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SOLUTIONS IN FOOD Vandemoortele’s partnership with MobileXpense: ‘Fast Implementation and Open Communication’ Testimonial by Johan Bohyn, Country F&A Manager at Vandemoortele NY Why did Vandemoortele take the decision to start using a travel and expense (T&E) management tool such as MobileXpense? Bohyn: ‘I was at Thomas Cook for a number of years, and in early 2001 we appointed MobileXpense as our travel and expense management tool. Throughout the past ten years I have worked with the system and, I must say, I have been very pleased with it. Consequently, when I started at Vandemoortele as Country F&A Manager last year, I was surprised to learn that they were still using a manual and paper based process to manage travel requests and expense reports. The whole workflow – from travel requests, travel bookings, submission, expense claiming, approvals and controlling -­‐ was done manually. They did not use corporate credit cards or T&E software to automate the whole process and, of course, no integration into our SAP back-­‐office system. This meant that each employee had to submit their individual finances themselves before they were reimbursed. For an organization such as Vandemoortele, which has more than 90 active personnel on the road each day, this was a huge labor-­‐intense activity. Were there any difficulties in implementing MobileXpense at Vandemoortele? Bohyn: ‘Vandemoortele has a rather complex company structure (16 companies with 16 different links to our accounting systems and 16 different manual workflows for T&E management), but this didn’t seem to make the implementation complex. ‘ ‘The implementation was very smooth and very fast, mostly due too the wonderful help and dedication of the project manager of MobileXpense.’ ‘The first thing we implemented was the use of Corporate Visa credit cards. We encouraged all employees to use their card for booking flights and hotels, using cabs, or paying for lunch. The main advantage was that every expense that was paid for with the corporate credit card was automatically uploaded and allocated to the correct user in MobileXpense. Another very important benefit of MobileXpense is that it easily and efficiently integrates into our SAP back-­‐office system.’ How many days/weeks did it take for MobileXpense to be up and running at Vandemoortele? Bohyn: ‘The implementation was very fast-­‐paced and it took less than 3 months from the first meeting to having the first expense report created and settled.’ Which factors were critical to the success of the MobileXpense implementation? Bohyn: ‘We had three people dedicated to us for the whole implementation process, and each knew Vandemoortele’s manual T&E process by heart. In addition MobileXpense allocated us a project manager who guided us through the implementation and set up process.’ ‘The dedicated and professional MobileXpense project manager meant the whole implementation process ran very smoothly.’ ‘I must say that with the open, swift and proactive communication between our people and the project manager, the implementation of MobileXpense into our system was flawless.’ What will be the added value that Vandemoortele will experience by using MobileXpense? Bohyn: ‘More control over our expenses, a clear workflow of who is responsible for approval, and last, but not least, the automatic integration into our SAP system.’ ‘My personal grade for MobileXpense and their implementation process is a 9 out of 10. I would definitely recommend MobileXpense to all other companies!’ Johan Bohyn -­‐ Country F&A Manager – Vandemoortele nv 12 September 2012