Strategies to saving costs with efficient expense management (2018)

Did you know most successful companies try to reduce costs by looking at big-ticket expenses such as payroll, real-estate and Travel and Expense Management?

T&E is always seen as a straightforward process, not associated with risk. Thus, often times, it falls out of the ambit of controllable expenses. But, with the evolving trends, businesses now see travel and expense management as a key aspect of reducing costs. Businesses now use tools to automate expense management, thereby, getting better visibility and insight into spending trends of the employees.

Challenges of conventional expense management tools:

Expense management has always been managed with an ERP solution. Most ERP solutions allow finance teams to look into the fyled expenses of their employees. But, most times, they require manual entry and lack automation and innovation. This makes the process and long and tedious one.

As per a recent study, it suggests 35% of companies still use a paper-and-spreadsheet based workflow.

This only goes to prove just how difficult it makes the process of documenting, validating and approving expenses. Needless to say, finance teams most often, have little to no insight into spending trends, duplication or forgery of bills and policy violations.

Evolving trends in the Travel and Expense Management sector:

• Most successful businesses have now moved towards automating and streamlining their processes. This includes the adoption of the right tools to increase efficiency and oversight into their processes. This development, however, is not uniform across industries.
• These T&E management solutions automate expense report management, along with providing travel booking support. The reasons that companies have adopted these tools in the first place is manifold. But there’s a cluster of common pain points that make them turn to expense automation tools.

Here are some reasons why businesses opt for expense automation tools: 

These pain points need to be addressed, in order to find viable solutions to reduce costs and build efficient processes. For example, the most common issue faced by companies is manually filling expense reports.

A recent study indicates that eliminating manual expense reporting, organizations are increasing efficiency and employee productivity, while also reducing costs. 

How are companies achieving these goals?

Companies are leveraging expense analytics to make better decisions that reduce manual work. This alows them to save valuable time which can be used productively, otherwise. The scope of how companies can save costs and time by hitting their T&E goals is a topic worthy of a deep report, and that’s what we have here.

To help companies achieve their T&E goals, Paystream has coupled Advisors’ survey data and market research and crafted this report. It explores current trends for both expense management and travel booking, details features of leading TEM softwares and provides strategies for accomplishing TEM goals.

It’s yours to read, and you can download it here.

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