This is the hidden face of a business trip, and probably one of its least glamorous stages: the tiresome expense reports. Although the business travel landscape has largely entered the digital age, "87 % of companies in Europe are not equipped with a business travel booking or expense management solution. As a result, their employees use Excel to enter their expenses, and consumer sites such as Booking to book their travel.says Sébastien Marchon, CEO of Rydoo. These are not the right tools for the job: you can't put in place a genuine travel policy. In terms of visibility, control and safety, it's a disaster.."
For travellers, managing expense claims is all the more frustrating, especially if reimbursement is slow in coming. After being forced to pay for a taxi journey, a business lunch or a train ticket out of their own pocket - and losing the necessary receipts more or less regularly in the process - they then have to keep a careful record of these expenses, to the detriment of other, more useful tasks. For the company, there is no added value in processing expense claims. The risk of deviations from the rules, and even of fraudThis, in turn, requires management to implement a control process. This mobilises other resources within the company and generates new indirect costs. However, auditing is all the more crucial because, in the event of an error, a tax audit could cost the company dearly...
But solutions do exist. They have even multiplied in recent years with the arrival of new players. Overall, the objective of these tools is the same, with a simplified, almost playful user experience. The business traveller carries out the transaction, photographs the receipt with his smartphone, and the character recognition system (OCR) does the rest by extracting the data required to fill in predetermined fields: amount, town, currency, merchant, VAT, etc. Better still, paper receipts no longer need to be kept thanks to thearchiving with probative value digitised invoices. For the employee, there's no more risk of losing receipts. For the company, there's no need to devote a room, or even a secure warehouse, to storing countless receipts for years on end.
The risk of deviations from the rules, or even fraud, forces managers to implement a control process. This mobilises other resources and generates new costs.
While not all technology vendors have progressed at the same pace in character recognition, due to a lack of conviction or resources, that time is now past. "OCR has become a standard"says Sébastien Marchon of Rydoo. For his part, Karim JouiniChairman and CEO of Expensya, agrees, even though, in his view, "not all OCR technologies are created equal. Today, almost half the players offer character recognition. But that's like boasting about owning a smartphone in 2019: between an entry-level model and the latest phone, the uses are very different.." Another important nuance is the geographical coverage of the technology. It's one thing to decipher a bill from a top Parisian restaurant, but quite another to extract data from a taxi bill in Shanghai. As for tax regulations This is another complex task. "The more users, territories, currencies and languages you involve, the more the machine will progress.explains Bertrand Blais at KDS. It feeds on mistakes. It's long and tedious, because you need a large volume of data to start learning.."
Consolidation and diversification
So how can you tell the difference between all the solutions available? In recent years, and even months, different strategic options have emerged. Market consolidation has pushed a player like Concur into the fold of SAP, another like KDS to American Express GBT or Traveldoo within the Expedia group. These publishers all claim a form of autonomy, while stressing that their increased financial strength gives them the means to develop the functionalities expected by their customers. What's more, this integration into a wider ecosystem allows them to play the synergy card, even if this relationship is double-edged. "In large groups, decisions will often be 'political': if a company decides to strengthen its relationship with American Express GBT, for example, and considers that KDS, which is a very good product, corresponds to its needs, it has its answer. But if it is not certain that its relationship with the agency will last, it will undoubtedly be more cautious."underlines Stéphane DondersCEO of Traveldoo.
Another strategic dilemma: diversification or specialisation. A player like Dimo Software has distinguished itself by broadening its scope. This was the case quite early on in terms of its customer portfolio, with the launch of an offering dedicated to public accounts to meet the specific needs of these institutional players. Then, more recently, Dimo has opened up to other areas with a new module dedicated, in addition to booking and managing expense reports, to the fleet management. "A number of companies want to see all these travel-related budgets converge around a single budget. mobility manager. Our aim is to help them optimise this management process"explains Gilles Bobichon, Director of Mobility Management at Notilus and co-founder of DIMO Software.a unique offering, with unrivalled depth of range and performance"Rydoo is also trying its hand at fleet management, although for the moment it is focusing on the Brazilian market.
