Case study: Curtin University boosted expense management automation, responsiveness and user experience

Curtin is an innovative, global university with locations in Western Australia, Dubai, Malaysia, Mauritius and Singapore. Curtin boasts a rich diversity of cultures, and is known for its high-impact research, strong industry partnerships and commitment to preparing students for jobs of the future.

“The manager of our Operations Accounting team has asked that we replicate Concur’s FBT configuration in our financial system to save even more time on FBT reporting because of it’s streamlined, user friendly setup.” Anita Treasure, Business Solutions Designer

Why Curtin University choose SAP Concur?

Curtin University needed to incorporate additional functionality into its existing Concur solution to increase the level of automation and responsiveness in its expense management processes, particularly receipt capture and processing both for users and the Finance team.

Curtin University case study

"Automating just 20-30% of our expense claims was enough for us to achieve a return on investment for the project.” - Anita Treasure, Business Solutions Designer, Curtin University

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Curtin University’s introduction of Concur mobile app dramatically improves user experience

Curtin University’s Financial Services team first implemented Concur in 2006 as a system to centralise the management of its staff and student expenses. When Curtin’s Finance Business Improvement team took ownership of the Concur solution in 2016, it gave Curtin the opportunity to explore new functionality in the platform and identify areas for process improvement.

The implementation of the Concur mobile app with ExpenseIt for receipt management has enabled Curtin to automate a lot of the manual receipt handling and simplify the user experience, freeing up time for the Finance team to spend on more strategic activities, saving costs and reducing the delays in expense claim processing and reimbursements.

“When our Finance Business Improvement team took on ownership of Concur, it gave us the opportunity to explore the software and discover how we could better use the solution,” said Anita Treasure, Business Solutions Designer, Curtin University. “We quickly realised that adding OCR capabilities through the Concur mobile app and ExpenseIt represented huge potential cost savings. Automating just 20-30% of our expense claims was enough for us to achieve a return on investment for the project.”

Up until that point, Curtin’s expense management process had been very manual for approximately 5000 FTE staff and EFTSL students using the system. Claimants had to manually scan and email receipts to the Finance team, who then processed them in Concur. It was only then that the acquittal process could start, resulting in significant delays before staff and students could be reimbursed.

Process Improvement and Automation

With the introduction of the Concur mobile app, Curtin used the opportunity to completely reconfigure the system and the expense management processes.

One of the biggest changes to make the system user-friendly was to revise the expense types to be more descriptive for end-users, and to automate the calculation of FBT (fringe benefit tax) by asking users a series of simple questions that help our taxation team to determine correct FBT treatment. This FBT automation had allowed the taxation team to calculate real time FBT payable which has led to more transparency of FBT costs and better decision making by Curtin departments.

Corporate credit card data feeds are now automatically pre-populated in Concur, which makes it easy for users to match up the expenses when they upload photos of their receipts or forward their receipts via email or the mobile app. Curtin has also linked up line items with merchant codes for additional automation, and integrated Uber for Business, with e-receipts from trips flowing directly into the user’s Concur account.

“Some of our staff have up to 40 Uber receipts to process a month, so that integration alone makes a huge difference,” said Ms Treasure.

Addressing Change Management

With the legacy expense processes firmly entrenched, one of the biggest hurdles for Curtin was change management. Initially, staff had to get used to new ways of submitting their expense claims, via a new system that required their staff or student ID number rather than their email address. Having freed up their time through increased automation, the Finance team championed Concur and led the change management and user engagement initiative across the business. Curtin ran information days, training sessions and one-on-one meetings with managers and administrative staff.

As a result, Curtin has seen the percentage of Concur mobile app users increase from 5% to more than 30% in 18 months, and 100% take-up by new staff and students.

In December 2018, our strategy to promote the Concur app expanded from one-on-one training to group demonstrations presenting Concur App demo across the University to try to increase usage, from providing live guidance on installing the app, uploading receipts using their mobile phone to learning some quick tips. We are increasing our demonstrations frequency to focus on new corporate cardholders.

• 15 demonstrations in 2019
• Locations throughout Bentley Campus, Tech Park and Perth City Campus
• Advertised through Curtin Weekly, Staff Portal, Yammer and direct emails

We have received positive feedback from staff members who have started using the app that it is easy to use and saves time. Frequent travellers and those who are constantly on the go find the app very handy and useful. Customers have also appreciated having the interactive in-person sessions as opposed to referring to reading materials.

Time Savings and Responsiveness

By far the biggest benefit for Curtin has been time saved across the entire business through automation. The Finance team’s time has been freed up to focus on more strategic activities, such as transitioning its multi-faceted financials and student management system to the cloud.

Expense claim errors have been reduced by 30% and real-time data has improved compliance reporting.

For Curtin students undertaking sponsored travel or attending conferences, Concur is enabling them to track their expenditure in real-time against their allocated budget, and have their claims processed by the time they return home.

Future Integrations and Innovation

The success of the project has seen Curtin exploring further cost-saving, automation and integration opportunities. For hotels seeking preferred status, selection criteria now includes their ability to offer e-receipts. Curtin is planning to integrate Airbnb for Work and Ingogo with Concur, as well as streamlining the data input from its business travel management provider AirPlus.

“ExpenseIt is a convenient way for staff to forward emailed invoices and receipts from suppliers to their Concur account. This in turn improves the speed of processing reports and reduces manual data entry for our Finance colleagues. This allows us to focus more on our service delivery and providing support to our valued customers” Adeline Yanuar, Manager Transaction Processing, Curtin University

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