Emerging technologies have revolutionized business processes, yet companies from coast to coast are still wasting time using handwritten records, spreadsheets, and emails to process expense reports, track travel and payments, dig through receipts, and chase down details. Automation and artificial intelligence can simplify operations, improve productivity, and reduce costs across all finance functions, but evolving is easier said than done.
For businesses with multiple business divisions, finding consistency across the organization can be tricky at times and this can often apply to spend management processes. But in a world of disruption, how a business manages spend is more important than ever. By bringing the expense management process into the future, businesses can streamline processes for employees—and ensure reimbursable expenses are accurate and compliant.
“Reducing a step here, or automating a process there, won’t deliver the far-reaching optimization that Canadian organizations need to succeed,” says Brian Veloso, Managing Director of SAP Concur Canada, the world’s leading provider of integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions. “What it takes, is having a dedicated, proactive partner with spend management solutions that can grow with your business.”
SAP Concur Canada offers a scalable and future-focused strategy in its partnership with Halifax-based IMP Group, a diverse assortment of industries ranging from aerospace and defence to healthcare and property development. At the same time, the relationship is focused on providing IMP with industry leading products that meet their immediate needs.
Prior to working with SAP Concur Canada, many of IMP’s processes were highly manual and expenses were charged to corporate credit cards, drawing the attention of senior executives, including the CFO, who questioned oversight and controls. “It was generally accepted that we needed a better way,” says Kevin Smith, Vice President, Corporate Finance at IMP Group. “That message came from the top.”
IMP rolled out Concur Expense across the organization over six months, a tight timeline facilitated by champions from finance and procurement as well as collaboration with IT teams. Time savings are well documented. Instead of keying in data, employees can now use their smartphones to capture receipts and managers can approve expenses more quickly and easily. Results have been equally dramatic for the accounting team, which is now able to concentrate on higher level tasks instead of spending seven to 10 days every month manually keying in and filing expense reports. Additionally, user friendliness and simplicity have resulted in better compliance.
With a host of improvements stemming from enhanced dashboards, personalized data views, report scheduling, and spending analysis, IMP rewrote their travel policy to include Concur Expense. The corporate finance team sees the benefits of having everyone in the organization on the same platform. Inconsistency no longer poses a threat, there is no concern that an employee used an outdated spreadsheet, and there are greater savings for the company. Also critical, SAP Concur can scale as IMP continues to grow.
Concur Expense wasn’t the first digital expense solution IMP tried, but it was the first to be deployed consistently across IMP’s operations, and the first that multiple divisions could use, because it works with a variety of ERP systems. In Kevin Smith’s opinion, it is also the first solution to provide a picture of company T&E expenses as a whole – high praise from such a diverse organization.
For more information on how to automate expense, travel, and invoice management for organizations of all sizes, visit https://www.concur.ca/.