Based on our extensive industry and systematic experience, “Leading-Practice Travel & Expense Management” can only generate value to companies if the following Key Leading Practices are fully taken into consideration:

  • Simplicity and usability (e.g. mobile apps)
  • Integration to ERP and Credit Card
  • Lean and integrated process with high degree of automation
  • KPI and reporting/analytics in place
  • Simplified approval processes
  • Standard expense reports
  • Pre- and post-payment audit process in place

In order to achieve this desired state of excellence, it is important that organisations handle the following value drivers with utmost attention:

  • Strategy:
    • Alignment of Travel and Expense management mission and strategic principles
    • Clearly-defined, simple and communicated Global Travel and Expense policy template
    • Set up of Global Integration Strategy, considering inbound and outbound key integration points, application integration mechanisms, and list management set-up
  • Policies & Compliance:
    • Definition of rigor to drive Harmonisation and enforce policies & procedures
    • Definition of permissible deviations from the Global policy template to account for regional and local specifications
    • Differentiation by country, legal entity, division, function, and level in the context of setting up a uniform organisation unit structure
    • Standardised audit & compliance procedures (pre-payment and post-payment) by applying statistical measures focusing on materiality in terms of risk, value and transaction volume
    • Global vendor management through a dedicated category manager (e.g., Self-Booking Tool)
  • Process:
    • Definition of one common Global expense type catalogue, workflow, receipt handling and payment hold
    • Metrics and incentives to improve lead-time of the “Trip-to-Reimbursement Process” travel requests and expense claims
  • Organisation:
    • Definition of required capabilities, functional units, KPIs and key roles & responsibilities
    • Support services for “End Users” and Business
  • Compliance:
    • Establishment of governance on global and local level that differentiates between global and local roles and responsibilities
    • Use of defined vendors
    • Comply with policies
    • Means of travel
    • Travel Request subject to pre-trip approvals
    • Form of payment
    • Amount by type and employee grade
  • Tools:
    • Definition of automation and integration
    • Enhanced solution capabilities, e.g., Mobility Functionality, Receipt Imaging, Image Archival, etc.

Our FinTrans consultants have the capability to deliver the following five main services to your organisation, considering all of the above value drivers:

  1. Business Case Development Support
  2. T&E Strategy & Global Process Model Development
  3. Implementation of Global T&E Policy
  4. Process Mapping, including improvement and T&E recommended practice
  5. Harmonisation of Travel and Expense polices to Global standard

We are technology agnostic and will jointly work with our clients to evaluate and tailor the best solution to meet their requirements. Everything we do is aligned to the following“Guiding Principles”…

  • Business-driven:
    • Clarified mandate and mission
    • Strong global governance
    • Right fit of concepts and designs to mandate and mission
    • Aspiration to drive standard global travel and expense policies with a minimum of localisations
    • Focus on change management including: change impact analysis, communication, enablement through training and stakeholder management
  • Template approach-driven:
    • Global template design and implementation
    • Industrialisation by using deployment toolkits and standard implementation methodologies
    • Country-by-country preparation and enablement
  • Standard tool-driven:
    • Standardise the integration landscape
    • Processes and solution design following industry standard functionality
    • Configuration enhancements in existing standard solution
  • Global Delivery model-driven:
    • Leveraging our delivery center network
    • Offshore, near-shore and on-site resource mix

During execution, we follow our “Key design principles” for Global T&E Process design, regardless of the solution:

  • One global process and SaaS application
  • Consistent organisational setup with end-to-end responsibility
  • Employees are able to arrange their own travel and manage expenses
  • Leverage global data standards (Expense types, Standard CoA, Employee master data, etc)
  • Minimize need for manual intervention and strive for paperless processing where possible
  • One back-office auditing approach
  • Segment reimbursement requests into risk categories for audit
  • Enable T&E spend data analysis for procurement travel sourcing and internal control
Illustration: FinTrans’ recommendation on T&E set-up standardisation

Global Template

  • Standardised expense management process, including employee reimbursement options
  • Standardised Report Header Form
  • Standardised Expense types
  • Standardised expense entry forms
  • Consistent data capture in a single solution to provide basis for all "Global" and "Local" business reporting
  • Global travel and and Expense Management Policy rules embedded within the solution to support employee compliance

Local Requirements

  • VAT/GST
  • Per Diem
  • Personal Car Miles/KM
  • Statutory
  • Regulatory
  • Legal