Lara Edwards
Lara Edwards is Content Manager for Concur’s UK SMB division. Lara’s has worked in a number of marketing and communications roles in the B2B industry with a focus on business travel and has a love for clear and crisp writing. She’s an avid fan of her TripIt Pro app and jumps at any opportunity to travel – for business or leisure – and says her favourite destination has got to be Pompeii. Her passions include history and the natural world and is happiest when she is exploring a museum, watching a documentary, reading up on a non-fiction topic or goofing around with dogs. Lara is always looking for quicker and smarter ways in business and her blog posts usually feature stories about how automation and technology can transform finance processes.
More recent stories from Lara Edwards
Small Business
Why SMBs are Combining Their Expense and Travel Processes
Expense and travel go hand in hand, yet, too often they’re handled separately. The travel manager knows when members of the team are going on a business trip because they’re often involved in booking the flights. But, the finance manager isn’t...
Travel & Expense Trends
What’s a Bad Expense Process Really Costing You?
There is one principle that's the same no matter where you are: You have to spend money to make money. Regardless of how big or small your company is, there’s no getting away from expenses. We’re not talking about the rent on your office or wages,...
Travel & Expense Trends
Six Ways to Cash in on Your Business Expense Data
Business expenses aren't normally seen as a place to save money. In fact, it's quite the opposite. But if you look closely at the data, you might be surprised by the money-saving opportunities you find. Examine almost any collection of data and...
Small Business
You’re Never Too Small to Automate Expense and Travel
Our research has revealed that some of the biggest challenges SMBs say they face are improving employee productivity, improving cash flow, and increasing visibility. There are two good reasons to tackle these issues when it comes to travel and...
Travel & Expense Trends
It's Stress Awareness Month. How is Your Team Coping?
How’s life? It's a simple question, but ask it of someone and, if they’re answering honestly, you’ll likely get a roll of the eyes and the answer: “Busy!” or "Stresssful!" Dashing around with a long to-do list and juggling competing demands is the...
Travel & Expense Trends
Finance, Are You Checking Your Expense and Travel Blind Spots?
We learn about blind spots when we first start driving. But, it’s easy to forget to check them., and it isn’t just driving where blind spots pop up. A recent survey of finance leaders in the UK revealed that 81% have blind spots when it comes to...
Small Business
How Can You Improve Your Cash Flow?
"Cash flow is king" is one of those business mantras that we all repeat but never stop to question. But have you ever wondered why it’s king? Shouldn’t profit be the ultimate end goal? Read on for the answers to the cash flow questions you’ve...
Travel & Expense Trends
Use This Cheat Sheet When Choosing an Expense and Travel Solution
The benefits of moving your expense and travel management to the cloud are well-documented: You get simple-to-use tools that give you greater efficiency, better visibility, and better control of your costs. It’s hardly surprising that for many...
Small Business
5 Common AP Automation Myths You Shouldn't Believe
Perhaps you have a “good enough” supplier invoice process. Invoice data is captured on spreadsheets and inputted into your ERP (eventually). But could the process be more streamlined than it is today? Maybe you think it could, but for a number of...
Travel & Expense Trends
How to Accurately Capture Mileage Driven for Work
Considering mileage is one of the largest categories of employee spend -- U.S. businesses spent more than $1.95 billion on mileage reimbursement in 2017 -- you would think it would be easier to capture. On the face of it, its not always clear what...
Small Business
There’s a Hole in My Data! Plug These Finance Gaps With Automation
Spreadsheets and other manual solutions are the cornerstones of many financial processes. I’m sure you have a few in your business, as they appear to provide documented evidence for every penny of spend. But they really mean a lot of...
Travel & Expense Trends
How Much Could You Save With an Expense Management Solution?
Before investing in any solution or project, you want to know what the return on investment is likely to be and that it’s worth your time and money. You wouldn’t be an astute finance leader if you didn’t. Concur Expense ROI CalculatorUse our tool...
Small Business
Business on the Go: Making Mobile Expenses and Invoices a Reality
Have you ever arrived at a meeting 15 minutes early and wanted to use that valuable time to do some much-needed admin? You could be paying supplier invoices, submitting or approving expenses, booking or signing off travel bookings -- all the...
Small Business
You’re Not Too Small to be a Victim of Cyber Fraud
We’re all aware that cybercrime exists and it’s a big problem. It’s so big, in fact, that the UK Office for National Statistics reports that cybercrime and fraud account for almost half of all national incidents of crimes. Here in England and...
Invoicing & Spend Management
How to Stop Special Projects Breaking the Budget and Impacting Cashflow
It’s a situation familiar to every small business owner: the nightmare project that’s spiralled out of control and sucked everything into its orbit. In many cases, it started out sounding like a simple, easy-to-deliver project and ended with you...
Travel & Expense Trends
How to Free Up Time So You Can Focus on the Important Things
How much of your day do you spend doing financial admin? Entering data, chasing invoices, remedying incorrect expenses, tracking down missing paperwork, and all the other things you need to do to? Every task is essential but it’s also...
Small Business
Key Small Business Growth Mistakes to Avoid
Your small business is successful – so successful, in fact, you’re starting to think about growing it. So, how do you grow a business? The first step to growth is to plan for it. Because whether you’re baking a cake or growing a business, the...
Invoicing & Spend Management
The Future Finance Leader: What You Need to Know
From machine learning to data visualization and more – what does the future look like for a rising CFO? Liverpool, 2025. Jane, the CFO of a fast-growing SMB bio-pharma company, is commuting to her office in her self-driving car. She’s updated on...
