Organizations are now under constant pressure to improve resource efficiencies and improve profits. Identifying new revenue streams is an essential contributor to this goal. However, that alone is not enough. With several departments, disparate teams, and a global business environment, organizations demand optimized processes that provide granular clarity into expenses. Plugging the leaks while developing the capacity to manage growing expenses are essential capabilities for organizations today to improve their bottom line.
Why look at expense management?
Developing the capability to manage expenses well not only improves profit margins but also ensures that organizations can cater well to their internal and external customers. Instead of spending time managing expenses, organizations can focus resources on high-value tasks such as improving customer satisfaction.
Clarity on organizational expenses and spending helps organizations make smart financial decisions and plug revenue leaks. One of the areas that contribute heavily to expenses and thereby renders itself a perfect candidate for expense management is travel expense management.
For retail businesses that see extensive travel, managing travel and related expenses together make eminently good sense. Expenses on travel come after payroll as the second-largest cost in any organization. Managing travel expenses well, with clarity and granular information gives retail organizations insights they need to improve the bottom line and drive informed decision making.
Travel and expense management need help from technology
Combining travel and expense data helps organizations get insights into the complete picture of their travel and expenses spend. They can then assess if all claims are aligned with the travel policy. They can check if the right suppliers are being used, expense limits are being followed, etc.
Manually running expense costs across excel sheets is a time-consuming, effort-intensive, and often, error-prone process. Eliminating human error is nearly impossible especially if the business is looking at high travel volumes. Even with moderate volumes, making sure that all the expenses are covered to the last detail can be difficult even for the most productive individual.
Instead, organizations can now get complete clarity into their travel expenses and manage these well with the right technology solution. However, it is essential to choose the solution well. Not all are created equal in the travel expense management universe.
Organizations have to look for a completely integrated travel expense management solution that can manage both travel and expense processes from end to end. Such a solution gives organizations the transparent insights they need to drill down into employee spending, ensure policy compliance and safeguard the bottom line.
Intuitive digital solutions like SAP Concur deliver this transparency to organizations and help them manage their travel expenses better.