Let Today’s Actions Transform Your Business Tomorrow with a Best-in-Class Spend Management Solution
A recent study by Aberdeen found best-in-class users of digital expense and invoice management technology saw 27% improvement in profitability and 36% improvement in productivity over a two year period. Those not achieving best-in-class saw static profitability and productivity.
We can see why best-in-class performers achieve these results when we look at how digital spend management solutions impact efficiency and effectiveness.
Imagine an organisation processing 1,000 expense reports a year with an annual spend of £1,000,000 and an estimated annual processing cost of £50,000. A 20% improvement in efficiency would save £10,000 a year. A 20% improvement in effectiveness would save £200,000 a year.
It’s clear to see how optimising efficiency and effectiveness transforms your program into a well-oiled machine now. It also equips you to respond to market pressures and opportunities as they arise in the future too. Even some small actions today can bring you big rewards tomorrow.
The question, then, is how you can use your digital spend management solution to improve efficiency and effectiveness and achieve best-in-class?
The answer is something we explore in three webinars. In each webinar, we look at best-in-class spend management through the lens of an issue that really matters to businesses: spend governance, controls and compliance, and employee experience and optimisation.
How to Achieve Best-in-Class Spend Management
What you need to optimise to achieve best-in-class and how best to optimise it is different in every organisation. However, there are some common areas where it’s a good idea to start looking.
Increasing Corporate Card Adoption
When you increase corporate card adoption you get more data in the system because you have access to card feeds. This gives you more visibility and more information you can use to drive better spend governance. You also enhance controls and compliance because, for example, you can see that when an employee said they gave a £20 tip, the tip was actually paid.
Gaining Insight into Cash and Personal Card Spend
For some organisations, increasing corporate card adoption isn’t the right way to go. If this is the case in your organisation, you need to look at ways to get more insight into cash and personal card spend instead.
Lowering the receipt threshold for cash spend increases visibility so you can see how more of your organisation’s money is being spent – and optimise the risk of non-compliant spend.
You can achieve this insight without compromising the employee experience by using technology to capture more data from the receipts that employees submit.
Reducing Travel Booking Outside Your Online Booking Tool
When employees use an online booking tool such as Concur Travel you get confidence that an employee has secured your negotiated rate where appropriate. You can also flag non-compliant behaviour during booking to educate users and reduce the number of non-compliant bookings.
Of course, it isn’t always possible or appropriate for employees to use your online booking tool. Concur Travel users can add Concur TripLink, which brings outside bookings back into your organisation’s managed-travel program and optimises the employee experience.
Requiring Route Data for Mileage
When you have accurate insight into mileage spend you can start to look at how to reduce it. For example, there may be times when it would be more cost-effective for an employee to hire a car or take a train or taxi. You enhance controls and compliance at the same time because auditors can choose to view the route an employee took, optimising the risk of non-compliant behaviour going undetected.
Tools such as Drive capture and document mileage automativally, so you can gain vital insight while also enhancing the employee experience.
Reducing Miscellaneous Spend
The miscellaneous spend category is essential for businesses. However, we’ve seen over the course of the pandemic that miscellaneous spend has been one of the largest growing categories because employees have had to spend money on items that weren’t needed before.
When that miscellaneous spend also falls below the receipt threshold, you lose visibility and you lose the power to make informed decisions – such as where you might need to create a new spend category.
Take the Next Step to Achieving Best-in-Class
These tips are just the start. By harnessing the POWER in your digital spend management solution to drive best-in-class you could reap the rewards NOW. Watch our three on-demand webinars are packed with useful information and actionable insights.
You can also download the accompanying eBook What Does Best-in-Class Spend Management Look Like – And Why Does It Matter Now?