The Fred Hollows Foundation saves time and administrative costs with SAP Concur solutions

The Fred Hollows Foundation is a world-class, not-for-profit organisation with locations across Australia in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, and Darwin, and country teams in 17 global locations worldwide. By mobilising ordinary Australians, The Foundation raises critical funds to reduce avoidable blindness and has helped restore sight to more than 2.5 million people worldwide.

Why The Fred Hollows Foundation chose Concur Expense?

• Automates expense management for faster claims processing
• Reduces the risk of data error and improves claim accuracy

The Fred Hollows Foundation case study

The Foundation reviewed its systems and identified a critical need to streamline and improve its finance processes. Concur Expense, with the support of implementation partner, Zentae, gave The Foundation an opportunity to digitalise its finance system, reducing the time consuming, manual processes involved and pivot towards a streamlined, automated system.

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Bringing the focus back to finance

As a not-for-profit organisation, every dollar counts. The Foundation is accountable to every individual donor that supports the organisation as well as the general public. As such, it’s essential that The Foundation’s expense management system is accurate and that every transaction is correctly accounted for.

The Foundation reviewed its systems and identified a critical need to streamline and improve its finance processes. Concur Expense, with the support of implementation partner, Zentae, gave The Foundation an opportunity to digitalise its finance system, reducing the time consuming, manual processes involved and pivot towards a streamlined, automated system.

The Foundation’s Group Financial Controller Moneeba Dean said, “Staff were each spending at least one to two hours per month reconciling expenses, with the finance team spending additional time to review and process each claim. This was taking up valuable time that could instead be spent raising funds or managing programs.”

Digitalising expense claims to reduce time and costs

By automating the claims process, Concur Expense reduced that time significantly for The Foundation’s finance team.

Moneeba Dean said, “Spending one to two hours on expenses per month was a pain point for employees and it was taking away from the critical work that The Foundation does. Credit card holders were also finding the monthly reconciliation process labour intensive, as every transaction must be reconciled with every single cardholder account.

“For close to 50 people making at least three expense claims per month, this is nearly 100 hours of time per month that is spent reconciling expenses that could instead be spent on life-changing work to help end avoidable blindness.”

“The SAP Concur solution is an example of process improvement done right for The Fred Hollows Foundation. It has helped the organisation significantly reduce the time spent on reconciling expenses and has streamlined finance processes for The Foundations’ Australian operations.” Moneeba Dean, Group Financial Controller, The Fred Hollows Foundation

Achieving 20/20 vision for the future of finance

In the first month since deploying Concur Expense across its Australian operations, The Foundation saved close to 10 hours in processing time in its accounts payable team and expects this trend to continue. Additionally, close to 100 Australian employees have been trained on Concur Expense since deploying the solution achieving approximately 60 per cent uptake.

Rossi Campbell, The Foundation’s Project and Change manager said, “The finance team was thrilled with the uptake from the wider team. Everyone at The Foundation, including senior leaders, was incredibly responsive to this change and eager to trial the new system.”

Investing in a cloud-based system has reduced the need for The Foundation’s Australian team to print and file expense claims or to manually complete forms. This also helps the team to be COVID-safe by reducing the amount of paperwork and manual documentation that is shared among employees. Staff can photograph and submit expense claims from their mobile devices in real time, helping to further reduce the time needed to complete expense claims for employees.

Moneeba Dean said, “Concur Expense has given The Foundation a new way of doing business. It has helped the foundation streamline its finance processes, letting employees spend more time raising critical funds for the vision impaired instead of reconciling expense claims. It has significantly reduced the manual processes and admin hours involved in processing expense claims. With Concur Expense, it’s possible to set a smart immateriality threshold that automatically identifies when the threshold is hit, notifying the finance team immediately, so they can process transactions. It makes the finance team’s life easy.

“Additionally, Concur Expense has provided a great employee experience, especially for vision-impaired users across The Foundation. Employees who require screenreaders have provided positive feedback, reporting that screenreaders work effectively with the Concur Expense solution. This is a critical benefit for The Foundation.”

The future of Concur Expense and The Fred Hollows Foundation

The Concur Expense deployment is part of a three-phase project The Fred Hollows Foundation is undertaking with SAP Concur solutions and its implementation partner, Zentae. Following the rollout of Concur Expense across its Australian locations, The Foundation is starting to deploy Concur Travel components across the country to streamline its internal booking processes.

Additionally, The Foundation is already preparing to roll out Concur Expense and Concur Travel globally to its locations worldwide to streamline travel booking and financial processes. This will be a two-part, staged rollout for 270 people across 17 locations globally

Rossi Campbell said, “Any system change faces challenges for some employees, particularly those working in the field. However, the wider team at The Foundation across the globe is already starting its journey towards Concur Expense and is excited to see the tangible benefits the system offers.”

The Concur Expense deployment was delivered on time and under budget in collaboration with Zentae. As a not-for-profit, having the support of Zentae as the implementation partner helped significantly streamline the implementation for the team, helping The Foundation continue to focus on providing life-changing support to people who are blind or vision impaired.

Moneeba Dean said, “The SAP Concur and Zentae organisations are great partners to work with. The project team was fluid and great to work with; they matched the energy of our team and are the right partners for The Foundation."

“Concur Expense has helped The Foundation change for the better through more simplified processes. With the support of SAP Concur solutions, The Foundation has adjusted its finance policies and achieved more efficiencies, which let the finance team get more done in less time, setting a trend for the better.” Rossi Campbell, Project and Change manager, The Fred Hollows Foundation

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