How can you tell the difference between all the solutions available? Over the last few years, and even months, a number of different strategic options have emerged.
While some publishers are exploring new horizons, others are opting for specialisation by remaining focused solely on expense management. "We are truly a pure expense playerbut we are teaming up with the best players in the booking industry with whom we are building automated bridges to offer a seamless experience."says Karim Jouini, CEO of Expensya.
Between these two options, the majority of 'historic' players have opted for a third path, that of the "travel & expense. This means integrating travel booking and expense management, and capitalising on data reconciliation. At Traveldoo, Dan Fitzgerald points out that "Research published by Aberdeen Group shows that companies that manage their business travel and expense accounts together, and on a single platform, are generally more effective in achieving their objectives. Conversely, the absence of a unified solution leads to a problematic disconnection between these two areas of expenditure.."
A new entrant like Rydoo has adopted the same philosophy: "From the outset, we decided to cover travel and expenses, because we felt that the two go hand in hand.says Sébastien Marchon, CEO of Rydoo. It makes life easier to have a single platform: all costs are automatically associated with the trip, as are checks, VAT recovery, etc. History seems to be proving us right, with more and more partnerships between the two worlds.." At KDS, Bertrand Blais explains: "In our strategy, we are no longer really talking about two modules, but rather a platform that enables us to exploit the data passing between the booking and the expense reports. This is also where artificial intelligence comes into play: learning from the context of the booking to associate it with the expense claim, or even predicting what comes from the trip and is going to be transformed into an expense.."
After migrating the expense report to the mobile - a development that is still ongoing - the ambition is to anticipate future expenses and identify errors using artificial intelligence.
After migrating the expense report to mobile phones - a development that is still ongoing - the ambition is to anticipate future expenses and identify potential errors thanks to theartificial intelligence (AI). The aim is not only to 'ease the workload' for travellers, but also and above all to lighten the load of post-payment accounting checks. "We need to look further down the chain, because the accounting part is underestimated by many playerssays Bertrand Blais. The creation of the expense claim only represents 25 % of the process. The other quarter is validation by the manager, and the remaining 50 % is audit, accounting control, etc.." At Expensya, Karim Jouini says: "Managers don't always go all the way with checks, usually because they don't have enough time. We want to replace this control with AI, because our data now enables us to know what is outside the box. What's more, when it's the machine that rejects an expense claim, it's also more readily accepted than if it were the manager.".
Managing the chain from A to Z
A neobank like Spendesk is stepping up its initiatives to simplify life for companies and their employees by streamlining approval processes to give managers greater security and control, reassuring travellers about the expenses they can incur with their cards, dematerialising expense claims and automating reconciliation with payments. "The initial idea was to manage the chain from A to Z, to satisfy employees as well as financial management."explains Fabien Dawidowicz, Managing Director in charge of finance at the start-up.
The rise of fintechs such as Spendesk, but also Qonto or Mooncardillustrates another convergence underway, in parallel with that between travel booking and expense reports: the convergence between the payment and expense accounts. These players, born in the digital age, offer companies - mainly SMEs and SMIs - agile, technological solutions combining physical and virtual payment cards, optical recognition of receipts and accounting integration. "We enable mobile executives to travel with peace of mind with cards that free them from the burden of expense claims and all that goes with them - Excel files, dozens of receipts, and so on.says Fabien Dawidowicz. There's even a reminder system for those who haven't entered their receipts directly. It's simple and intuitive."
The rise of fintech illustrates another convergence that is taking place, in parallel with that between travel booking and expense reports: the convergence between payment and expense reports.
Challenged by these troublemakers and heckled by major groups interested in these new offerings, the traditional payment players also intend to extend their footprint beyond their comfort zone. BNP Paribas, for example, plans to develop services that go beyond the simple corporate card, whether it be a system for pre-approving travel expenses or for packaged solutions combining payment methods and expense management. The fact remains that with their centralised payment solutions, and the smart and virtual cards that enable a large proportion of expenses to be paid upstream, the payment specialists also have a strong desire to eliminate the need for expense claims as far as possible.
