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Employee Buy-In Is Key To Successfully Implementing T&E Automation
Like other types of Business Process Automation (BPA), T&E automation has the potential to streamline processes, save employees time, cut costs for the company, and improve user experience.
Unlike most other BPA modules, though, T&E is something that affects almost everyone in the company. It’s not like accounts payable automation, where the finance team is the only one interacting directly with the software. When you update your company’s T&E process, it impacts the finance team as well as everyone in the company who travels and/or submits expense reports.
With so many users, implementing a new T&E system becomes more challenging. Research by McKinsey & Company shows that large-scale transformations fail about 70% of the time, and that number has held steady for about 10 years. In contrast, when leaders engage employees in the transformation, those organizations see a 70% success rate.
Engagement Before Automation
Transforming the T&E process will impact many employees and executives outside the financial department. Depending on your organization, it might impact every single employee in the company. With so many different people involved, the new T&E system has to meet a variety of needs beyond those of the finance team.
Updating T&E starts with the finance team, but it should also include IT, HR, and frequent travelers from across the company. Set up a focus group before you even choose a software supplier. This group should be able to address finance, legal, tax, HR, and IT considerations about implementing a new software program, as well as the perspective of travelers who will frequently use the system.
McKinsey’s research shows that if “frontline staff members feel a sense of ownership,” transformation success rates are around 70%. If those “frontline employees take the initiative to drive change, transformations have a 71 percent success rate.” If both of those things happen, “the success rate rises to 79 percent.” It’s crucial to secure employee support for T&E automation early in the process, particularly from those who can lead others to embrace change.
Understand and Communicate the Why
Different groups of people have different things they want from a T&E process. When you’re asking them to learn a new process that’s different from the one they’re already familiar with, you need to provide a compelling reason for the change.
Executives are likely most interested in how the new T&E process will impact the bottom line. The finance teams will want to know how the T&E process affects their workload. Travelers wonder if there will be any benefits to them personally from the effort to get used to a new system.
Answering those questions will help you secure buy-in from different groups. Executives need to know that automation streamlines financial processes, freeing up finance teams to use their time efficiently and focus on tasks that can’t be automated. Finance teams need to know that T&E automation makes their jobs easier. Travelers should know that the new system will be user-friendly and speed up reimbursement turnaround so they receive their money faster.
Identify Metrics to Track
When you’re making plans for implementation and considering the benefits to everyone using the software, take the time to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can track to measure the success of the implementation. Examples of key metrics to track include:
- Operating margins. For example, how much time does T&E automation save the finance team? What insights does the software provide into spend management?
- Data accuracy. For example, what number of duplicate expenses does the software identify each month?
- Employee satisfaction. For example, does the new software reduce reimbursement turnaround time? Is it easy for employees to submit receipts and expense reports?
Tracking these metrics helps you measure and report on the success of a new T&E system. It can also reveal any potential issues so you can correct them early in the implementation process. If the KPIs you’re tracking aren’t showing improvement, then you can work with your software provider to customize the software solution to better serve your company’s needs.
Choose the Right Solution
Picking the right software solution to match your company’s needs is critical when implementing any BPA program. It’s particularly important for T&E systems because the user experience will impact so many people. Also, if T&E automation is part of a larger automation initiative in your company, you’ll need to make sure that there are no software conflicts between the T&E program and other financial processing programs.
One way to do this is to plan on implementing a software suite from a single provider. It’s important to identify larger goals early on in the planning process so you can make sure that you choose a provider that includes all of the software solutions that you’re going to need. NextProcess is one very few BPA providers that provides a suite of software modules that can provide a true end-to-end solution. Our modules cover budgeting, capital project management, procurement and purchase orders, accounts payable, travel & expense reports, document management, and payment disbursements.
From the earliest phases of planning T&E automation, you should communicate with employees that automation like this typically increases employee satisfaction. Specifically, NextProcess’s travel and expense automation makes it extremely simple to submit receipts, generate expense reports, track the approvals process, and receive claims faster.
User-Friendly NextProcess Features
There is often a high level of dissatisfaction with current expense report processes. Employees might be resistant to change, but many are also not satisfied with current systems. Communicating that this new automated system will solve a lot of common pain points experienced in T&E claims can go a long way towards ensuring employee buy-in as the software implementation rolls out.
For example, employees who currently have to collect paper receipts and submit those physical receipts should know that with NextProcess, they can simply take a photo of the receipt and upload it to the T&E system from their phone. Once the expense claim is submitted, employees can log into the system to track its status and see when they will receive reimbursement. Typically, reimbursement happens much faster with automated systems than it did with traditional manual systems.
Employees on the finance team also benefit from the user-friendly features of T&E automation. Customizable features in the program allow you to set pre-approved categories of expenses and thresholds for expenses, which helps weed out expenses that wouldn’t be approved without employees needing to review them. The system can also catch duplicate expenses, producing a higher degree of accuracy in the process without an additional burden on the finance team.
Curious about how NextProcess’s user-friendly T&E system can streamline expense reports? Contact us today to learn more and schedule a free demo.
