Acubiz

A/O Bayer is part of the Bayer Group, which has core competencies in the fields of health care, nutrition and high-tech materials. In the CIS region more than 1,600 employees are working for Bayer.

"The majority of our staff works in sales, and many of them need to travel frequently to visit customers," explains Matthias Sallat, Project Manager, Bayer MaterialScience CIS. "Naturally, they need to be reimbursed for their travel expenses, and as a result, we need to process as many as 20,000 expense reports every year."

Until recently, the management of these expense reports was a manual, paper-based process, which was both very complex and time consuming.

 'Software as a service'

Following a detailed analysis of various products, Bayer decided to implement Acubiz Expense Management.

"One of the advantages of the Acubiz solution is that we haven't needed to buy any servers or software, and our IT team doesn't need to support it," explains Matthias Sallat.

"It's a complete 'black box' solution from our point of view. Acubiz hosts and maintains the environment, and we don't have to worry about it at all. There was no need for up-front investments, and we pay for the service strictly on a usage basis. So, for example, if our employees submit fewer expense reports this month than last month, we don't need to pay as much to Acubiz."

Significant time saving

"The feedback has been very positive - particularly from the accountants, because they no longer have to manually enter the data," says Matthias Sallat. "Even though we are not currently using all of the automation features of the Acubiz solution, it has reduced the time it takes to process each report by about fifteen minutes - and when you have 20,000 reports, this really adds up to a significant saving."

Increased transparency

Matthias Sallat concludes: "Acubiz Expense Management is a low-impact solution that provides a more effective way to handle expense claims without having to manage and support yet another IT system.

With the 'software as a service' model, there is no need to invest capital or sign up to long contracts - we can use the solution as much as we need, for as long as we need. As a result, we are now considering rolling out the solution to other European countries."