Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/182340
Relocation employees, the potential retention risks are reduced. But, the key benefit is strategic—if the CFO needs to know the relocation spend over the past two quarters to compare to forecasts and budgets, he or she can tap the app and get the results instantly. Ditto such granular information as the expenditures earmarked for temporary housing or moving van expenses. Based on this insight, decisions around resource allocation can be revised. While such capabilities were available in past using the websites of many relocation services providers, a portal is not a mobile device. Not only is the ease of accessing data on a smartphone or tablet far superior—one does not have to sit at a desktop or log onto a laptop and then slowly navigate through muddy waters—so is the volume of information flying through the airwaves. Indeed, business apps hosted in the cloud have great horsepower, are easy to deploy, and present wide flexibility. A CFO or chief HR officer can quickly access an enormous amount of data from across the world to slice and dice and thereby scrutinize relocation expense trends, sifting through the information to improve the overall process. The improvements in relocation apps have even the providers excited. "I've been in the relocation industry for 29 years, and this is by far the coolest development in the business," says Jennifer Thomas, senior vice president of global business development at NEI Global Relocation. Yet, like all things cool, some are less cool than others. [70] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 2013 Technology provides the ability to click onto the app using a smartphone or tablet to peruse pretty much everything entailed in their transfer: the market price of homes at the new employment site, school rankings, and delivery timetables for their household goods in transit. Even expense reporting can be tracked if the employee photographs each receipt then an app takes care of repayment in the background. "I did some homework and learned that there are 106 apps that are listed when you type the words 'relocation' in the App Store," Thomas says. "Some are aimed just at employers or employees, some are aimed at both, some support only parts of the relocation process like real estate or moving household goods, and some are really not apps at all, just mobile links to website portals. I saw one that was called "Denver Relocation", which I thought would be a vendor of some sort. It wasn't. It was Denver the city, and the benefits of relocating there."