Is Your Immigration Program Strategic, or Just a Spreadsheet and a Lot of Hope?

Immigration is no longer just a checkbox for HR; it’s a critical business driver. Yet, for many companies, the reality of managing a visa-dependent workforce is a fragmented mess of vendor portals, manual trackers, and constant "firefighting."

Benivo recently conducted a study with 17 leading global organizations to find out exactly how the market is handling immigration compliance. The results, published in our recent 2025 Immigration Compliance & Mobility Management Benchmark Report, reveal a stark divide between typical manual processes and the "strategic" future of the industry.

The Compliance Blind Spots

The research highlights that while traditional relocations are often well-governed, newer, high-risk move types, such as Temporary Cross-Border Remote Work (Work from Abroad), are falling through the cracks:

• The "Spreadsheet" Strategy: 46% of companies still manage cross-border remote work (Work from Abroad) fully or mostly manually. As one participant famously put it: "Our remote work program is essentially a spreadsheet and a lot of hope".
• Business Travel Risks: Only 53% of companies assess immigration risk before a business trip is booked.
• The Renewal Gap: 24% of participants acknowledged missing at least one sponsored worker renewal deadline in the past 24 months due to communication gaps or a lack of automated reminders, leading to consequences like severe compliance risk exposure, delays in employment, and work authorization gaps. 

From Reactive Firefighting to Strategic Oversight

The burden on mobility teams is growing, yet they are increasingly asked to "do more with less". The benchmark report shows a growing appetite for centralized, tech-enabled visibility that moves beyond simple case tracking.

Leading companies are now seeking tools that allow them to:

• Forecast Costs: 56% of companies are prioritizing the ability to forecast immigration costs to help business units plan headcount effectively.
• Unify Data: Participants expressed a strong desire for better integration between immigration vendors and internal systems like Workday to eliminate duplicate data entry.
• Automate Risk: There is a shift toward proactive assessments that flag visa requirements before travel is booked rather than at the airport gate.

Take Control of Your Immigration Data

You don’t have to replace your immigration legal provider to gain world-class technology. Benivo’s Immigration Management Hub acts as a provider-agnostic "system of record" that sits above your existing vendors to provide the visibility and automation you’ve been missing. For example, Cox Enterprises uses Benivo to centralize all immigration activity while continuing to partner with their preferred legal provider. This allows them to track every visa and renewal in one place with automated alerts that prevent last-minute emergencies.

Ready to see how you compare to your peers?

Download the Full 2025 Benchmark Report to access the complete data set on vendor SLAs, audit practices, and remote work policies.

Ready to stop "hoping" and start managing?

Request a Demo of the Immigration Management Hub and see how we help teams centralize their immigration activity to prevent last-minute emergencies and automate compliance tracking.