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Expense management conglomerate Emburse has announced the acquisition of Dutch startup Roadmap and Virginia-based travel data expert DVI to beef up its travel offerings. The terms of the deals were not disclosed on both the deals.

Simplifies complex business travel 

Based out of Amsterdam, Roadmap simplifies complex business travel processes by integrating all information including, policies, supplier benefits, and much more, in one place. 

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The solution is fully customisable and enables organisations to choose a variety of data options, such as travel bookings, duty-of-care insight, destination visitor information, and trip carbon footprint data. 

How does Emburse benefit from this acquisition?

Roadmap acquisition gives Emburse the ability to offer an intuitive experience for their employees while ensuring that travel spend stays are within corporate policy. 

Throughout the trip, employees receive employer-branded flight updates, destination tips, and safety reminders via the app, creating a custom, curated experience.

“Business travel will return – but it will look completely different to pre-pandemic travel,” said Eric Friedrichsen, CEO of Emburse. “Businesses requiring their employees to travel will place greater emphasis on the quality of that experience. They will also pay closer attention to business travel policies to ensure trips are not only cost-effective but also safe and environmentally responsible. Bringing Roadmap into our suite of solutions allows our customers to offer their employees a modern, consumer-like travel experience that empowers employees and is reflective of their policies and values.”

“Roadmap and Emburse share the same philosophy of humanizing work by providing a great user experience and eliminating the need for employees to spend time using unintuitive tools,” said Jeroen van Velzen, CEO and co-founder of Roadmap. “By keeping users within the app for all travel-related activity, Roadmap helps organisations minimise booking leakage, which in turn improves spend visibility and controls cost. Together, we will be able to increase the pace of innovation for our customers and enhance Emburse’s existing mobile solutions. We look forward to being part of Emburse’s continued global growth.

Second acquisition – DVI 

The Los-Angeles-based company also acquired travel data expert DVI (Data Visualisation Intelligence) to deepen its analytics expertise and capabilities in travel and corporate spending. 

How does Emburse benefit from this acquisition?

With DVI, the company can optimise its travel programs by unlocking the potential of its data. Notably, customers will gain real-time visibility into large, complex data sets, significantly enhancing T&E spend management, program compliance, and supplier negotiations.

DVI’s technology also enables organisations to analyse every type of travel spend–such as flights, hotels, rental cars, and meals. It also analyses trips arranged by a corporate travel agency and those booked outside a company’s approved tools, ensuring a full and accurate picture of spend.

“We’re thrilled to build upon our platform capabilities with the addition of DVI. This enables us to provide customers with even more sophisticated data analysis, which continues to grow in importance for business travellers and the finance teams that support them,” said Eric Friedrichsen, CEO of Emburse. “As organisations around the world return to increased business travel, employee safety, and cost control will remain a critical issue. Granular visibility into spend patterns, identifying pockets of wasteful or inefficient spend, and minimising out-of-policy transactions, will be essential for organisations to successfully emerge from the economic downturn.”

Eliminate manual and time-consuming tasks

Founded by Peter Lai, and Roger Gu, Emburse is a provider of expense management and accounts payable automation solutions. The platform helps business travellers, finance professionals, and CFOs to eliminate manual, time-consuming tasks so they can focus on what matters most.

Growing portfolio

The company offers a growing portfolio of expense and AP automation solutions, including Emburse Abacus, Emburse Captio, Emburse Certify, Emburse Chrome River, Emburse Cards, Emburse Nexonia, Emburse SpringAhead, and Emburse Tallie. Emburse’s offerings are tailored to meet the unique needs of specific industries, company sizes, and geographies. 

As per the company’s claims, more than 9 million users in more than 120 countries are using their platform. Over 16,000 customers, from startups to global enterprises, including Boot Barn, Grant Thornton, Telefónica, Lufthansa Systems, and Toyota use Emburse’s solution to eliminate manual processes.