Receipts that travellers accumulate in their wallet or in an envelope, at the risk of losing them; sums that are carried by hand or, at best, in a notebook. Excel file Invoices that have to be sent to the management controller... Expense reports are often a source of error. tedious and time-consuming process. All the more so as this thankless task distracts the employee from his or her primary mission, as claims for reimbursement are most often made during working hours.
The 2016 survey on expense claim management carried out by KDSpublisher of self booking tools (SBT)A survey of 780 French employees revealed that 43 % of them still use spreadsheets to draw up their claims. It also revealed that 59 % spend between thirty minutes and an hour on this task, and 18 % more than two hours. A long time, but easily reached when the expenses incurred exceed €1,000. The manual processing and checking of claims, which takes up a lot of the resources of the financial departments, can also result in a fairly long repayment period, ranging from sixteen days to one month, according to 27 % of the employees surveyed.
"Many companies are not yet equipped with technological solutions and use good old-fashioned methods such as an Excel spreadsheet."confirms Patricia MorosiniDirector of Business Travel Selectour network. "The market is still fairly disparate, with companies with 200 employees equipped with high-performance tools on the one hand, and establishments with several thousand staff on the other, still using paper or Excel spreadsheets."says Julia Vulcain, Managing Director of the agency. Frequent Flyer Travel.
Solution owners
Over the past decade business travel agenciesor travel management companies (TMCs), have already ushered in a new era for companies looking to cut costs by introducing a travel policy and deploying a booking tool.
In the age of Big Data, the next step is to add an automated expense management solution. This technological symbiosis between booking, travel and expense management has become so important that the major players have stepped up their purchases in a bid to make a high-tech leap forward. Egencia has bought Traveldoo in 2011, the GDS Amadeus has set its sights on IT solutions provider I:FAO in 2014, before American Express Global Business Travel last year to get its hands on KDS.
With its booking tool Neo doubled its expense claim management solution Expense ManagementKDS offers end-to-end support. And Amex is likely to be tempted to sell this solution exclusively to its new customers in the future. For its part, Egencia, the business travel arm of the Expedia group, has made its subsidiary Traveldoo one of its official technology suppliers. Egencia is now marketing three new offers with different levels of services and functionalities, ranging from the simple - but effective - management of expense reports with Open Sync to the complete solution including Egencia Travel & Expense reservations, not forgetting the opening up of the tool to partners with Open Connect. "Whereas companies used to be able to choose a booking tool and an expense management tool from two different suppliers, the technology on offer today is increasingly limited. The choice of SBT now influences the choice of expense management tool"says Cédric LefortSenior Director of Solutions Consulting at BCD Travel.
For their part, TMCs such as Carlson Wagonlit Travel, BCD Travel, HRG or FCM Travel Solutions have opted for partnerships, notably with KDS, to meet the needs of companies where its solutions were already deployed before it was acquired by Amex, but also with Concur, Traveldoo, Dimo Software and Cytric Travel & Expense, the Amadeus tool.
"All booking tools have an expense management solution. The interfaces have become highly intuitive, enabling business travellers to get to grips with them quickly and save time when entering data.explains Patricia Morosini of Selectour Affaires. Travel agencies need to know how to recommend the right solution to their customers, depending on their profile and the type of travel undertaken by their employees...". While technology suppliers offer broadly the same functionality in their expense management solutions, it is important to note that this is not the case for all of them, prices vary from one tool to another. "Everything depends on the needs and objectives expressed by the company, its level of maturity in business travel management, and also its budget, because this tool is expensive, confirms Julia Vulcain of Frequent Flyer Travel. Deployment starts at around 30,000 euros, but can be multiplied by five or six depending on the number of employees involved and the size of the company's entities in France and around the world.".
The potential number of companies to be equipped, be they major accounts or small and medium-sized businesses and industries, is significant and is attracting a great deal of interest from professionals. The Group's Edenred In 2015, it entered the market for medium-sized companies with its Ticket Travel ProThis includes a booking tool, a nominative and configurable Mastercard payment card, and a space where all expenses are automatically recorded.
