For more than 80 years, general contracting and construction management firm Barton Malow relied on paper-based expense reports and receipts for reimbursement and ran a decentralized travel booking process. But by 2008, with 15 offices and more than 2,000 employees dispersed at job sites throughout North America, the company needed a more efficient system that offered a better experience for its employees while giving its travel managers clearer data visibility and improved control over T&E spend.
That year, the firm adopted Concur's T&E platform, offering for the first time a one-stop shop for electronic expense reporting and booking, along with a robust mobile component suited to the company's on-the-go employees. Sourcing Concur was a major step and required the firm to jettison its travel management company, which didn't support Concur's platform, in favor of Teplis Travel.
But implementation was just the first step, Barton Malow soon learned. To fully realize the benefits of a centralized T&E system, the company had to ensure its employees actually used the platform for expense reporting and booking, a task complicated by the diffuse nature of its workforce. "Our biggest takeaway was that a system is only as good as the support a company is willing to put into it," Barton Malow senior director of finance Brian Farhat said of the early years of the implementation. "You can have a great system, but you won't necessarily get the compliance and adoption if there isn't the right team in place to support it."
Over the past few years, accounts payable manager Jill Liegghio has headed those support efforts. Since joining Barton Malow in October 2016, she has overseen the company's T&E and corporate card programs with a particular emphasis on employee compliance and rolling out new auditing and reporting tools to give the company actionable insights into corporate travel spending.
One of her first major initiatives was Concur Expense Pay, which automatically reimburses employees and pays out corporate card billings for approved expenses. More recently, she rolled out Concur Detect by AppZen, which automates expense report auditing using artificial intelligence. Automation leaves more time for expense managers to communicate with travelers about their spending behavior, according to Liegghio. "Before, we had one person who all they did was expense auditing, so there was no time to give [travelers] feedback or do reporting because they were just trying to get reports paid on time," Liegghio recounted. "By adopting automation, we were able to cut down the workload and add in more reporting and communication that drives compliance."
The power of communication extends to booking compliance, as well. Barton Malow's in-channel booking rate now sits at 75 percent, and air booking tops 90 percent. Liegghio credits those results to clear and consistent direct e-mail messaging to travelers, especially around duty of care. "It's often just a lack of knowledge [that causes out-of-channel booking], and sometimes it does take a little pushing to change to something new," she acknowledged. "But through communication, we're able to impress upon our travelers the importance of duty of care and why they need to book within the tool so we know where they are and can contact them directly if we need to."
Even more-effective messaging comes from travelers who relay positive booking and expense management experiences to their colleagues, added Farhat. "Some people tend to be reluctant to change [to new systems and tools], but we found that as more people speak positively about the experience, that generates a conversation" that drives further desired behavior, he said.
To help create that positive experience, Liegghio rolled out Concur's ExpenseIt tool, which enables users to enter expense items by photographing them with their smartphones rather than having to manually enter information. That means Barton Malow's on-the-go workers don't have to get behind a computer to enter the details manually.
"We're always trying to find ways to make things better, even if it's just incrementally," said Liegghio. "The whole [expense and booking] process can be a hassle and it's not our employees' main job, so we have to find a way to make [our systems] as good as any other tool out there and make the process as painless as it can be."