Opportunity

A well-known FMCG company had employees submit their expense reimbursement claims by manually posting the due dates for submission. Being a manual process of sending and receiving claims from across the country in mailboxes, quite naturally, reimbursements got delayed in getting processed. When there were intermittent queries on the claim, the TAT was further impacted. There was confusion, an intent to freeze the turnaround time, and employee discontent.

Solution

There were constraints in developing this process within and around existing ERP, considering its accessibility to a large user base. We extended our support by creating an online claim submission environment outside of ERP that was accessible to a large user base and simplified the entire employee expense reimbursement process. This allowed the employees to submit their claims online from the comfort of their homes and attach all relevant supporting documents.

The Finance and Accounting team could download the claims, verify them, and process the employee’s reimbursements timely and accurately. All queries, deficiencies, and additional requirements needed in the claim could be raised online and resolved in real-time. This was supported by an employee communication matrix empowered by SMS, email, and (later) WhatsApp.

Tracking the status of claims by employees was made possible through online access to the environment on their smartphones. The employee reimbursement process is now more efficient, on time, and digitalised, keeping the processor and the claimant happy and satisfied.