discard it? “It is important to think about when you tell people they no longer need to keep a receipt, particularly if you are going to remove choice,” he says. But the power lies in the database of receipts Traveldoo has already collected. “We have millions of receipts and correct analysis of those entered by the user. It is the perfect database to drive smarter, predictive analysis.”
Voice recognition technology looks like an interesting new frontier whose bound- aries are being pushed by advances in AI but again, the challenge of paper receipts remains. “The big challenge with voice is company policy around the receipt,” says Certify’s Neveu. “Here in the US, if the expense is for less than US$75 and it’s not a hotel charge, then you don’t need a receipt. Yet most companies will never adopt that.” But he does predict that elec- tronic receipting will become standard.” Traveldoo’s Fitzgerald thinks voice has some way to go, too. “It annoys me because I am talking to something and all of my expectations are aligned with having a proper conversation. Voice for me is still in that underwhelming phase.” What does the buyer side feel about AI?
Chris Pouney, of Severnside Consulting, says that great strides have been made in
Bra firm gets better support on expenses
expanded rapidly from its launch in 2011 to become a US$16 million turnover operation that sells “a bra every minute”.
The company now has more than 200 employees. It wanted to move away from its existing expenses process which required employees to submit expense claims, then managers to manually approve them, then the finance team to manually settle them. The company assessed a number
of different options for managing expenses, but dismissed using corporate cards because of the audit trail and the need to use prepaid cards for many of its employees. Looking at expenses software that could automate the process as much as possible, the company’s finance team
automating expense management, such as being able to photograph expenses and automated upload, but it has not yet lived up to the hype. “There is much more to do for it to be effective for most business travellers,” he says. “Will we ever see hotel folio data transmitted straight to a credit card, for example, which has been talked about for many years?
up do tra fol ca ab
“Intuitive approvals are another area where companies can benefit [from AI]. I see companies who install complex pre-trip approval processes, but what are they trying to achieve in reality? Most are trying to reduce certain trip types – high -value transactions or high lost savings – so approvals should be targeted in this area. I would like to see more emphasis on how many trips are approved or rejected. If all are approved then where is the value?” So is PwC’s prediction of one-third of us being out of jobs in 15 years’ time realistic? Concur’s Baker thinks not. “The overall problem with AI comes with the
wh I s pr th try -va ap wo m are
of rea ov
felt that most software was only doing a partial job, with just policy checks and approval workflows automated – while manual data entry was Zivame’s biggest pain-point.
The company chose automated expense management platform Fyle and says its use has cut the cost of time spent on expenses in half. One of the biggest wins was that employees were able to submit their expenses throughout the month rather than waiting until the end of the month, giving the finance team greater visibility of spend in real-time. Abhijeeth Naik, Zivame’s chief financial officer, says, “Fyle has helped us add a lot of value internally in terms of ease of use, a near paperless trail, faster turnaround times for employees and better visibility for finance.”
categorisation of it in all its various formats,” he says. “At the moment, it’s heading the same way as the cloud or describing things as ‘next-gen’. “Fundamentally, there isn’t a company in the world at the moment that is offering true AI. Instead, there is machine-learning, augmented intelligence, chatbots and busi- ness intelligence.
“The past few years have seen a surge of interest in programs and solutions that can think and adapt themselves, with many – if not all – of these terms being used interchangeably. “For now, what does need clarity is exactly how autonomous these technolo- gies are – and how much work is needed from employees analysing the data along- side them, allowing businesses to make smart decisions about how they approach reporting and insights.” It seems we can sleep easy in our beds for the time being.
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