Automated purchase-to-pay process
by Pascal Benn, HRG Business Manager
A large accountancy and consulting firm wanted to fully automate a purchase-to-pay (P2P) process by moving travellers from using personal payment cards to one lodging card for the procurement of all business travel.
One of the critical factors for the success of P2P was the compliancy to booking channels. The client has 99% compliancy to HRG and a third-party online booking tool for air travel and only last minute flight changes on the day of travel were being purchased direct with suppliers. This is important for the capturing of certain key pieces of information which are passed automatically from HRG to the client’s internal finance system.
The process has enabled travellers to drastically reduce the number of steps to book, pay and be reimbursed for a flight from six steps to two.
The client expects to reap financial benefit from the process because, while they currently receive an incentive payment when travellers use individual corporate cards to purchase business travel, there is about 60% compliancy to the company’s chosen card. Therefore, any leakage is lost revenue. The move to P2P will significantly increase compliancy with the only exceptions being when an airline does not take the chosen card.
Additional financial benefits are harder to quantify but will be seen in time and productivity savings with travellers no longer having to make expense claims. The move to P2P has also reduced the risk of fraud and provided valuable knowledge for the extension of the lodge card to other areas of business travel such as rail and hotels.
The process has required changes in working practices and partnerships with all parties coming together, from HRG to the online booking tool supplier and the lodging card supplier, to ensure the systems communicated with each other and the right information was passed through, received and validated at the right time.
HRG has been involved in the process since the idea was proposed some years ago. In partnership with the client we created a strategy and worked with third party suppliers throughout to ensure smooth implementation of the process.