What are the most important factors in running an effective expense management programme? Mark Frary asks the travel buyers
first time, Buying Business T
has carried out a detailed survey among travel buyers about the expense management systems they use.
T
AUTOMATIC OR MANUAL? Expense management systems are reasonably prevalent among the survey respondents, with more than two-thirds saying they use an automated system as opposed to a paper or spreadsheet-based solution. Despite the hype surrounding the use of such automated systems, more than a quarter of those travel buyers and expense managers answering the survey said they were still using Microsoft Excel or a similar spreadsheet to handle expense claims. Of those companies that are using
automated systems, Concur was the most widely employed, with just under half of those respondents (47.4 per cent) saying they were using it. WebExpenses was the second most widely utilised system, with 15.8 per cent of those answering the survey saying they have adopted it. As might be expected, the
expense management tools used by organisations in our survey are generally tightly linked to wider financial systems, such as SAP
30 Buying Business Travel 2012
his year’s corporate card and expense management supplement is setting a precedent – for the ravel
and Oracle. Almost nine out of 10 respondents (89.5 per cent) said their expense tool was integrated into their organisations’ financial systems. The survey also asked respondents which particular financial systems they used. SAP was cited by half of the organisations polled, with Oracle in second place (28.6 per cent) and Microsoft Dynamics (14.3 per cent) trailing in third place.
INTEGRATION Much has been made in recent years of the integration of travel booking and expense systems, but does the reality bear out the shiny vision of the future promoted by system providers? Just fewer than two-thirds of
buyers and managers questioned in the survey said there was no integration between the two systems within their organisations. That a third did have integrated systems is likely to be partly due to the popularity of Concur, which offers an end-to-end solution.
COSTS AND COMPLIANCE We asked our buyers their main reason for using an expense management system, and it comes as no surprise that most organisations wanted to use it to monitor compliance with their policies. The second most important reason cited was to reduce the cost of processing claims, while
Buying Business Travel’s survey was carried out online in March and April 2012; 98 buyers from a range of sectors and organisations responded (see below).
INDUSTRY SECTOR 10% 7% 7% 17% 20% 10% 29%
Manufacturing, engineering and aerospace
Finance/insurance Public sector/charity/education Pharmaceuticals
Media/publishing Technology/telecommunications Other