Seeking T&E Visibility Capabilities for Companies

Following a study carried out by Forrester Consulting that was conducted on behalf of management solutions, it has been found that organizations still find it difficult to control and optimize the expenses relating travelling and spending (T&E).

‘The Power of Real Time Insight’ study assessed the research which was based on decision makers totaling to 348 across the globe. The objective was to determine how data analytics, better visibility and reporting can assist ‘T&E’ spending in companies. The research revealed that T&E is among the difficult financial items that companies find difficulty in controlling. It is only after the expenditure is incurred that most organizations sit back and wait for their staff to enter their data manually. Therefore, any cost optimization and trend analysis will be primarily filled through the spreadsheets.

The Forrester study also came up with the following findings;

- That there is no real time approach to the data and eighty percent of the organizations depend on the T&E manually entered data

- That forty two percent of the organizations were unable to obtain any information from unrelated sources even the external systems.

- That most of the organizations lack the capability of processing such invoices as rental car charges and hotel bills automatically

- That sixty percent of the interviewed respondents affirmed that accessing information through the mobile devices is quite limited and that there is a chance for accessing business insights immediately.

- Forty three percent of the respondents agreed that the ability of creating and modifying reports is what the present tool of T&E analytics lack in offering informed decisions and business insights.

From the findings of the Forrester research, a number of companies are dealing with entering data manually and face limited visibility into the expense behavior of their employees. According to Robson Grieve who is Concur’s vice president, this places companies in an indifferent position in terms of corporate spending. He further observes that their mission is to build up a mobile first solution that is automated which helps employees expenses populated in real time. Consequently, organizations are therefore able to acquire real time insight into the data in order to optimize spending.