Pilot Corporation, Margaret Akins
"The audit rules have really saved us time. It allows us to set up the rules that we want our company employees to follow, so upon their data entry they have to follow the rules up front so it has really saved us on the back end of auditing all of those expense reports because we know that the audit occurs at the front end and not at the back end."
"When I hear Concur, I think of innovation. I think about systems that can help you do your business work in a timely, efficient way. It is primarily known for the travel and expense, has a great reputation for that and we’ve seen the expense side and highly recommend using expense so I think it’s just a solid company at this point."
"We’re looking at the whole picture and again, we have been imaging on the back end so we have been paying our invoices, sending them off to be imaged and then at that point in time they would be available to view in something other than paper form. Concur has allowed us to adjust our process. We’ve got that image on the front end. We’re no longer handling the paper. We no longer have the file cabinets, boxes of paper, paying for the storage for the paper. You have that visibility to the document up front."
"One, look at your process and what you’re doing today. Look at how Concur will change your process where you can add efficiencies to your business process, where you can eliminate the paper work but also have a trail of where your invoices are. Also look at the audit rules and the reporting that’s available within Concur because all of this data is electronic now so you can do reporting on it. Which adds a huge visibility for all of your company."
"It’s important to us that Concur is able to handle multiple currencies. We have locations in both the United States and Canada. We have invoices and travel expenses between both countries and it’s just that functionality, the robustness of the system to handle our needs as a company that is important to us meaning it’s going to handle multiple currencies and we can. We don’t have to worry about if we want to expand into the future our system not being able to handle it."
"My job with Pilot is to work with the business community, look for ways to implement efficiencies using technology. Concur has been one of our implementations where we were able to take a business process, image the documentation, have it located in a central location, be able to implement work flow, be able to implement business rules at the front end of the process so that we can streamline our process and upload the documentation into our financial systems with more accuracy."
"It’s efficiencies in time, efficiencies in the vendor that we’re paying. Selecting the correct vendor to pay, being able to pay in a timely manner which gains us discounts that we can go back to the vendor and request because of our efficiencies that we’ve gained. Also the visibility that we have in the entire invoice process. We know where an invoice is sitting and how long its been sitting there and we can address any issues that we may have in our process to get our vendors paid more accurately and more timely."
"It’s very important for Pilot that Concur is online and on-demand because we not only have corporate people using this application during the regular business hours but we also have divisionals, regionals, sales people out in the field all the way across the country that need to be able to access this application when it fits into their schedule. Again, we’re a retailer. We’re open 27x7 and we have people out in the field that need to be performing their jobs. We don’t want to take away from peak times at our stores for them to file an expense report so when they get to a point in their daily schedule that they can access an invoice online, access an expense report online, it’s important to us that that system is available for them at that time."
"For our organization without Concur, it would be taking us a step backwards. It would be adding a lot of manual checks and balances, going backwards to auditing a report on the back end as opposed to from the front end so again, it would be a step backwards for us."
"Another thing that we have really enjoyed about Concur is the development team, they have been super to work with. We’ve had a great team that’s kept us focused, kept us on track, been able to answer our questions, been able to look at our process and make recommendations on how we can utilize the system. And that has just been just a great experience working with our development team."
"One thing that Concur is willing to do is they’re willing to listen to the customer. They’re willing to look at our needs and give us advice on how this system can be used. They’re also willing to take to their research and development, suggestions and come back with options and future enhancements that are really going to improve our business process."