The University of Pennsylvania expects to complete this fall
the implementation of its first integrated online travel and expense management
system, replacing a paper-based system that separately addressed travel and
expense.
Penn's transition to Concur's travel and expense management
system began this year with a small pilot group of schools and centers,
including its Graduate School of Education.
Penn "had been on a paper system," said travel and
expense program manager Hilary Easley. "It's an inefficient way, and it’s
hard to have visibility."
Before Easley joined the purchasing department in July 2012,
Penn handled travel management and expense management as separate functions.
Representatives from Penn's purchasing, finance and computing departments
comprised a project team that consulted with internal stakeholders, benchmarked
with similar institutions and sought proposals for technology that could manage
both aspects of the process. The group eventually selected Concur's system.
After the university began using Concur, it moved expense
management oversight from the finance department to the purchasing department,
which handles travel, a Penn spokesperson wrote in an email. Previously manual
processes, such as traveler reimbursement and card provider payment, then were
automated.
In the single platform, Easley said, "it's a quicker
approval process and a quicker payment process, because we pay every
night."
Any faculty or staff member traveling on behalf of the
university uses a Bank of America-issued corporate Visa card for payment, and
once business expenses are filed through the Concur system, the university pays
the card company on the traveler's behalf.
Travelers also have the option of using personal credit
cards and being reimbursed. However, a spokesperson said using the university
card is the preferred option.
The university's breadth—16 schools with nearly 25,000
students and more than 4,000 faculty members, plus 16,700 support
staff [see correction below]—presented Easley a challenging undertaking. "One of the biggest
challenges initially was configuring this one system to serve the diversity of
all the schools and centers," she said.
At Penn, she said, each individual school is
responsible for managing its own finances and each has its own financial
management system. Easley and team must facilitate the integration of the new
central system into each school’s already-established set of financial
management practices.
CORRECTION, Sept. 9:A previous version of this report incorrectly noted the number of University of Pennsylvania support staff. The university employs a total of 16,700 support staff who utilize the Concur system, not 2,500. The latter figure includes only direct academic support staff.