Alcatel Telecom UK
For many companies the current harsh economic conditions have forced management to focus on expenses, both in terms of controlling cash spend and reducing administration costs. The challenge facing business today is to permanently reduce processing costs whilst delivering a greater quality and quantity of data quickly and efficiently for management reporting and tax compliance purposes.
Alcatel Telecom UK ('Alcatel'), one of the worlds leading communications companies, met this challenge by implementing a customised GlobalExpense solution, a complete end-to-end expense management service.
"We were aware of various technical solutions claiming to streamline expense management", explains Dylan Williams, Finance Manager at Alcatel, "but GlobalExpense stood out from the crowd due to its strong service offering. Many of the other expense management solutions we looked at required significant up-front investment, either in terms of the software and hardware required or the amount of configuration that would have had to be undertaken by external consultants or in-house teams. With GlobalExpense, those compliance features come as standard and there were no hidden costs"
The business case?
As is common for many companies, the finance department had a huge number of telephone calls to deal with. A significant proportion of these were from company employees seeking information on their expense claims. Williams explains, "We have a large number of expensed employees and the time spent dealing with expense related calls was of no value to the organisation and needed to be reduced. If a User needs to know anything about their expenses they are advised to call the GlobalExpense Helpdesk not the finance department. We only become involved in exceptional circumstances where GlobalExpense are unable to deal with the query."
The ability of GlobalExpense to work efficiently alongside the introduction of Company Barclaycard was paramount to its success" Williams states, "The reconciliation of Users statements was taking far too long. We needed to automate the accounting procedures so that we had greater visibility of all credit card spend." Because GlobalExpense takes weekly electronic feeds from Company Barclaycard, the finance team at Alcatel can now see all expenditure for all Users at the touch of a button at any time during the month. GlobalExpense has an automated reconciliation policy that tells Users the date by which they must deal with all transactions. If items are not dealt with, GlobalExpense generates a report for finance that reconciles all outstanding amounts.
"One of the biggest concerns we had over Company Credit cards was the timely submission and reconciliation of card transactions. With GlobalExpense, this is completed automatically which should significantly reduce the need to chase Users for information" said Williams. "With monthly statements, the Users only had 3 weeks to deal with claims. Now, with GlobalExpense providing weekly transaction feeds, this gives the Users up to 7 weeks to deal with claims and allows them to keep on top of their expenses without the need to spend hours pouring over statements trying to recall the detail of expenses from five weeks ago. GlobalExpense even reminds them when they have claims to deal with."
From an accounting perspective, GlobalExpense produces reports that are uploaded directly into the Alcatel ledger system. Williams is delighted, "Before GlobalExpense came along we had to enter a large proportion of expense items individually. Now we can simply upload a journal and use GlobalExpense for our detailed analysis which has had a significant impact on the time associated with expense reporting in the finance department."
The implementation
Alcatel decided to put GlobalExpense through is paces by running a pilot project and selecting a group of 40 Users made up of claimants and authorisers. Prior to training, GlobalExpense reviewed Alcatel's corporate expense policy to ensure it met with best practice standards and was compliant with Inland Revenue stipulations "The tax regulations surrounding employee expenses are complex and ensuring compliance is administratively very hungry for a large company such as Alcatel," explains Williams, "with GlobalExpense this was all part of the service, as they employ their own internal tax experts. In fact, any changes we requested were dealt with efficiently by the GlobalExpense team."
At the conclusion of the pilot, the feedback from the Users was very positive. The vast majority of Users felt that the adoption of GlobalExpense was a positive step forward, providing a better system for the Company and themselves alike. All accounting reporting requirements were dealt with during the pilot, which allowed Alcatel to commence the full roll-out of GlobalExpense with total confidence in its ability to meet their requirements whilst enhancing financial and management reporting.
Williams also cited the improvement of multi-site authorisation of expenses as a significant benefit of the web based solution. As with many multinational companies, claimants and line managers can be located at different sites or even different countries. Not only are the logistics of making and claiming expenses now improved but it is now much easier for line managers with cross border responsibility to control their own budgets as budget allocation and authority levels can be built into the system.
The Impact
As GlobalExpense is web-based, there was no strain on the resources of the IT department as a result of the implementation of a new solution. Users simply login on via their web browser and submit their expenses from anywhere in the world. There was no need to purchase any new software or hardware to get started.
"With our previous system we experienced significant peaks at the end of every month. Now, with GlobalExpense, Users can submit claims as they incur them, which reduces the strain on the finance team as the flow of claims is a steady stream throughout the month." Williams goes on, "One of the major advantages of GlobalExpense for Alcatel is automatic credit card pre-population. Employees are encouraged to make the majority of their travel and expense purchases using their Company Barclaycard. Data is fed to GlobalExpense so that when employees login to the system, their purchases are ready to forward for approval. Because GlobalExpense is designed and supported by chartered accountants, the allocation and tracking of cash advances and the review of un-reconciled credit card transactions is straightforward."
GlobalExpense founder and CEO, Ashley Whittaker, adds; "GlobalExpense is an accountancy service, which deals exclusively with employee expense management. The philosophy behind GlobalExpense is to take the pain out of employee expenses, both from the company accountants and the employees view point. The GlobalExpense team spend man-decades a year solving issues related to expenses from every angle to produce a state of the art service that is easily understood by employees". With GlobalExpense, employees login to the GlobalExpense Website and enter their claims into a secure front-end designed to make the process quick and intuitive. The claimant is guided to ensure all the correct data is captured and once entered, a claim is automatically forwarded to the authorisers for approval prior to payment. GlobalExpense is configured with a company's expense policy and the GlobalExpense team can also deal with receipt validation and payments to employees.
"We have in-house experts to deal with accounting issues such as tax compliance and the implementation of corporate expense policies and technical experts who have designed the interface to best capture information across the web, facilitating credit card downloads and enabling easy integration into accounting systems. Above all, GlobalExpense provides a rapid return on investment and reduces operational costs while increasing business efficiencies," comments Whittaker.
In May 2002 Alcatel commenced the roll-out of GlobalExpense across its entire UK offices and early reports are positive. "Claimants have minimal data entry due to the Company Barclaycard feeds and because GlobalExpense takes weekly feeds it has extended the time claimants have to reconcile claims without affecting the finance team" says Williams. "Overall, GlobalExpense will help us cut costs and increase efficiency by introducing tighter controls and improving the finance team's productivity. Without GlobalExpense it is hard to see how we can achieve any real value out of this largely government imposed processing activity."
Contact us
Phone us on
08717 40 80 10
