Spend Reporting Made Simple

Our clients are a global pharmaceutical company and a large consultancy firm. Both companies were looking for a solution that would provide them with complete visibility into all categories and activities and understand how decisions made at the time of booking flow through into the outcomes reported via Finance.

The Challenge

Our clients have an inconsistent spend report due to a difference in what is externally reported as ‘spend’ and what is internally used for business management. Part of the issue with linking activity undertaken with the reported spend impacts is that moving parts in the process operate on a different measure and allocate and assign the value to the spend at different points. This leads to a level of complexity that often leads to the various transaction types being treated as irreconcilable.

The Solution

For many years, PredictX has linked booked transactions to their eventual payments, firstly via the payment method and then through expense reconciliation at a later date. Our aim to see what happened on a trip has allowed travel teams to view the many categories of activity as being part of a whole. This means that it becomes possible to look at the cost ascribed to a trip from the ‘core’ air and hotel parts and the onward costs incurred in ground transportation, meals, and other areas. In addition, looking at spend values holistically allows us to compare differences in value between data sources - such as the difference between a hotel booking and a final value paid at checkout.

The Impact

This approach was implemented by both companies, which quite quickly led to fundamentally different ways of managing their travel program:

• There was a renewed focus on what behaviours drive increased final costs through expenses.
• Our clients now understand that travel activity is only really finished once the expense report is paid and all items are accounted for.
• The companies now have visibility into all categories and the whole chain of activities.
• They understand how decisions made at the time of booking flow through into the outcomes reported via Finance.

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