Challenge: A leading global manufacturer’s healthcare division needed to get its own expense management system for its vast network of over 17,000 employees spread across 20+ countries. Their existing employees were using expense system on main company’s legacy landscape, leading to complexities in reimbursements. Additionally, integrating expense data with their disparate middle-ware and multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems proved challenging.
Solution: Our consultant spearheaded the global rollout of Concur Expense, a cloud-based solution designed to streamline the entire expense management process.
- Strategic Implementation: Defining the overall expense management strategy, aligning it with company policies and global compliance requirements.
- Configuration and Customization: Configuring Concur Expense to match the company’s specific workflows, expense categories, and approval hierarchies. Setting up custom fields, expense types, and business rules to automate expense routing and approvals.
- Policy Enforcement: Establishing clear expense policies within the system, including spending limits, per diem rates, and acceptable receipt requirements.
- API Integration: Integrating Concur Expense with existing ERP systems and HR platforms using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to ensure seamless data exchange and eliminate manual data entry.
- Concur Integration Center (ICS) Utilization: Utilizing Concur ICS, a platform for building custom integrations, to connect Concur Expense with other business applications that may not have pre-built connectors.
- Global Rollout Management: Leading the global deployment of Concur Expense, ensuring a smooth transition across different regions and languages. Also involved training of employees, providing ongoing support, and addressing any international variations in expense management practices.
Results:
- Global Efficiency: We successfully implemented Concur Expense across all 20+ countries, impacting over 17,000 employees. This provided a standardized and user-friendly platform for employees to submit and track expenses.
- Faster Reimbursements: We integrated Concur with Convera, an automation tool, which slashed expense processing time by a significant 20%-30%. This not only improved employee satisfaction but also generated savings for the client’s Accounts Payable (AP) and treasury departments.
- Seamless Data Flow: By leveraging the client’s existing middleware, we automated the data exchange between Concur and three different ERP systems, including SAP (utilizing Concur ICS), S2K, and MS Dynamics.
- Customization for Control: We configured and customized SAP Concur’s rules to cater to specific user roles, streamline AP/Treasury approval processes, manage various expense types, and establish robust audit rules and validations. This enhanced control and ensured compliance with internal policies.
Overall Impact:
This successful Concur implementation transformed the client’s expense management process, leading to increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved employee satisfaction. The streamlined system facilitated faster reimbursements, boosted data accuracy, and provided the client with greater control over expense management across their entire global workforce.