Although perhaps surprising, the vast majority of enterprise organizations are making decisions about their T&E budgets and overall spend without a complete view of theirdata. And although automation helps, it does not provide the full picture. Enterprises are not taking full advantage of possible savings in their T&E spending because of outdated systems that impede a timely and proactive spend management strategy. In February 2014, Forrester Consulting evaluated the state of T&E spend management in a study commissioned by Concur Technologies. In a survey of 348 financial decision makers around the world, Forrester found that T&E is the second most difficult item for companies to control. Most firms wait for their employees to manually enter their T&E data after the expenditure is already made so that the resulting T&E reporting process focuses on retrospective compliance and budgeting. Analysis of T&E trends and potential cost optimization, if done at all, is done primarily via spreadsheets.

KEY FINDINGS

› Data is entered manually.

› Companies are hampered by reporting shortcomings.

› Few companies have a real-time view of T&E.

› T&E systems lack of mobile capabilities.

› Businesses want more capabilities.