Digital Transformation is the process of using digital technologies to streamline processes, productivity and customer experiences.In this blog I would like to state how SAP Concur has come up with the solution for Receipt Digitalisation assuring end to end compliance. The art of value addition starts with the ability to see your business solutions through the eyes of your customers. SAP Concur is always an up runner in making big steps to bring more value to customers. We shifted expense management to the cloud world before it was popular, aimed government and international markets, and we introduced the platform approach to give an awe-inspiring experiences for business travellers and their employers. We have designed a comprehensive solution that will set the basis for a global digitalisation and compliance framework supporting multiple markets consist of Japan, France and Spain. This is one of the example how SAP Concur works to remove barriers to efficiency and innovation.
SAP Concur innovations designed to address unique challenges and helping the customers in achieving legal compliances, when it comes to managing travel and expense, including shifting to smart phones for digitising receipts and moving the digitalised copies to cloud. Many countries recently amended the law to support the paper to digital conversions. Thanks in part to SAP Concur, Our customers can now save receipts electronically rather than having to save paper copies. Paper to digital transformation’ is part of the digital reinvention strategy that is very relevant with changing times. Business organisations have to challenge the way they work to make themselves less dependent on paper. They have to free themselves to be able to emphasise on high-value activities that drive customer satisfaction and high performance. Information can be processed swiftly and securely. Digital processes are, also, fast, responsive and precise when compared to the those based on paper. Also, going digital enhances the process of establishing a full audit trail thereby depicting your document’s chain of custody over its lifecycle. This also makes it much easier to comply with privacy legislation. Our focus areas when designing the solution was mainly comprise below values.
- Enabling conversion of paper receipts into digital copies with legal value
- Key focus in EU markets: key common requirements + local specifics
- First customer facing milestones: Japan e-Bunsho, France compliance, Spain homologation
The feature is provided to existing and new customers with a one-click enablement option.
The Administrators can enable the Japan e-Bunsho/Digitalisation feature via accessing the Expense Admin screen and selecting the right Digital Compliance Country Rule for the applicable groups under Group configuration screen. This will make sure the particular group is enabled with the chosen digital compliance country rule and all the receipts will be processed under the applicable rule defined.
SAP Concur Expense Group Configuration Screen
Once a particular group is enabled with Digital Compliance Country Rule, when an expense user belongs to that group uploads a receipt via Expense or SAP Concur ExpenseIt automatically convert the paper receipts to its digital form with compliance rules applied.
SAP Concur Mobile page
The user takes a picture of the receipt with the SAP Concur Mobile app camera, in the background the digitalisation process will be applied.
SAP Concur capture receipts
When the digitalisation process completes, the expense line item will appear with the receipt image displaying the “Certified” badge.
Receipt Certified Badge
“Audit Rule”. The administrators are allowed to set an Audit rule for Receipt Digitalisation using the specific field “Is Digitally Complaint” at an Expense Report Submit level or at Expense Report Entry Save level.
Digitalisation Audit Rule
A custom audit rule is used to monitor information entered by Expense users and is triggered by an event. You can tailor custom audit rules to a specific configuration and Travel and Entertainment (T&E) rules of a company. A validation rule is used to compare values in expense report fields to a table of predefined values, imported by a company. The comparison can be configured to take place on entry save and submit, allocation save, and report save or submit If the comparison uncovers a mismatch, the validation rule can generate an exception. The Exceptions and message to display in the expense user screen for Is Digitally Compliant can set at Warning Level or Error level.
The Japan e-Bunsho receipts can be audited by Digital Compliance Administrator to make sure the receipts are not hampered or modified by any external medium or person. The Role Digital Compliance Administrator in SAP Concur Expense is created only for receipts auditing purpose. The receipts attached by expense users will go through the timestamp process, in the case of Japan, Seiko will timestamp the data and share the timestamp information with SAP Concur system. All the timestamped receipts are eligible for auditing.
We have made the audit screen as simple and user-friendly for the auditors. The Auditors can access the Company Tools screen and would be able to see the e-Bunsho Timestamp link, then the user will be able to run the audit on receipts for a particular date range. The receipts belonging to that period will be fetched and posted to Seiko for verification. Once Seiko confirms the receipt validation status, the data will be asynchronously updated to the auditor screen. The auditor would be able to see the Count of receipts posted for validation, Out of posted how many got validated, count of pending and failed count also. The failed details can be further drill down to get the details on which receipt got failed, associated with which report etc.
Timestamp Validation Request Screen
This make sure the data uploaded to SAP Concur cloud establishing a full audit trail thereby depicting your document’s chain of custody over its lifecycle.
The Japan e-Bunsho and Receipt Digitalisation features helping our pride customers to go paperless. It can streamline not only the compliance requirements but also save money and greatly enhance productivity and client service. Through digitalisation it is easier for organisations to have a clear line of sight over the execution of strategy, the measurement of its level of attainment, and the degree of compliance with policy. SAP Concur Digitalisation offers more transparent governance arrangements for all activities within an organisation. Ultimately, this feature assists our customers to confidently take on even more upside, reasoned risk than before, because decisions are based on higher quality information.
NOTE:
- This feature is available to new and existing clients in France and Spain for those who enable Global Receipt Digitalisation and Compliance Configurations via Group Configurations.
- The Receipt Digitalisation feature requires that the end users must be using the Next-Gen Expense UI. It is required that clients migrate users that will use this feature to the Next-Gen Expense UI before activating this service.
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