Reimagining expense management: There is an AI for that.

How can you best create a seamless user experience while ensuring the proper control and governance processes are in place? Dealing with logistics around booking travel should be the least of your worries before you embark on a business trip to meet an important client. Never mind the additional hassle of looking for receipts and entering the expenses into the system after the trip. Not only is this process cumbersome, but it is also prone to error and time consuming. With limited to no visibility to the spending until after the fact, budgeting and controlling expenses can become a guessing game. 

But expense management doesn’t have to be complex.

Remember the envelops full of paper receipts? Now there is an AI for that.

Recently, SAP Concur extended its partnership with Mastercard in a bid to simplify the expense management process, by leveraging a new integration that automatically captures and populates purchases made via the Mastercard corporate cards in the Concur Expense platform. The system can also alert the users right away if further actions are required. Beyond providing a better user experience and connecting with the users at the moment that matters, automated expense creation also helps to improve cost control and policy compliance, enabling organizations to better leverage data to drive decision-making across the enterprise. Automation can also help streamline operations and reduce manual tasks and errors. Gone are the days when we need to manually enter the receipt amount, date, location, expense type; the AI model can do that for us now when we upload the receipts via ExpenseIt.

Technology at the forefront

While the future will undoubtedly be chartered by the advances in AI, however, as an organization, we must also make sure we are ready for it, both technically and operationally. As investment in digital transformation gains momentum, CFOs are playing a more crucial role than ever — managing risks and addressing complex financial challenges while helping position their organization for growth. This requires a tighter partnership between CFOs and the rest of the executive suite. The changing dynamics is reflected in the SAP Concur CFO Insights Report from March 2024, where an overwhelming 99% of CFOs responded that their relationship with the head of HR is of strategic or operational importance. Meanwhile, cost control and AI dominate the top priorities when it comes to collaborating with heads of IT. Surprisingly though, only 12% of CFOs indicate that they should work with the CIO on employee experience matters using technology at work, despite 43% complaining about unsatisfactory ease-of-use in their cost control tools. Perhaps this is a timely reminder that digital tools are only as good as their users; addressing the user experience gap is crucial to ensuring that digital transformation projects don’t turn costly experiments that can’t scale.

It starts with good data and talent strategies

When it comes to adopting and scaling AI projects beyond pilot, having the right data strategy is extremely important. As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. Much like the need to build a solid foundation for a high-rise, data serves as the foundation for AI. Having high-quality data in place, knowing where the data comes from and ensuring proper privacy and security controls are in place are some of the key elements to successful AI implementation, so that organizations can get the maximum value from their investments, while reducing potential risks and exposure to the firm.

But there is more work to be done. According to Gartner Leadership Vision eBook detailing CFO’s vision for 2024, finance lags other administrative support functions in using and scaling AI.  Size of firms plays a role as well, with just 16% of CFOs in mid-sized firms indicating that they are investing in cutting-edge technologies such as AI, versus 42% in large firms, as reported by the SAP Concur study. With a startling 58% of finance leaders indicating that they understand very little about AI in finance, bridging the talent gap, along with upskilling and reskilling team members, will be essential to ensure that the organization has the right talent with the essential skills and mindset in place to support the transformation journey. From enabling more accurate forecasting and more effective risk management practices, to improving efficiencies and cost control, AI holds tremendous potential in transforming financial operations of organizations and beyond.

Can we envision a future where the expense process can practically manage itself? In an era where companies are increasingly being asked to deliver more with less resources, using AI to automate mundane tasks and remain competitive might just be the business applications that we can all root for.

Catch my latest conversation with Christopher Juneau , SVP, Head of SAP Concur Product Marketing, where we continue our conversation on how SAP Concur is reimagining business travel and expense management experiences with AI-powered solutions.

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This article was sponsored by SAP Concur , but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent SAP Concur’s positions or strategies.