How World Vision Balances Global Spend Management, Local Realities, and Responsible Innovation

Managing travel and expense is complicated for any global organization. For World Vision, the challenge looks very different. The humanitarian organization works across more than 100 countries, including fragile environments where stable internet, electricity, and even card-based payments can't always be assumed. At the same time, World Vision must maintain financial controls, support employees on the ground, respond to local requirements, and demonstrate to donors how their funds are being used. 

In a recent episode of SAP Concur Conversations, Jeanne Dion, Global Vice President of Customer Advisory at SAP Concur, spoke with Ben Andrews, Global Spend Management Director at World Vision, and Bob Perkinson, Global Spend Manager at World Vision, about what it takes to manage spend across that kind of complexity. Their conversation reveals an approach built less around rigid mandates and more around flexibility, governance, trust, and responsible innovation. Here are some of the top key takeaways we discovered through chatting more with World Vision and their unique approach to spend management:

1. Technology has to work in the reality where people operate 

Digital transformation can make travel and expense processes faster and more efficient. But the experience from World Vision offers an important reminder: technology can only create value when the environment can support it. World Vision regularly operates in areas affected by natural disasters, conflict, displacement, drought, and other crises. In one story, Bob recalled a disaster response where severe flooding had left much of a city without electricity, but the need for supplies didn't stop. Teams still had to secure goods and services quickly, even as the systems they would normally rely on went dark. In that environment, digital payments weren’t always an option. Cash became essential, information had to be captured manually, and employees had to keep operations moving with whatever tools were available. The goal for their organization isn’t simply to digitize more processes, but to build systems flexible enough that keep working when the circumstances on the ground are anything but normal.

“The technology can't outpace the infrastructure of where we work. Or again, they just won't adopt it. It just won't happen.” 
— Bob Perkinson 

For global organizations, the broader lesson is that modernization does not necessarily mean eliminating every manual process. It means giving people the right tools and processes for the circumstances they actually face. 

2. Standardization works best when it leaves room for localization 

Consistency matters in a global travel and expense program. World Vision found that greater standardization helped make baseline processes more recognizable across the organization, particularly as employees moved between national offices and regions. But consistency does not mean every office should operate identically. Regulations, currencies, infrastructure, purchasing power, and business practices can differ significantly from one country to another. World Vision therefore evaluates where standardization adds value and where exceptions or localized processes are necessary. Proposed changes can go through regional and national leadership, governance processes, and smaller pilots before being expanded more broadly. The organization can even maintain multiple versions of a standard. Approval workflows, for example, may differ depending on local requirements while still fitting within a broader global framework. That flexibility is reinforced through governance and local participation. 

“And so one of the easiest ways to ensure somebody has a buy-in is to give them a stake in the game.” 
— Bob Perkinson 

For organizations managing spend across multiple countries or business units, flexibility can therefore be part of strong governance rather than an exception to it. 

3. Trust can be more powerful than mandates 

World Vision operates as a confederated organization, which means local offices have significant autonomy. That makes traditional top-down mandates difficult and places greater importance on buy-in. Regional and national leaders are included in governance conversations and given opportunities to shape new processes and technology decisions. Rather than simply asking people to comply, World Vision works to build agreement around why a change should happen and how it should work locally. 

“And the buy-in approach seems to take longer. It does, it's harder. We have to become marketers. But in the end, we have found that we build trust more.” 
— Ben Andrews 

That approach can take longer, but the investment pays off when adoption is built on understanding rather than enforcement. 

“And building trust, of course, takes time. Losing trust, you can lose it right away, but building trust, which is really the currency of how we get things done at World Vision, takes time.” 
— Ben Andrews 

It's a useful change-management lesson well beyond the nonprofit sector. Adoption is not created simply because a new workflow, platform, or policy exists. Employees are more likely to embrace change when they understand it, have a voice in it, and believe the people making the decision understand their reality. 

4. Better spend visibility helps reinforce the donor promise 

For World Vision, financial visibility has implications far beyond internal reporting. Donors — including governments, corporations, and individuals — increasingly expect organizations to demonstrate where their money is going and how it is being used. Ben said that as World Vision expanded its global use of Concur, stronger reporting and analysis helped the organization respond to those expectations. That transparency can also support the ability for World Vision to compete for grants and raise revenue. 

“And so Concur in that sense actually helps us to raise revenue, giving confidence and assurance to our potential donors that yes, we're able to fulfill what we call the donor promise...” 
— Ben Andrews 

That donor promise is fundamentally about stewardship: demonstrating that money entrusted to World Vision is being used where the organization said it would be used. 

“So Concur plays a huge role in allowing us to be transparent.” 
— Ben Andrews 

That makes financial controls, reporting, efficiency, and transparency part of the mission itself, not simply back-office functions. 

5. Responsible AI starts with a clear purpose 

World Vision is not approaching AI by asking where it can deploy the technology fastest. Instead, the organization is looking at problems where AI has already demonstrated practical value. 

“I wouldn't say the organization is trying to revolutionize our internal reporting mechanisms by just throwing AI at the problem...  I would say that generally what I see our team doing and other groups within the organization is taking AI and applying it to things that AI has already proven to be effective at doing.”
— Bob Perkinson 

One example is data quality. Because World Vision still operates heavily with cash in some environments, expense information may be entered manually by employees working across languages, currencies, and sometimes extremely difficult conditions. That can create incomplete or inconsistent data. World Vision is exploring AI to help normalize that information, recognize currencies and languages, handle inconsistent inputs, and potentially accelerate data-model development and reporting. 

“Something AI has already proven to be really good at doing is cleaning and normalizing messy data.” 
— Bob Perkinson 

That pragmatic approach reflects a larger philosophy of risk-aware rather than risk-averse innovation. The World Vision global strategy calls for digital technology and AI to help staff work smarter, respond faster, and innovate in support of vulnerable children. And as the organization continues operating with fewer resources while maintaining the same mission, Ben sees technology as an important part of doing more effectively — even if that requires taking thoughtful risks and changing established ways of working. 

Spend management in service of something bigger 

The experience shared by World Vision shows that effective global spend management is not necessarily about creating the most standardized or technologically advanced program possible. Rather, it's more about creating one that works. That can mean standardizing where consistency adds value and localizing where circumstances demand it. It can mean choosing trust and stakeholder buy-in over mandates. And it can mean adopting AI deliberately, with a clear understanding of the problem it is meant to solve. Most importantly, spend management provides the visibility and accountability World Vision needs to demonstrate responsible stewardship of donor resources. For an organization whose work depends on trust, that makes the way money is managed inseparable from the mission it supports. 

“We realize we can't stay the same because the world is different.” 
— Ben Andrews 

Listen to the full episode of SAP Concur Conversations to hear Jeanne Dion, Ben Andrews, and Bob Perkinson discuss the approach World Vision uses to deploy global spend management, trust, technology, and responsible innovation.