Small and midmarket companies are finding more opportunities to globalize expense reporting programs, particularly with upper management and travelers more open to change in the tough economy.
Two midmarket expense managers detailed their recent move to a global expense reporting system during August's National Business Travel Association International Convention and Exposition in San Diego. Andrea Williams, travel service manager for Baton Rouge, La.-based specialty chemical company Albemarle, said most companies today face global challenges regardless of size.
"You don't have to be as big as Microsoft or Exxon Mobil to be global," Williams said. "Pretty much everyone has global needs now."
Albemarle, which has about 4,300 employees worldwide and an annual travel and entertainment spending level of $12 million, recently switched to Concur's expense reporting tool but initially had no plans to roll it out globally, Williams said. The switch was aimed more at reducing costs around expense reporting, she said. "As we developed our global travel program, this also became part of the project," she said.
The key, Williams said, was to get executive buy-in from the beginning. This included not only the finance and IT teams, but also the company's sales heads.
"The biggest travelers are your sales force," Williams said. "With each implementation I've done, I've communicated with the vice president of sales both formally and informally."
The company since deployed Concur in seven countries and has implementations pending in three more. Williams trained employees for the implementation through Web-based applications, so she never had to leave her office in Baton Rouge, she said.
Williams said she was pleasantly surprised by the ease of implementation in China, which turned out to be even easier then implementing the system in Albemarle's headquarters.
Foster City, Calif.-based Gilead Sciences, which has about 3,600 expense system users in 18 countries, implemented a global expense system covering most of its footprint, said accounts payable manager Sharon Warmboe. Unlike Albemarle, Gilead had a goal of a global rollout from the start and began implementation in Europe.
The process began with an international team of general managers from several European countries who worked out the specifics, Warmboe said. The goal was to develop one global process, database and policy for the company, she said.
The first countries to adopt the tool were the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany, which had the largest populations for the company. Germany has a reputation for strict privacy and reporting regulations, and Gilead wanted to tackle the most difficult country first, Warmboe said. The rollout continued with two or three countries going live every few weeks, and the entire process took about nine months, she said. The only barriers have been in Greece and Turkey, where the company does not have language support from Concur.
Gilead's next step is the implementation of a corporate card program, Warmboe said. Gilead recently acquired a company that had the American Express corporate card in place and is using those employees as a pilot group with plans to have the full card program in place by year-end.
Warmboe and Albemarle's Williams said their global expense projects reduced expense report processing time, improved data capabilities and offered better visibility for audit and compliance reporting. Particularly for Gilead, which had used an expense spreadsheet, the data improvement was significant, Warmboe said. "If you don't have a tool, all you know is who you're reimbursing and for how much, not for what," she said. "It's improved the quality of reporting and compliance to our policy."