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WH Smith outsources expense claims management process to globalexpense
Leading retail group moves expense claims process out-of-house to improve cost control, compliance and employee satisfaction
The WHSmith Group has chosen to contract out its expense claims process to travel and expense business process specialists, GlobalExpense. GlobalExpense’s outsourced business process solution will enable the retailer to enhance control of costs across the group and increase employee satisfaction while improving compliance with the company-wide expense claims policy and tax legislation.
WHSmith has approximately 2,500 employees who make expense claims during the year, 50% of which are regular, monthly claimants. In common with most employers the current process is entirely paper-based, placing a heavy administrative burden on WHSmith’s payroll department, in terms of answering employee queries on their claims, checking that these claims are accurate and within policy and gaining appropriate authorisation.
Yvette Lamidey, Group Compensation Manager at WHSmith, explains, "We have found that we can actually spend more time processing expense claims than we do processing payroll submissions. Outsourcing the process to GlobalExpense will remove the administrative burden, tighten up on compliance with our internal expense policy and give us the opportunity to analyse expenses and really improve the value we get out of our travel and expense budget. Additionally, we will be able to offer our employees reimbursement on their expenses within four days of the expenses being authorised, as opposed to a monthly payment - a vastly improved service which has already been greatly welcomed internally."
She continues, "Whilst GlobalExpense has improved upon our existing process and service to employees and managers of the business, this improvement has cost no more than the old process and holds out the potential for considerable savings from enhanced cost control travel procurement, and budgeting from more accessible expense data. Whilst we are pleased with the current level of our compliance with internal policy and legislation implementation of GlobalExpense will ensure that compliance is of the highest order and removes risk from human error within the department."
GlobalExpense will automate WHSmith’s whole expense claims process, and take the entire business process out-of-house. GlobalExpense will handle and reconcile all of WHSmith’s paper receipts and provide the company with 24x7 electronic expense submission and approval, electronic reporting and management information, while integrating all the claims into the company accounting system.
Lamidey comments, "We were lucky to be able to call in the expertise of Bill Kirwan, Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, to work with us in our selection process. We had evaluated a number of competing expense management products, and this highlighted that GlobalExpense was the most holistic solution on offer, and Bill was able to confirm that it was clearly the most favourable in terms of its tax reporting capabilities."
She explains, "GlobalExpense works closely with the Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise, to ensure that the system is always in line with the latest legislation, and this will assist in ensuring that we remain fully tax and VAT compliant. But just as importantly, because we are outsourcing the entire business process to GlobalExpense, we can have the solution we want straightaway and start to see return practically immediately."
WHSmith is one of the UK's leading retail groups incorporating market-leading companies in retail, publishing and wholesale news and magazine distribution. The retailer is scheduled to complete rollout across the whole group during the summer.
Ashley Whittaker, Founding Director of GlobalExpense, adds, "WHSmith is another major milestone for the growth of GlobalExpense. Blue chip clients such as WHSmith prove that business process outsourcing is deeply penetrating the UK corporate world and that even the biggest companies believe specialist providers can make a real difference to the actual and potential results of their organisations."
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