Global consulting firm transforms expense management Slalom

June 3, 2021

3 min read

Summary

Emburse Insight Advisor helps organizations maximize the impact of their spend data by delivering sophisticated custom report authoring and analytics capabilities.

    Relying on cumbersome systems for expense management creates an inefficient reporting path. Constantly weaving back and forth frustrates everyone involved in the process. That’s a similar reaction Slalom heard when they got results from an employee experience survey.

    Spanning 39 markets over five countries, the consulting firm processes over 10,000 expense reports per month. Low user satisfaction scores reported by the survey brought to light a time-consuming expense effort for everyone.

    Slalom evaluated their entire process, and uncovered some specific challenges:

    • A dependency across the organization on an outdated system that frustrated users and admins alike
    • Slow reimbursement cycles compounded by a lack of mobile capabilities
    • Insufficient reporting and poor visibility into expense data

    With improving user experience top-of-mind, Slalom’s VP of Finance began evaluating alternate solutions that would make reporting expenses a more linear effort. Details of their move to Emburse are found in a recent customer success story.

    _______ "Emburse solutions save us time so we can focus on what really matters: transforming our clients’ businesses." – Rob Potter, VP of Finance, Slalom _______

    Straightening a previously twisty process

    While evaluating alternate solutions, Slalom focused intently on mobile capabilities, robust analytics, as well as integration for their corporate credit cards and travel booking tool.

    Emburse Chrome River stood out as the ideal choice to address their expense management requirements. Managed services add-ons like Emburse Solution Administrator and Emburse Insight Advisor helped chart a path towards increased efficiency. Potter also called out a shared customer-centric approach to business as a contributing factor in choosing Emburse. “Slalom’s mission is to help solve clients’ challenges through a people-first approach to technology innovation and services, and we felt that Emburse’s values aligned well with our vision.”

    A more linear, less frustrating expense management process emerged after implementation:

    • Their 10,000/month expense reports were now processed automatically
    • 20 hours of manual AP tasks were eliminated from the workweek
    • Managed services optimized administration and reporting
    • Mobile tools streamlined tasks for both users and approvers

    After rolling out the solution, Slalom surveyed users again. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Their employees expressed appreciation for investing in a modern, user-friendly expense reporting system. Admins conveyed their love for approving via email from any device—making reimbursement times much faster.

    According to Potter, Emburse solutions helped Slalom employees save significant time that can now be better spent serving their clients.

    Read the full customer success story for details about Slalom’s efficiency gains.