Forrester Consulting has released a study on the state of travel and expense management, as seen from the perspectives of 348 financial decision-makers across companies with 500 or more employees globally.
The report, which is available for download here, was commissioned by Concur to highlight the state of the travel and expense reporting environment.
Some of the key findings include:
- Manual entry of expenses remains standard, even in companies that have automated reporting solutions in place. This manual entry situation is a reality for 80 percent of surveyed companies, where T&E data is entered after the event or trip by employees.
- Multiple sources of data are problematic, as 42% of firms were unable to successfully gather the data necessary for complete T&E reporting due to lack of inter-operability.
- Real-time tracking of expense data is desirable but only a quarter were able to see this data in a comprehensive, real-time fashion.
- Mobile access is also desirable, yet 60% were unsatisfied with their ability to see - and act on - this data via mobile devices.
- Reports lacking, as 43% of respondents said the lackluster ability to create custom reports was a huge issue.
The research also found that travel and expense management ranked number two as the most problematic expense category, as far as ability to control the expenses.
As far as the data backing the above stated percentage of 80% which rely on manual entry for expense data, the breakdown is spread evenly across internal solutions and third party vendors.
In order to target improvements in the available features for travel and expense management, the survey also asked respondents to identify the most pressing issues driving concern for an expanded feature set.
The survey was carried out in February 2014.
The full report lives here.
NB: Abacus image courtesy Shutterstock.