Synopsis
Expanding the geographic footprints is a great endeavor for businesses and an absolute necessity to remain competitive in the market. However, with a growth in business travel comes increased business expenses. The challenge lies in the hidden costs that drain the company’s resources. The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) report states that an employee spends 20 min average time on creating one expense report and another 18 min in rectifying the same. According to the same GBTA report, the average hidden cost sums up to 110$ on processing and correcting one expense report, varying according to the organization’s size. And a survey by Forrester states that travel and expense is the second most challenging operational cost to control in the business. Fortunately, travel expense automation helps business leaders streamline the T&E management system, make actionable decisions with enhanced visibility and accurate reports.
About the Client
Our client is the people’s choicest electrical and power distribution equipment manufacturer in the industry, ranking among the Top 10 in the Fast-Moving Electrical Goods (FMEG) sector. It offers a broad spectrum of electrical goods such as fans, home appliances, electric water heaters, industrial and commercial appliances, switchgear, and more. Having created a strong presence and extensive geographic footprint, the company continues to emphasize innovation and creativity.
Key Issue
Our client’s major challenge was lack of accurate travel expense reports, leading to many financial loopholes. They did not have a consolidated report of employees’ travel expenses incurred yearly, that disables business leaders gain visibility into the finances and make actionable decisions.
Our Solution
The client needed an RPA solution to remedy their travel and expense management, streamlining their process and enabling the business leaders to have a single dashboard view. The company selected RPATech as its digital partner based on its handholding capabilities and expertise in RPA and IA. Our RPA experts analyzed the client’s in place process using our in-house methodologies—D3OTM and AugurDTM— and created detailed workflow automation. Next, we configured a customized RPA Bot on the UiPath platform and deployed the solution into the client’s system.
- Travel expense automation begins with the Bot logging into SAP using a specified ID.
- Then, the Bot accesses the folder located in the specified location.
- Next, it opens bill images one by one and extracts relevant information such as date, description, amount, place, and GSTIN number using the OCR tool.
- After that, it fills the required fields in SAP as per pre-defined rules for a different type of bills.
- Lastly, the Bot creates a report of all the transactions and sends it via email to the designated user.
Automation Benefits
The results obtained with travel expense automation were as follows:
- Zero error rates.
- Accuracy increased by 100%.
- Average handling time was reduced by 85%.
- Quick ROI realization within a year.
- Approximately 2% cost saved with improved regulatory compliance.
