Client Success Stories

The Problem

• Travel and entertainment (T&E) expense management process required manual entry and a significant amount of time spent by employees away from core responsibilities.
• Expense forms required repeated mathematical checks for human error, taking 3-4 weeks to reimburse employees.
• Process did not effectively gather information on T&E spending trends across the enterprise.
• Resources and budget did not allow for an internally hosted T&E expense management solution.

The Solution

• Concur Expense automates each step of the T&E expense management process.
• Concur's expense reporting service model allows for a fast return on investment and frees resources from hosting and maintaining the solution.
• Concur Expense incorporates specific company practices, as well as industry best practices.
• Concur Expense allows employees to automatically track approval and reimbursement processes.

The Benefits

• Expense reporting service dramatically reduced time spent by employees creating, tracking and managing T&E expense reports, and eased administration burden.
• Provided vital spend information, resulting in a 12% reduction in travel costs.
• Rapid deployment and low upfront costs created a rapid return on investment.
• Functionality necessary to operate globally.
• Employees are reimbursed in 2-3 days, rather than weeks.
• Increased compliance with spending policies, creating a more predictable cash flow.

In 1999, Intershop Communications, Inc. was a company of slightly more than 100 employees, on the verge of rapid growth, both in number of employees and global presence. Its Excel-based T&E expense management process was not efficient and scalable enough to expand with the Company's growth. Intershop needed a solution that could meet its needs and grow with the Company.

With the advice from an implementation partner, Intershop chose Concur Expense, not only for its successful track record in automating T&E expense management, but also because Concur Expense offered the comprehensive and scalable global solution that Intershop needed for its second largest controllable cost, T&E.

"We chose Concur Expense because of the inevitable growth we were going to experience and the immediacy of our need to increase the efficiency of our T&E expense management process," said Christine Sherron, controller for Intershop. "With Concur's hosted solution we have a highly scalable, flexible application that reduces operational costs, increases operational efficiency, and provides rapid ROI with no burden on our IT staff and only minimal upfront costs."

Concur's expense reporting service allowed Intershop to keep its valuable IT resources focused on its core business, rather than distracting the company with a T&E expense management infrastructure project. Concur Expense streamlined the expense management workflow, increased employee productivity, and total control over operating costs.

Concur Expense's reporting features have provided Intershop with valuable information on enterprise-wide T&E spending trends. As a result, Intershop negotiated a 12% reduction in their travel costs with vendors.

"We have not only recognized a rapid return on our investment with Concur Expense through increased efficiencies, but also negotiating better rates with our vendors," Sherron said. "Concur has allowed us to target spending trends and leverage that information to reduce our T&E spend. It has been critical for us to take the necessary steps to lower unnecessary operating costs."

Since 1999, Intershop has almost doubled in size totaling more than 200 employees, half of those working abroad. With Concur's expense reporting service, Intershop employees no longer have to wait a week if they miss their deadline for submitting expense reports, as was the case previously. By bringing the process online, expense forms are more accessible to all employees, regardless of location.

"The greatest advantage of Concur Expense is that while our company and expense report volume continues to grow, we haven't had to increase our T&E management staff!" Sherron said. "With Concur Expense, our employees can focus on their core competencies and access expense forms anytime, anywhere. The accessibility of expense forms has been a great benefit especially for our employees that work abroad. Now instead of waiting to return home to file expense reports, they can do it abroad."

With Concur's expense reporting service, Intershop has improved the accuracy of its T&E expense reporting; eliminating human error, no longer requiring employees to double-and-triple check their math on expense reports and increasing compliance with company spending policies. With more precise expense forms, Intershop has had more accurate time tracking, client billing, and a more predictable cash flow.

"Concur Expense has eliminated the need to manually review every expense report," Sherron said. "More importantly, Concur Expense has allowed us to pinpoint employees who have had trouble complying with our travel policies. With Concur's compliance rules, they can manage the process themselves without worrying about not being reimbursed."