Small Business
Trading Places: How to Find Wins for Both Finance and Employees
We speak to many finance leaders in small and midsize businesses who tell us that expense processes are inevitably cumbersome and create a lot of work for someone in the business. We understand the concern. The common belief is that if you make...
Small Business
Small Business Growth: What Stage Is Your Business In?
What is your business’s approach to growth? Are you taking it steady and growing it organically? Or do you have ambitious plans about where you want to go? Your answer is likely to be a reflection of two factors. The first is where you are on the...
Small Business
How to Fine-Tune Your Expense Approval Process
Signing off expenses can be a problematic chore. On the one hand, it’s essentially admin. It’s very easy to simply approve an expense claim without a second glance, which is troubling given 5% of a typical organization's annual revenue is lost to...
Small Business
Unexpected Advice About Implementing SAP Concur
We recently hosted a webinar with three finance professionals running SAP Concur in small businesses in the U.S. The panelists shared their stories to help fellow small businesses learn from their successes and avoid their pitfalls, with some...
Small Business
Don't Let These Bad Habits Hold Back Business Growth
It is generally accepted that if you’re serious about growing your business, you’re more likely to succeed if you have clearly defined goals and a plan in place to achieve them. But it is also important to look at any barriers to growth,...
Small Business
Are Your Systems Ready to Scale as You Grow?
Think for a moment about the systems you have in place and the processes you use on your team. How many of them were strategically implemented with an eye on the short, medium and long term? And how many of them were invented as a quick fix at the...
Small Business
What Are Your Barriers to Business Growth?
With the big change in the form of Brexit on the horizon, we asked market research specialist Vanson Bourne to survey 500 UK finance leaders to explore growth strategies in a changing economic landscape. Let's take a look at some of the findings...
Small Business
Need a Travel and Expense Policy? Create One in Three Minutes
We hear from many small businesses that they need greater visibility into and control over what their staff is expensing, but don’t know where to start. The answer is simple -- a travel and expense (T&E) policy. This policy governs what can...
Small Business
Ensure Your New Spend Management Solution is Welcomed with Excitement
What’s the usual reaction in your business to the announcement about a new system being rolled out? Excitement about the difference it will make to your efficiency and productivity? Or a sigh as everyone thinks, “oh great, another system to...
Small Business
Invest in Your Finance Team to Drive Growth
The input of the finance team is a critical part of business growth. In a recent survey of 500 finance leaders commissioned by SAP Concur, 91% of respondents said the finance team plays a vital role in helping achieve the business’ growth...
Invoicing & Spend Management
You Need a Risk Management Plan. Here's How to Create One
In the last two blogs we’ve been looking at compliance and risk issues in growing businesses and how to manage it. In this last blog I’ll show you a three-step process for creating a risk management plan in your business. Travel Risk...
Invoicing & Spend Management
Empower Your Finance Team with Continuous Accounting
Little and often: It’s an approach that’s recommended for self-improvement activities such as exercise and learning. It’s also recommended for keeping on top of chores such as gardening and housework. You can apply this approach at work, too. In...
Industries
How to Improve Cashflow: Top Tips for Finance
When your business uses manual, paper-based finance processes, all the information you need is there, but finding it in a timely manner is hard. That means it’s hard to keep track of cashflow – and even harder to improve it. Finance automation...
Invoicing & Spend Management
Do You Have a Supplier Invoice Policy in Place?
A supplier invoice policy is one of those documents that every business should have. An effective policy will greatly reduce the amount of time related to the tasks of approving and processing vendor invoices, addressing exceptions, or storing,...
Industries
How to Plug Skills Shortages in Your Finance Department
UK finance departments are facing a problem. Many don't have enough of the right staff in place. Six in ten chief financial officers (CFOs) at UK companies said that they expected to have skills shortages, according to research published in August...
Invoicing & Spend Management
How to Manage Employee Spend Risk and Compliance in Your Business
Managing risk and ensuring compliance is a vital part of every finance manager’s role. Yet in the average small to medium-sized business, it’s often one of those areas that gets squeezed because of a lack of time and money. In this compliance...
Travel & Expense Trends
Be Ready for Brexit, Whatever the Outcome
The news is full of big companies discussing preparing for Brexit. But what about the 99% of businesses in the UK that are small and medium-sized? What preparations should they be making? If you trade with any EU countries or travel to the EU on...
Travel & Expense Trends
3 Key Factors in Achieving a Compliant, Efficient Month-End
Does your month-end start long before the last working day of the month and typically spill into the start of the next? Is it a stressful, inefficient exercise that doesn’t really deliver as much value as you’d like? If you use a paper-based...
Invoicing & Spend Management
Do You Have All Your Business Risks Covered?
For finance managers, it’s very easy to focus on the risks that fall into your remit: failing to comply with legislation, breaching travel and expense policy, falling victim to fraud, and the like. But businesses face other risks too. And as a...
Invoicing & Spend Management
Is Your AP Process Holding Your Business Back?
Chances are, your business is planning for growth. You aren’t alone. Research shows 96% of businesses are planning to grow and expect to hit their peak in the next two years. As part of your preparations, you’re probably looking at your systems...
Products in Action
Selling Finance Automation to Your C-Suite
Within the C-suite, you're used to hearing other members pitch their spending plans to you. But what happens when the boot is on the other foot? Because when it comes to invoice and expense automation, it will be you trying to get buy-in from the...