Getting Your Company on Board with Automating Company Spend

In the current business landscape, digital transformation is essential for companies striving to remain competitive and resilient. However, achieving greater efficiency with fewer resources poses significant challenges, sometimes making it difficult to secure buy-in for finance automation from stakeholders who are content with existing paper-based systems. 

If you're committed to advancing your company's financial operations but encounter requests for further information, we're here to provide valuable insights and talking points that can help you rally support for embracing spend automation. 

What business problems can spend automation solve? 

In a twist on a familiar saying, sometimes you need to spend money to save money. Especially when it comes to building your company's technology infrastructure. And the sooner you can get up and running, the better. 

Spend management automation can help businesses quickly start saving money on travel, expense, and vendor invoice processes. Organizations using SAP Concur solutions achieved an average 406% return on investment over three years, with a payback period of just 5.1 months. By automating travel, expense, and invoice processes, organizations can reduce manual work, improve compliance, and give finance teams greater visibility into company spend. 

Learn more: Automated Spend Management for Financial Services 

How you may be missing out on growth 

Foregoing spend management software and managing everything manually is, of course, an option. But there is a clear cost of doing nothing. Lost opportunities and unmet challenges mean missing out on growth. 

• Artificial intelligence proliferates: AI deciphers receipts and invoices, personalizes trips, deters fraud, and strengthens analytics. But AI’s use is built upon automation. Businesses cannot benefit from one without the other. 
• Spending evolves: The how, where, and what of spending changed with remote and hybrid work. Desks, internet, and other charges now appear on cards as part of stipend programs. Multiple travel booking channels compete for attention with corporate tools. Employees prefer flexibility and consumer-friendly tools. All test your control, costs, and legacy systems, ultimately slowing you down and stifling growth. 
• Tax and compliance shift: Tax authorities around the world are increasingly going digital in their pursuit of compliance and revenue collection. Automation and AI can help your keep up to date in multiple jurisdictions and manage taxable employee benefits and value-added tax (VAT). You can also reclaim a higher percentage of the VAT you’re due. 

What business problems can spend automation solve? 

The shifting economic landscape has made a lot of businesses redefine their long-term strategies, including using automation to improve their processes.  

Top finance leader pain points included... 

• Incomplete documentation 
• Fraud/risk management 
• Difficulty tracking spending trends and behaviors 
• Employee experience issues with manual expense and invoice management workflow 

The top three expected benefits of digital transformation included... 

• Improving business process efficiency 
• Enabling the business to run successfully whether employees are in the office or working remotely 
• Making faster progress in digitizing finance processes 

And the savings reported after adopting SAP Concur solutions for spend management included... 

• 72% reduction in lost receipts 
• 53% decrease in expense reporting errors 
• 55% reduction in auditing efforts 

You can keep these points in mind when you have conversations with other stakeholders. But it’s also important to acknowledge the issues your stakeholders and their teams are dealing with that spend automation can specifically address. 

How to tailor the business case to each stakeholder 

To get a clearer picture of what your stakeholders’ needs are, ask them how the following benefits could impact their teams in the everyday and the longer term: 

• Streamlining processes, eliminating manual processes, and improving compliance with policies. 
• Ensuring corporate data security and regulatory compliance, built-in policy compliance, and meeting duty-of-care requirements. 
• Having clearer visibility into employee spend, financial reporting, and spend management processes. 
• Getting control over costs and savings through supplier negotiations. 
• Improving safety, satisfaction, and ease of support for travelers. 

Align with your finance leaders and CFOs 

Your finance leader or CFO knows your company’s finance process inside and out—including its pain points. They might also already see how the company could benefit from automating its spend management. 

So they might not ask, “Why?” but “Why now?”—which is a good opportunity to lead with the speed to ROI. In addition, remind them that automation can also help them bridge the gap in finance processes for all work arrangements, gain real-time visibility into cash flow, and keep up on shifting compliance regulations. 

Helpful resources for finance leaders include: the Concur Expense ROI Calculator and Concur Invoice ROI Calculator, and The Finance Leader's Guide to AI-driven T&E guide. 

Are you a finance leader looking for talking points to get buy-in from others? Check out: How the CFO Can Create Partnerships and Boost Company ROI. 

Aligning with your AP team 

With an automated spend management solution, you can connect all your company’s finance applications and platforms for a much more efficient, streamlined process. And when your accounts payable team has an up-to-date view of all outstanding AP items, finance decision-makers have a clearer idea of what decisions need to be made—and when. 

