or easily book their own trips, which didn’t fit with the company’s belief in trusting employees and giving them the responsibility to make important decisions.

“We often had to check flight details with the event organizer, traveler and CFO. We were losing time checking details across so many different booking companies,” says Martin.

Even worse than the tediousness of travel management, Martin and his senior leaders realized that too many of his daily tasks didn’t correlate directly to increasing employee happiness and fostering a positive company culture, which is the mission of his role.

“We didn’t see any connection between what I should do and what I was doing at that point so we were trying to find a solution for how to get rid of unnecessary work and free my hands to do more important things,” says Martin.

Switching to a travel tool that matches company culture: TravelPerk

A customer success manager heard of TravelPerk at a conference, while helping the event organizers implement Slido, and recommended the platform to Martin. The rest is history. He was able to quickly and easily onboard employees to the platform and get going from day one.

“We opted out of setting up policies and limits inside of TravelPerk,” Martin says. “We have recommendations outside of the platform that encourage employees to choose reasonable prices based on their needs. This works well with our culture, giving the responsibility to our employees and trusting them.”

Before using TravelPerk, employees would occasionally book for themselves in consumer booking sites. Martin always assumed that employees booked reasonable prices, but it was hard to track. “In our TravelPerk account, we can see that our employees book the most reasonable flights, not just for price but also duration, layover, and other factors. No one ever abuses their freedom in making their travel arrangements,” he says.

Getting travel support when it matters most

Having 24/7 travel support has also been a huge shift for Martin and the Slido team. For example, four employees were headed to Australia for Sibos, the country’s largest technology conference, to help the event organizers implement the use of Slido for the first time. The employees realized that they weren’t going to receive their visas in time and needed to postpone their flights.

“Our TravelPerk representative responded to our query immediately and helped us to reschedule our flights right away,” says Martin. “If our team members weren’t at the destination on time, it could have put our customer’s event at risk.”

Devoting 10 more hours each week to employee happiness

Since implementing TravelPerk, Martin has helped quickly book the flights they need and get support on the go. The use of the travel platform has also sped up invoicing and reconciliation for the finance team, who can login and download the monthly invoice and any reports they need.

For his part, Martin has shaved off 10 hours each week on travel management tasks—that’s 25% of his work week. “A lot has changed for me since we started using TravelPerk. Now I have more time for the things I should be doing in my role - like planning company events and taking care of our office headquarters.”