What Does Automating Expense Reporting Have to Do with Boosting Productivity and Company Performance?
More than you may think.
According to Gallup’s latest “State of the Global Workplace” report, just 15% of full-time employees are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. This means 85% – nearly all employees across industries – are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job.
It’s a shocking number – and something every business, large and small, needs to address. As a financial decision-maker, you understand the implications of this data on your company – the kind of negative impact that unmotivated employees can have on your company's performance and the high cost of replacing highly skilled staff who leave. So, it’s critical that you take an active role in mitigating these impacts by focusing on improving the employee experience. According to research by AMI-Partners focused on small and midsize businesses, increasing employee satisfaction and retaining top talent or among the top challenges these companies face.
The challenge is figuring out where to get started – because the concept of “employee experience” can seem a bit vague. But consider yourself, for example. Do you work to your true potential and willingly go above and beyond the call of duty when you are:
- Not enthusiastic about what you do or how you’re expected to do it?
- Bogged down by cumbersome, paper-based, manual processes?
- Unable to do work where you want, when you want, even while traveling because your company hasn’t implemented mobile-friendly systems?
- Working harder and longer than you should – and often on weekends – because your company’s processes aren’t designed to help you get work done efficiently?
Most likely not – and neither are other employees. So use your own experience as a starting place.
AMI-Partners’ research sheds light on where you, as a financial decision-maker in a small or midsize business (SMB), can get started, and it’s right in your purview: automating travel and expense management in ways that enhance the employee experience and increase the bottom line. Consider the fact that 93% of SMBs have employees that travel for work on a regular basis. This means nearly all employees have to use your current process to create expense reports. This makes travel, expense, and reimbursement processes high-touch, high-impact processes for nearly every company.
The AMI-Partners’ study notes that the majority of SMBs worldwide still rely on manual processes for managing and tracking employee travel, expenses, and vendor invoices. Only 21% of SMBs worldwide are using a dedicated travel and expense solution. And more than half of small and medium-sized companies do not have well-defined travel and expense policies. As a result, employee expenses are often managed on a case-by-case basis, which leads to confusion (for example, are receipts required for reimbursement or not?) and inconsistent approvals.
An automated travel and expense solution – such as the Concur Travel and Concur Expense solutions – can help you establish straightforward policies that are in alignment with your company’s processes and then enforce them through the use of simplified templates. Automated travel and expense management also increases policy control by guiding employees to book travel through approved channels that you define. This vastly simplifies the process for employees on the go and gives them peace of mind.
At the same time, Concur Expense can also reduce unproductive man-hours and employee frustration and reduce costs by cutting down the time they need to spend on tedious expense forms. For example, instead of saving receipts, taping them to sheets, and manually entering data into a spreadsheet, employees can take photos of receipts with their cell phone using an app that auto-populates relevant data into an expense report. The app can also capture data from travel booked using popular Web sites – all in real-time – enabling greater efficiency and a better overall experience for employees.
See the power of expense automation for yourself by exploring the Concur Expense self-guided demo. In just two minutes, you’ll see the true power of expense automation in action – and understand how it can transform your employee experience in ways that boost productivity and drive better business performance. As noted by AMI-Partners, customers of SAP Concur solutions save, on average, US$23 dollars per expense report.
View the Concur Expense self-guided demo now!