Transforming Corporate Spending Processes: T&E and AP Best Practices and Digitization

Every business or organization essentially has two financial flows revenue and expenses. Money coming in is, obviously, what keeps a business afloat and allows it to operate for any extended period. However, once the money comes into an organization, there needs to be a surefire way to track expenses and keep costs minimal and manageable. That’s why the spotlight is on transforming the travel and entertainment (T&E) and accounts payable (AP) processes. This two part seminar will explore modern best practices, the impact of digitization and the critical controls to consider for your T&E and AP processes.

Part 1 – T&E Best Practices and Process Transformation

Technology may have opened up new ways for individuals to connect, but there is still no substitute for face-to-face communication. U.S. companies collectively spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on travel and entertainment. Considering that travel and entertainment spending also represents a big part of the typical company’s budget, the efficiency and effectiveness of managing employee expense reports can have a significant impact on an organization’s financial performance and profitability. And business travel is continuing to increase as evidenced by the statistics below.

• Business travel is expected to grow to $1.6 trillion in annual spend by 2020 (GBTA).
• Business travel is expected to grow 6% between 2018 and 2019 (Deloitte).
• U.S. travelers took 462 million domestic business trips. This figure was forecasted to rise to 499.4 million by 2022. (Statista)
• In 2017, the United Kingdom spent $50bn USD on business travel (Statista)
• Business travel is increasing disproportionately. When surveyed in 2018, 77% of travel managers in India expected their company to spend more on business travel in 2019. In Spain, 25% of travel managers shared the same view (Statista)
• The proportion of women business travelers is growing. In the US, 47% of business travelers are now women (CreditDonkey).
• Business travel accounts for 22.2% of the contribution of travel and tourism to Europe’s GDP. Business travel in Western Europe grew 4% in 2017 versus 2016 (Spendesk).

Finally, to stress the value and importance of the T&E process, The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed chief financial officers and other financial managers across the U.S., U.K., France and Germany earlier this year, and found that more than 60 percent lack complete visibility into company expenses. According to Coupa, which commissioned the report, the data revealed the importance of migrating T&E processes to the cloud, enabling digitization of expense data and allowing managers to gain visibility into that data.