Sberbank, the giant state-controlled financial institution, has made a new step to extend activities to ever-new fields. Presented just days ago, ‘Business Travel’ helps the bank’s corporate clients organize business trips, buy rail and air tickets, or book hotel rooms.
The business trip documents required under Russian legislation – such as the ‘letter of assignment’ and the ‘advance statement’ – are generated automatically.
In what is described as a market first, invoices and other closing documents related to the purchased services are sent to the client at the end of the month in electronic format. Thus, clients will receive the entire set of documents necessary to obtain VAT refunds.
“The entire set of business trip documents is stored in a single place within the service, which means that employees can promptly submit documents about business trips so that they are included in accounting on time,” Sberbank explains.
This new online service has been developed and is supported by Korus Consulting CIS LLC, a subsidiary of the bank. It is reserved for companies which have subscribed to ‘Sberbank Business Online,’ an offer that includes more than 60 banking and non-financial products and services for legal entities.
Over the past decade, Sberbank has extended its activities to a variety of domains well beyond financial services, betting on new technologies to create a series of “ecosystems.” These new activities range from e-commerce, to food services, to digital healthcare, to CRM and neuroscience, to name just examples.
An adapted version of this article appeared in ThePaypers.com, a partner of East-West Digital News.