As well as being easy to use and saving time for the employee, the advantage of an expense claim management tool is that it gives the company an up-front view of the cost of business travel, enabling it to validate planned expenditure. "The challenge lies in controlling expenditure and ensuring that the company's travel budget is respected, and then in automating and ensuring the reliability of flows to recover all the expenses incurred, so as to have a complete picture of the company's travel budget. overall budget visibility"says Julia Vulcain. "The new tools provide an overview of the cost of an assignment," confirms Patricia Morosini. The company can therefore calculate the return on investment -the ROI of business travel". On the other hand, the aim of this a priori control is also to reduce open bookingThese are bookings made outside the traditional circuit, or which do not comply with the company's travel policy.
What's more, an expense management tool can limit any cheating on certain items. "If a passenger uses their mobile phone to order a Uber or book by credit card on theAirBnBthere is no no traceability for the company, no data integration or compliance with security measures, underlines Cédric Lefort. Thanks to our partnership with Concur, BCD Travel is able to offer its clients a universal connector that integrates all travel data into a single expense tool. Regardless of the SBT or channel used.". And Cédric Lefort emphasises the need to integrate the players in thecollaborative economybut also new suppliers, particularly low-cost suppliers, and different payment methods such as corporate, hosted and virtual cards…
Integrating new players
The TMCs surveyed claim to be able to automatically process expense claims for all suppliers, including VTCs, business meals (see box below) and travel in personal vehicles. Concur, for example, is tackling mileage costs with the Smart Drive. Integrated into its Expens software, it uses the smartphone's GPS to record the number of kilometres travelled, calculates the amount of expenses based on the distance travelled and automatically includes them in the expense claim. For its part, the Moovcard solution has been positioned since autumn 2016 in the journeys in VTC, taxi and moto-taxi via a mobile application, a website and a prepaid account system for automated expense management for businesses. "The trend is to integrate third-party players such as Uber, G7 taxis or Business Table in order to centralise expenditure even more effectively and gain an overall view of the cost of travel. It also makes it possible to know where employees are"confirms Julia Vulcain.
It is not only the HR, accounting and finance departments that are pushing for the adoption of an expense management tool, but also, very often, the Information Systems Department (ISD) for reasons of standardisation and integration of all flows in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions.
Ultimately, the cost of computerised management via an integrated solution is advantageous. Amadeus estimates the cost at around €6, compared with €23 for manual management, the gain depending on the degree of automation of the entire business travel management chain. According to thePayStream Advisors study taken over by KDS, "companies that fully automate their spend management process can achieve an additional 39 % reduction in processing costs compared to using a process that still involves manual steps". The technological leap forward could be accelerated by the presence in companies of millenialsThese are 18-34 year-olds with a smartphone in their hand, who are keen to use simple, effective mobile applications to book and carry out their business trips, while managing their expense accounts.
Witness photos
Faced with its already well-established competitors, Spain's Captio intends to make a difference on the French market with a 100 % mobile management tool. This new player offers automatic scanning of receipts via a photo taken from a smartphone or tablet. The application records and classifies key information (amount, supplier, type of expense, date, etc.) before automatically verifying expenses. "The automatic reading system avoids manual input and human error. To simplify back-office management, Captio imports statements from other means of payment, such as employees' business cards."explains Myriam Zanatta, Marketing Director for France.
Similarly, the French start-up Expensya offers a mobile and cloud-based solution for managing expense claims. KDS is not to be outdone, having also adopted this process of digitally photographing payment receipts in its Neo Expense tool, which can be used to optimise purchasing processes, automate expense claim processing and reconcile supplier invoices.
Other advantages for the company raised by TMCs include VAT recovery. "It is sometimes difficult to reclaim expenses incurred abroad. An expense claim management tool will help financial departments by identifying what can be recovered"says Patricia Morosini of Selectour Affaires. "An expense solution facilitates audits and feeds into reporting tools. It allows you to identify areas for potential improvement."adds Cédric Lefort of BCD Travel.
