GR1 - ReimburseMe
Pam Chuang, Ari Dukes, Leo Espindle
Problem Statement
Companies currently have very inaccurate methods of reimbursing people for mileage when they own their own cars. They currently estimate mileage and provide a Google maps link rather than a more accurate representation of mileage. In addition to the issues of inaccurate reporting, the expense reporting entry process to be very cumbersome.
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:
- 225 miles (Distance between Boston and NYC) * $.50/mile (IRS reimbursement per mile) * 2 trips (Round trip) = $275/week/employee
- Assume that salespeople travel twice a month: $550/month/employee
- Assume that 5% of the company uses this system in a 500 person company
- Of these 25 employees, 10 employees actually use this system, because they own a car.
- Value saved by the company: 10 employees * $550/month * 12 months/year = $66,000 / year
Our program provides the value proposition of planning, reimbursement, and auditing.
User analysis
There are a few main personas to represent the main users of our product:
- 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 her daily job, but she is not necessarily up to date with the newest cutting edge technology. She finds that during 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.
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 analyzes total travel expenses for all employees across the whole company and is always looking for incremental ways to improve travel expense reporting.
Mary the Approver (Travel Manager)
Mary is a manager who cares about dealing with her budget. She has ten employees and just wants to see the big picture and see how her employees are spending money. She generally only cares about big ticket items but will appreciate the improvement 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 line items but has to approve the expense reports. 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 is less tech savvy than Phyllis. Mary drives a Cadillac.
Task analysis
Creating a trip. Goal: enter a trip into the system for eventual approval
o Decide where you want to go on your trip
o Enter/modify trip information
o Submit or Save the trip
o Preconditions
§ Have a profile
§ Need to know where you want to go
§ Need an approver
§ Need a personal car or authority to go on a trip
o Time constraint
§ Company policy for limit of time
§ Have to be before you get reimbursement
o Frequency of use
§ Every day?
- Approve a trip. Goal: sign off on an amount for reimbursement for mileage
o View queue
o View details of specific trip
o Approve/reject a trip
o Preconditions
§ Have employees assigned to you
§ Employees have to create a trip
§ Have to have a profile
§ Trip should be submitted by traveler
o Time constraint
§ Company policy for limit of time
§ Have to be before employee gets reimbursement
o Frequency of use
§ Once a week
- Analyze trip. Goal: look for discrepancies or unusual behaviors in mileage
o Choose how you want to visualize information
o Check trends or rankings
o Go from trend/ranking to more detail (trips)
o Flag a trip that looks questionable
o Preconditions
§ Trips submitted and approved
§ Profile
§ Authority to view multiple trips
§ Authority to see analytics
o Time constraints
§ None
o Frequency of use
§ Every day
Domain analysis
Lessons Learned from Interviews
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.