Top of Mind: Thirst for Actionable Data Advances IT Adoption

It's 10 o'clock -- do you know where your traveling employees are? Did they pay for parking and dinner with a company credit card, or did they pony up cash and collect paper receipts?

Considering that employee-initiated expenses are second only to payroll expenses within most companies' food chain of expenses, finance executives are determined to achieve ever-greater transparency into their employee travel expenses, as revealed by the results of a recent expense-management systems and processes survey conducted by Business Finance and Concur, an expense management software vendor.

When asked what was driving their company to consider implementing an automated expense management and control system, the most popular answer among survey respondents was "expense policy management/enforcement," which was followed by "analysis of spending" and "control of spending."

"ROI is often what gets companies' attention, but ROI is often not a primary driver behind the adoption of expense management systems," says Concur's vice president of product marketing Chris Juneau, who believes the survey's findings underscore the desire of companies to have greater control of the expense management process. "At the end of the day it's about controlling the process and getting visibility into the spend, where they can find actionable data," explains Juneau.