AP automation can help your team avoid making late payments, find opportunities to pay earlier for discounted rates, and get insights to help negotiate better rates with vendors. 

Helpful resources for AP include: Concur Invoice ROI Calculator and AI-Powered Accounts Payable Automation: A Buyer’s Guide. 

Are you an AP pro looking for talking points to get buy-in from others? Check out: How AP Teams Can Create Cross-Functional Partnerships and Boost Company ROI. 

Aligning with your IT team 

Your IT team will play a major role in the company’s transition to full spend automation. Be sure to communicate that cloud-based automation of your finance processes can help your IT team: Centralize finance technology into a single platform, protect company and customer data, and create secure and integrated back-end systems. 

Helpful resources for IT include: From vision to value: How IT leaders can drive smarter spend management, AI in travel & expense management: 8 top questions for IT leaders, and learn about our world-class security. 

Are you an IT pro looking for talking points to get buy-in from others? Check out: How IT Can Help Boost Company ROI with Automated Spend Management 

Align with your HR team and employees 

Your human resources leader is familiar with employee pain points and can help determine the best way to use automation to solve these issues. Talk to your HR team about how automating the finance process can benefit the company and its people by: Reducing manual tasks for employees—for submitting and processing expenses and invoices—so they can focus on higher-value and more rewarding work, as well as ensuring duty of care for all employees. 

Helpful resources for HR include: this eBook on how to make employees happier. 

Are you an HR pro looking for talking points to get buy-in from others? Check out: How HR Can Align Across Teams for a Better Employee Experience. 

5 steps to build a business case for spend automation 

1. Explain the difference between simple digitization – spreadsheets and electronic payments, for example – and fully connected cloud-based solutions that bring near real-time spending visibility. 
2. Assess how current solutions perform and establish benchmarks. Use the information to demonstrate efficiency, cost or labor savings, productivity gains, and other measures influencing ROI. Don’t overlook softer categories like employee satisfaction or reduced risk. 
3. See what outside analysts and reviewers say about specific solutions, so you can make informed comparisons and vendor recommendations. 
4. Explain how automated solutions are flexible, extendable, scalable, easily implemented, and able to operate globally. 
5. Align expense management automation’s benefits with top company priorities, whether growth, efficiency, sustainability, risk reduction, employee experience, or all of the above. 

Is spend automation suitable for small businesses? 

Some organizations with separate spend management solutions still have silos, as the solutions aren’t linked to one another or an ERP.  Other businesses think they’re too small for managed travel programs. It’s likely not so, considering the potential costs and risks of doing without. 

Smaller businesses should determine whether their current approach: 

• Provides control and can guide travelers to the best rates, make compliance the easy choice, obtain discounts, and get the most from every dollar. 
• Wastes travelers’ time because booking requires bouncing between websites to find flights, lodging, and rental cars. 
• Puts safety at risk because they can’t easily locate travelers when problems arise and lack ways to share updates on health issues, natural disasters, and trouble spots. 

Connecting your finances, connecting your teams 

When you meet with decision-makers in your company, ask about their challenges and work together to help solve those issues. Take note of who seems clearly ready for change and on board with digital transformation. And be sure to collaborate with the team members who can help you get buy-in across the entire company. 

Being a good listener is key to building bridges and finding ways to set up your company—and its people—for greater efficiency and success. 

Ready to start a transformation conversation? Feeling stuck in your journey? Contact us. 

FAQs 

What is spend management automation? 

It uses integrated, cloud-based tools to automate travel, expense, and AP processes, cutting manual work and errors, enforcing policy, improving visibility into cash flow, and enabling AI-driven insights and VAT reclaim while integrating with your ERP. 

How do you build a business case for spend automation? 

Clarify “why now,” baseline current costs and cycle times, quantify savings and risk reduction (e.g., early‑pay discounts, VAT reclaim), validate with external benchmarks, outline a phased rollout with IT/security fit, and tie outcomes to top priorities. 

Which stakeholders should be involved in spend automation? 

Include Finance/CFO, AP, IT, HR, Travel/Procurement, Tax/Compliance, and key business leaders, ideally under a steering committee to align requirements, prioritize releases, and drive adoption. 

What are the most common objections to spend automation? 

Common concerns are cost, disruption, security, and “manual works fine”; counter with fast payback and ROI, phased deployment, enterprise-grade controls, and hidden costs of status quo (errors, fraud risk, slow cycles, poor visibility).