Team Structure

[stsnyder1]

Hello! I am a new participant within this group. I am looking for those willing to share your organizational structure as it relates to Travel Expense Reporting.  Thank you in advance!

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear @stsnyder1 ,

as I noticed no one has answer your question, could you please be  more specific on your request?

[MSTEEN]

Hello, stsnyder1!

Welcome to the community!  Please send me an internal email.  I would be happy to connect and exchange ideas with you. 

Regards,

[stsnyder1]

Hi Maria

Thank you reaching out to me. I have received no responses.  I am responsible for management of travel expense reporting for close to 40K travelers including amex management, expense reporting, payment and purchasing cards for ~2K users.  

I am newer to the role and would like to change the team structure.  My team is focused on customer service type activities, payment/file processing, and continued roll out to remaining countries.  Although we have a global footprint, we have regional support centers who assist with travelers, although not a direct report into me.  

I am interested in know what others have as their support models.  If there is anything you can share that would be great!

[Munari_alEXPert]

I am a bit surprised to read that with a such vast organization (more than 40K employees) you have not been consulted and planned best approach from the Concur team once the system was implemented, or probably it was implemented before you started to deal with the Travel Expense program.

- Do you have a Concur account manager to contact?

- Who is checking the expense reports before sending them for payment? In your case I would have delegate it to Concur Audit.

For the credit card program, I would work closely with AMEX account manager to assure you are getting bi-mothly report of overdue cards and have your team dealing with the employees (as customer service) to follow up in order to clear oustanding items. 

Also from Cognos/Concur you should be able to get a report of outstanding (not yet paid) credit card transactions and have the same team (customer service) to follow up. 

[MSTEEN]

I’ve also encountered resistance from others to share the specifics of their Travel and expense program structure.

Let me share my thoughts on a high level description without giving away my secrets. 😉

1. Customer Service:
1. Travel:  Let your TMC handle all the travel questions, you are already paying for that service.  The travel advisors at the TMC would be able to answer most questions. 
2. Expense:  move traffic for all expense questions to the Concur help desk.  Have an expense subject matter person for all expense related questions not answered by the Concur Help Desk.  The Concur help desk will open a ticket for your expense matter expert to answer. 
3. Expense Audit
4. If your company has a ticket platform like ServiceNow, upload How-To documents for users to access in case of questions.  Encourage users to check these documents before sending email.
2. Analytical:
1. Ad-hoc reporting:  I am sure you have a lot of requests by management for reporting.  Your expense subject matter expert should be well versed on this utility to create and schedule the reports.
2. Concur Report Writer – this is an add on service.  Check your Concur agreement for the number of reports your company signed up.  Leverage this tool as much as you can.
3. Monthly and quarterly KPI and SLA for your team and company goals.  Use the results to improve and make changes to the policy.
4. Do the same for your card program by expanding the analytical person to handle the card program reports and KPIs.
5. Manage vendor and suppliers with monthly/quarterly reporting
3. Credit Card Program
1. Usually the bank has a program administrator to assist you and cardholders.  You will still need a person inside to manage the program.  The bank would assist the cardholders, move that traffic to them.
4. Operations
1. Training for users and your staff
2. Cross-training staff
3. Desktop procedures
4. Recurring news and best practice communications
5. Continue process improvement
6. Site review for both Travel and Expense
7. Custom field management.  The number of custom fields are limited and you should be aware you cannot purchase additional custom fields. A review of the custom fields will allow to re-purpose those that are not using and have little relevant data.
5. Hotel Program – Leverage the TMC services to manage the hotel program on a global stance.
6. Global Governance Committee – This is a way to engage all countries within your travel program to exchange ideas, challenges, and solutions each country faces and keep the company standards.   There is no owner but a chairperson, you are engaging your colleagues on all things Concur.  Use the forum to discuss policy changes, industry challenges
7. Leverage your Concur representative and your company’s leadership team for support to optimize your Concur T&E platform.
8. Engage with other companies within your industry for benchmarking purposes

I hope this helps.