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MileageManager

Pam Chuang, Ari Dukes, Leo Espindle

Problem Statement

Our product will help to address issues for travelers, their managers, and auditors.  For the primary user (the travelers themselves), we will make both business trip planning and reimbursement easier so that they can spend time working on the main parts of their jobs.  Currently, if you consider a salesperson traveling regularly from Boston to NYC:

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Our program provides the value proposition of planning, reimbursement, and auditing. 

User analysis

There are a few main personas to who represent the main users of our product. To create each persona we have interviewed people who perform user class function:

• Phyllis the Traveler
• Juan the Auditor
• Mary the Approver

Phyllis the Traveler

Phyllis is a salesperson and an experienced traveler.  She works late almost everyday and is always looking for new ways to make her daily job more efficient, especially for tasks that do not directly impact her performance at her job.  She has three kids, and therefore wants to maximize the amount of time she spends at home.  She is comfortable with using the internet from for her daily job, but she is not necessarily up to date with the newest cutting edge technology.  She finds that during doing reimbursements is the worst part of her day, and most of the time has to take care of her expense reporting at home, because she is not allowed to bill those hours to her work.  Phyllis wants an interface that is easy to use and will save her a lot of time.

Lessons learned from a business consultant (Traveler persona):

Things already done well for expense reporting:

• Company has their own homegrown system for business expenses
• Air, hotel, car rental was automatically input from company AMEX

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• For mileage: "we end up estimating." This is likely a source of inaccuracy (at best) and bilking the system (at worst).

Juan the Auditor

Juan is an auditor who has to deal with multiple systems.  Juan works in the finance department and has to transfer the data from expense reporting to the financial software used by the finance department for bigger expenses.  Juan enjoys his job because of the analytical aspects of his job that he enjoys doing and therefore also enjoys finding mistakes that people make.  Juan's primary role is to look at expense reports and compare line items to insure that there is nothing wrong between the receipts and expense reporting.  Juan also analyzes total travel expenses for all employees across the whole company and is always looking for incremental ways to improve travel expense reporting.

Lessons learned from auditor (Auditor Persona):

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• Very manual process of comparing line items on spreadsheets and written documents to ensure correctness
• Tracking down the sources of discrepancies when people make mistakes is very time consuming
• They usually work with multiple applications at once. One for reporting, one for tracking, and generally excel for numerical analysis.

Mary the Approver (Travel Manager)

Mary is a sales manager who cares about dealing with her budget.  She has ten employees direct reports (including Phyllis) and just wants to see the big picture and to see how her employees are spending money.  She generally only cares about big ticket items but will appreciate the improvement reducing waste in her budget as long as she does not have to put in any extra effort.  She’s a busy manager who does not check the individual line items and is constantly approving different line items.   She is very busy at work and with kids, and she does not have time to analyze the individual line items but yet has to approve the every expense reportsreport.  She consults with the traveler to help them plan where to go.  She is part of the initial process and a user of the system herself.   Phyllis is her direct report.  She likes her job, and she’s older.  Mary which she has held for 30 years. She is less tech savvy than Phyllis.  Mary drives a Cadillac.

Notes from interviewing a business consultant:

• Company has their own homegrown system for business expenses
• Air, hotel, car rental was automatically input from company AMEX
• "Meals were the worst", "we end up 'estimating' " (anything under a certain amount - depending on city - does not require receipts)
• Gas/mileage is done by the mile.

Notes from interviewing business administrator:

Notes from a VP of Sales:

BEFORE CONCUR

• Fill in expense report excel document template
• They hand sign it
• Manager hands sign it. Some managers would look at the excel document for like a big ticket item ($100 or more) do a quick audit.
• You print out excel document. Staple receipts onto blank paper, google map for mileage. Staple it all together.
• You turn it in to finance department. They would go though excel document and submitted receipts and they'd final check it.
• So every Friday they'd cut a check (if submitted by noon on Thursday)

AFTER CONCUR

• Log into concur (website). Difference between corporate card expenses, personal card expenses. For both, use blackberry to take picture of receipt, email to concur address. Receipt matched up with expense automatically. Personal card they would enter information on receipt on website.
• Effect: use corporate card way more than you used to because its easier.
• Actual process for personal card: give receipts to somebody (secretary) to do that. Corporate card only for executives. Do a batch process.
• Sales people use personal card, manual entry on website.

Task analysis

Lessons learned from a VP of Sales (Approver Persona):

Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:

• Manager hand signs approvals.  Need a quick way to make sure that no line items are completely inaccurate
• People end up submitting all reports at the same time, and the system gets crowded all at once, therefore need a solution that can handle high volume and allow the person receiving the high volume to be able to deal with all the expenses.

Andy the Assistant

Andy is the business manager of the office. In addition to his own responsibilities, he is often called on to handle expenses for executives of the firm. Andy hates his job, particularly the repetitive paperwork tasks he has to do day in and day out. He also hates how a lot of clerical work (like expense reports) get dumped on him on Friday, as the executives leave for the weekend. Andy is relatively young for the office, and has ample experience with web-based applications due to his browsing activities during work hours. 

Lessons learned from a Business Manager (Assistant Persona)

• Mileage reimbursement was the worst part of expenses. Every leg had to be entered into an excel form and printed out on mapquest, and often required multiple conversations with busy bosses so that they could remember every leg of their trip.
• She also had to look up the mileage reimbursement rate on a regular basis, because she would forget.

Task analysis

There are a few main tasks involved with creating MileageManager.  These tasks include:

• Create a trip
• Approve a trip
• Analyze a trip

Create a tripe

Goal: Enter a trip into the system for eventual approval

Subtasks

• Decide where you want to go on your trip
• Enter/modify trip information
• Submit or Save the trip for further modification

Preconditions

• Have a traveler profile
• Know where you want to go
• Have an assigned approver
• A personal car and authority to create a trip

Time constraints

• Company policy for time limit between trip and reimbursement submission

Frequency of use

• Once a day

Approve a trip

Goal: Sign off on a requested amount for mileage reimbursement

Subtasks

• View queue of trips to approve
• View details of a specific trip
• Approve/reject a trip

Preconditions

• Employees assigned to your profile for approval
• Trip must be created and submitted by traveler
• Have an approver profile

Time constraints

• Company policy for time limit between trip and reimbursement submission

Frequency of use

• Once a week

Analyze trip

Goal: Look for discrepancies or unusual behaviors in mileage

• Choose how you want to visualize information
• Check high level data
• Dig in deeper on a certain traveler or a certain trip
• Flag a trip that looks questionable

Preconditions

• Can only view trips submitted and approved
• Profile as auditor
• Authority to view multiple trips
• Authority to see analytics

Time constraints

• None

Frequency of use

• Many times a day

Domain analysis

The administrator can create, read, update and delete accounts. These accounts can be: "Traveler Account", "Approver Account" or "Auditor Account".

Travelers can create, read, update and delete trips.

Approvers can approve or reject trips.

Auditors can analyze trips and export reports that contain information about the trips.

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