Forrester Study: Expense, Travel and Invoice Management

If your company is facing issues with expense, travel and invoice management, you’re not alone. 

Outdated legacy technology is one of the main barriers to efficient spend management. Manual processes are clunky, time consuming, open to human error and lack visibility. The inaccuracies, and the slowdowns they cause, can also lead to auditing headaches, additional work and extra costs.

The other issue is the lack of alignment between the IT and Finance departments. In fact, 54% of EMEA companies agree that IT and Finance don’t see eye to eye on expense, travel and invoice priorities.

Finance Teams Want to Simplify Processes and Save Money

Investing in new tools can help your business optimise processes to cut costs. For example, an automated invoice solution will ensure suppliers are paid on time, saving you from late fees, reduce the time spent managing invoices and allow you to refocus valuable time on other tasks.

Beyond time savings, you need visibility into what is being paid, to whom, and from what budgets. Inadequate visibility into expenses is a key challenge for many businesses but this type of reporting is critical to understanding where and when spend happens with enough time to influence it. Especially as only 44% of companies are satisfied with their travel and expense reporting and analytical capabilities.

IT Managers Want to Reduce the Burden of Tech Support

Many finance leaders want to increase automation but the IT department will benefit too. Automated, cloud-based tools enable the efficiency that companies lack, lessening the burden on the internal IT support team, and allowing them to focus attention on supporting employees in other ways.

Cloud-Based Tools Increase Productivity, Adoption and Satisfaction

Employees expect that the technological advances they enjoy in their personal lives will carry over into their work lives. Instead, they face fragmented, manual processes that are inefficient and time consuming. 28% of respondents said they found travel booking process and tools cumbersome.

By fully automating expense, travel and invoice systems with cloud-based, mobile-optimised tools, you can reduce employee frustration, encourage adoption and increase compliance. Likewise, better tools to track expenses in one place can help them make responsible spending choices and give managers visibility into any potentially fraudulent spending. All of this translates into savings for your business.

A Unified Solution Benefits Everyone

An automated expense, travel and invoice management process will improve the employee experience and reduce spending. In the report, 75% of companies with a unified strategy reported high satisfaction with travel and expense tools, compared to just 35% without a unified strategy. This can be accomplished by full alignment of IT and finance, allowing both departments to accomplish their own goals.