Private Sector
A Global Manufacturing Company
Saves over 40% in travel costs with improved controls using ExpenseAnywhere
PROBLEM
The Client is a $2B global company headquartered in Europe. The Americas operations are headquarter in Ohio, USA.
The client's workforce based in US travels extensively. They use paper forms to enter and submit their expense reports for reimbursement. The company uses corporate AMEX cards for travel. The Cards are central-bill, central pay. Corporate Card travel spend is about a $1.4M per year.
The AP department processes about 2000 paper-based expense reimbursement claims annually. Since the employees travel globally, their expense reimbursement claims remain unprocessed until they return to their offices, resulting in employee dissatisfaction; the corporate card charges remain un-reconciled resulting in substantial unallocated amounts (over 40% ) month over month. The company has one person taking care of AP functions who is spending almost 50-70% of regular time managing the employee expenses.
The accounting system is a home-grown system running on legacy systems with no reporting capabilities unless specifically coded, which in today's age is even more expensive.
Pain Points:
- Employee Dissatisfaction
- Company paid AMEX accounts stays un-reconciled with substantial amounts unallocated month-over month; year over year, causing irk of the auditors.
- No reporting capabilities to watch their travel spend.
- Manual import of data in to their legacy system results in employee overwork and delays.
- Too much paper to track and file for audit purposes.
- A small IT staff to support the growing demands of corporate HQ and executives.
SOLUTION
The Company sought a web-based solution to automate their manual process for the Americas Division with an eventual roll-out to other operations. After an extensive evaluation of markets' leading products, the company selected VCOM's onDemand web-based ExpenseAnywhere ASP service for automating their entire manual process. VCOM implemented the solution with Client specific data, policies and workflow, interfaced with AMEX for daily transactions data feed, and with their legacy system, in under 20 days from the award of contract.
The client has been using the application for over 3 years and recently renewed the contract for an additional 2-year term and is considering rolling ExpenseAnywhere to other global operations using SAP. The client has benefiting tremendously from substantial control, audit tracking capabilities, and phenomenal Return on Investment. The following are just a few benefits.
- The division achieved over 40% savings in travel costs through implementation of travel policies, cost control and efficiency gains.
- Extremely happy users. Faster process. Easy to use and manage.
- Automated workflow conforming to policies and procedures making the whole process nearly paperless.
- AMEX charges are reconciled month-over-month with almost no un-reconciled charges at year-end.
- Improved spend visibility.
