Learning Lessons from our Best Performing Assets

Throughout the course of the last 12 months, many businesses have learnt a huge amount about their people, their processes and the products they offer. Now is the time to take those lessons and look ahead to how your business can thrive and maximise the solutions you use.

With this in mind, we thought we’d share our most read content over the last year or so. Behind the links are white papers, guides, eBooks, blog posts and online demonstrations that our customers downloaded, and we hope you will find interesting too.

We’re kicking things off with our eBook - Think You Know SAP Concur? Think Again! It’s not just about taking your spreadsheets into the cloud or being the “expense” people…in this eBook we’ll show you how our complete spend management solution can drive value for your business.

Robust Foundations Help Growth

The 12 months has provided businesses with the strongest indication yet that having the right spend management solution in place is key to reducing costs and increasing efficiency. But keeping on top of administration and compliance whilst maintaining best practices can be challenging.

We have several resources which are ideal starting points if you need to refresh your processes. Creating a best practice expense policy provides tips on employee and manager responsibilities plus suggested costs and exclusions. This is well-supported by The Blueprint of a Best Practice Expense Process, which addresses end-to-end spend management from submitting expense all the way through to reporting on key data, covering the ideal approach for your business at each stage. Once you’ve established what works for you, you can guide your employees on how first timers can submit an expense claim.

Establishing supplier invoice and Accounts Payable (AP) structures is equally valuable but putting a business case forward for AP automation can be complex if you don’t know where to look. Our Buyer’s Guide provides key considerations for automated AP management, and our 10 Step Guide: Efficient Supplier Invoice Process will help ease the pressure on your AP team.

Once you’ve implemented an expense policy that works for your business, you need effective auditing. Different approaches vary depending on the industry and company culture, but with the Concur Audit: Closing the Gap in Compliance, there’s a whole host of guidance to help you improve your audit process.

Our self-guided invoicing and expensing demos also proved popular, providing step-by-step guidance on how SAP Concur solutions can work for you.

A final key takeaway of last year is that future-proofing your company is essential. Our white paper on How to Create an Effective Business Continuity Plan advises on business impact assessments, technology gaps, leadership buy-in, scenario modelling and communications planning to help you navigate any rocky waters lying ahead.

More on future-proofing your business with SAP Concur Solutions is available here.

Adapting to Your Surroundings

There’s no doubt that over the past year many company’s expense policies have adapted at pace to accommodate circumstances brought about by the pandemic. As we have seen greater flexibility in how people work, homeworking and travel expense processes should evolve alongside.

For a comprehensive look into business spend management, we put together FAQs on Managing Travel Expenses and Invoices. This eBook provides quick answers to common questions asked of finance professionals, including information on T&E policies, HMRC compliance and the need for Purchase Order (PO) Numbers.

Taking the time to reassess your expense policy allows you to reflect on what worked well for you last year. With working from home so much more widespread, you’ll find our piece on updating your expense policy useful when accounting for provision of internet, technology, equipment, phone, electricity and gas for your remote workforce. You can also overcome delays in the expense claim process by utilising automation, which is vital for employee welfare at a time of economic uncertainty.

Whilst hybrid working for many companies is now the norm, some employees still need to travel - areas such as reclaiming VAT on fuel and capturing mileage accurately can be tricky for employees so these blogs could also come in handy for you.

Business Support No Matter Your Size

Regardless of the size of your business, a couple of areas will always be key to your success – costs and efficiencies. Although you may be able to identify where to improve in this regard, implementation and integration can be less straightforward.

Finance automation is a prime example of this. When done well, SMBs can save an average of one day a week per finance employee and nearly £50,000 per year. With any solution you choose seamless integration of automation is crucial. Further information here on the experience of implementing automated finance and travel solutions backs-up the potential benefits, with ‘before and after’ experiences from 500 SMB financial decision makers.

Having the right spend management solution in place eases the strain on small businesses, helping to bypass hefty paper trails and administration costs. This can give you greater control over cashflow and monthly account management, and once you’ve established how much VAT your small business should pay it can expedite that process too.  No matter your size of business, improved insights on VAT and HMRC compliance will help you keep an eye on spend and maximise your VAT reclaim to become a more agile and resilient business. Written by a tax expert, the Expenses, VAT and HMRC Compliance in a Nutshell guide captures all the basics you’ll need to master compliance and it even contains handy links to useful sources.

And last but by no means least, the ever so popular Tips and Tricks guide - packed full with over 180 tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your SAP Concur solutions.

Whatever stage your business is at and however you have managed these uncertain times, it is important to not stand still. Solidifying and developing your spend management solutions pays substantial dividends long-term. But cutting through the noise and finding the right answers for your organisation isn’t always easy.

Keep an eye on our  newsroom for updates, insights and actionable advice for businesses of all sizes.