Consolidated expense system

Using our online booking tools to save our clients money

CASE DESCRIPTION

Gray Dawes has provided our client, an international marine vessel operator, with their full scope of travel services for over 6 years. The client has grown significantly in recent years, but they were conducting their business travel and expense management in the manner of a much smaller company:

 

  • Expenses submitted manually on a spreadsheet.
  • Each expense (over 500 per month) checked by a member of the Accounts      Payable Team – taking 1 day per month of their time.
  • Each expense is manually input into ERP System.
  • HR would manually cross check and approve each expense (from £2 for a coffee to £700 for van hire) taking 2 days per month of their time.
  • Invoices and receipts were posted / emailed to Accounts Payable

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROJECT

Gray Dawes reviewed the clients current process and worked in partnership with them to determine where they wanted to see significant improvements. Due to the cumbersome nature of their process we could see obvious areas for success would be significant process efficiencies and cost savings from the implementation of a consolidated expenses system.

Process efficiencies:

  • Reducing the time spent on booking travel, claiming expenses, approving expenses and the time travellers are waiting to receive the funds back into their bank.
  • Integrating an online booking tool which ‘speaks’ to the expense management tool for a seamless, consolidated approach.
  • Enable complete automation between travel & expenses and their travel policy

Cost savings:

  • Freeing up 36 FTE days (per annum) currently being taken up processing expenses
  • Mandating of travel policy to control, monitor and report upon costs
  • Eradicating duplicate claims (breakfast when already included in hotel cost, wifi, subsistence, parking etc).

Through human error, multiple claims had been processed twice.

THE RESULTS

Since the implementation of our online booking tool and Certify Expense Management, we have seen significant improvements across the clients account:

  • Achieved 70% online adoption for travel bookings. We rolled out a communications plan to deliver onsite & WebEx training, share ‘How To’ booking guides and videos and provide 24/7 assistance via the booking team.
  • We built a low touch approval process for all in policy expenses resulting in a 90% reduction in time spent processing approvals, freeing up their internal resources (Accounts Payable and HR)
  • Reduced their costs from £45 per expense claim down to £5.60 per claim
  • 99% policy compliance by blocking any travel expenses made outside of Gray Dawes unless it was exceptional circumstances / unavoidable.
  • A reduction in duplicate claims; providing a cost benefit to the client
  • Complete process efficiency through YourTrip and Certify integration.

Bookings seamlessly flow through to the traveller and their expense platform. They are now able to process their expenses on the move with less impact on their day-to-day job and ultimately get their out of pocket expenses returned to them asap. Other benefits include:

  • A much shorter lead time on expenses being processed, meaning the traveller is getting the funds back into their account faster.
  • Total trip cost visibility in an easy to report solution giving the client a clearer view of their budgeting requirements
  • Fully auditable
  • 45 reports to understand expense spend
  • HMRC mileage rates
  • VAT easily accounted for on all expenses

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