CASE STUDY:

INTERACTIVE SESSION : MANAGEMENT

MANAGING TRAVEL EXPENSES : NEW TOOLS, NEW SAVINGS

1.    What kinds of systems are described here? What valuable information do they provide for employees and managers? What decisions do they support?

• Transaction processing system is a unique software system created to ease the process of recording, monitoring ,sorting , listing , updating and evaluating task or data related to any business in unit\units in manufacturing, shipping , airlines, Online business, sales, telemarketing, finance and accounting, human resource etc.

•      It’s highly beneficial for managers in senior and middle management level to plan, structure their goals and attain a logical decision based on the data from TPS.
•        Based on the useful data from TPS managers are able to organiz and assign task and responsibility to resources for accomplishment of their target.

•      Help maintaining records of the potential employee with their skills and talents, which is usedby the manager to train, develop and motivate their employees.
• ·    Based on sorted and listed data from TPS about the financial assets and firm’s financial record,managers in middle and senior management level plan budget and profit making of the firm.
• ·    In manufacturing and production industries, based on production goal, schedule and availability of production material data production planning is done at the management level. Similarly in marketing and sales, based on the information from market research, promotion and ads, pricing and customer identification, price analysis and sales forecast of a particular product is done by managers.

2. What problems do automated expense reporting systems solve for companies? How do they provide value for companies that use them?

·         Improved Policy Compliance : Automating expense reporting maintains spend limit and the set audit rules. Enforces spend policies on employees by making them to input the important data, making employee to maintain expense at certain limit and prohibiting them from entering expenses beyond limit by rejecting those entries.

·         Employee Ease : Top management and travelling employee who need to get their travel expense reimbursed are always at ease because of automated and integrated T&E system as there is direct deposit of their reimbursement to their account, reducing their round trips to banks and making them to stay focussed on their jobs.

·    Reduced cost and expenses : With automated integrated system companies have brought down the processing time of expense report, which brought down the company cost drastically.

·         Increased productivity : Since it reduces the turn-round time to get and compile data for managers; managers can use their valuable time in other activities like planning and organizing project activities, mentoring teams and individuals for the project.

·         Better deals due to enhanced visibility : Managers having access to automated system can analyze the reliable and quickly available data, giving them better access to areas where cost to the company can be cut or any malicious fraud can be stopped.

3. Compare MarketStar’s manual process for travel and entertainment expense reporting with its new process based on Concur Expense Service. Diagram the two processes.

• MarketStar’s manual process for travel and entertainment expense reporting system: Expense data that is entered manually on MS-Excel is commonly known as manual process of expense reporting system. Since these data can be audited and analyzed manually hence it is difficult to understand their correctness and their compliance with important regulatory bodies dealing with bribery and corruption.

• "MarketStar's selection of Concur Expense and Concur Time validates our solution strategy to provide a suite of proven Corporate Expense Management solutions for a broad range of core expense management needs," said Steve Singh, chairman and chief executive officer for Concur.

• Concur Expense automated the travel and entertainment manual expense reporting system making it highly efficient and automated. expense report preparation and approval were automated making them cost effective and time efficient. Reimbursement, and data analysis were also automated increasing the productivity, reducing time and increasing the efficiency.

4. What management, organization, and technology issues did MarketStar have to address when adopting Concur Expense Service?

·      Management : The Company had lots of expense reports which had to be processed and approved. 650 of the 1200 employees regularly filed expense reports to accounting department

·      Organization : Three full-time employees were required to manually approve, process, and audit 300 expense reports per week, most from remote locations resulting in delayed Expense disbursements delayed for several weeks

·     Technology : In addition to processing reports, MarketStar's staff was also equired to audit every single expense report to ensure that reports were accurately tabulated and all expenses were properly coded.

5. Are there any disadvantages to using computerized expense processing systems? Explain your answer.

There are very few disadvantages of using computerized expense processing systems:

·       Expense : Expense of buying the software, later expense incurred while upgrading the software and then buying new software license while installing it on new upgraded operating system is more than using manual expense reporting.

·     Training: The cost involved in training people each time the software is upgraded or changed is also one of major disadvantages. Apart from cost, it may be time consuming as sometime resource may find it difficult to adapt to new software.

·         Dependency: Dependency on computer and server to maintain huge data may be also disadvantageous, when there is case of server down or in the worst case server crash. The time and cost involved to recover the data may be very huge.