Roche, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, has chosen expense@work to manage employee expenses in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Before implementing expense@work, Roche Moscow Ltd. expense processes were manual. Employees in the field completed paper forms, and posted them to their line managers for approval, their line managers then handing them on to the finance department. Postal delivery sometimes took a week, and if a line manager asked for a correction (by post), the process could be very lengthy.
Following their implementation of SAP in 2010, Roche also missed an ‘employee balance report’. Marina Nekrasova, Treasury Operations Manager at Roche Moscow Ltd., comments: ‘Employees were unable to run an employee balance report to check their outstanding balance, and line managers, business unit managers and budget controllers were unable to track all activities related to employees’ expenditure.’
The core aim of Roche’s implementation of expense@work was to automate the process of local and foreign business trips and fully to manage all other employee expenses, such as conference and representation costs, office and maintenance expenses, etc. It was also essential that the system should fully comply with Russian legislation and local statutory reporting requirements, at the same time as substituting other processes for the inefficiency of the posting of documents from various cities. Corporate business rules must also be enforced.
In expense@work the process of business trips is automated. First, an employee creates an online travel request which he submits for approval. Following approval, the employee can print the statutory documents for the trip (the Business Travel Authorisation form, the Business Trip Order, and the Business Trip ID). On return, the employee scans all receipts into the system, and completes an expense form. This is then approved by the employee’s line manager or returned for correction. The form is then forwarded to the finance department for review and to ensure completion of all necessary local legislative details prior to the posting of transactions to SAP. Furthermore, expense@work was customised to capture cost centres and business divisions using the same analytical structure as in SAP.
Everything related to expenses is now held in expense@work and automated as far as is possible. Signed hard copies of documents must be retained by the company in accordance with Russian legislation but this does not obstruct the day-to-day business process.
„LLP was very supportive during the implementation and we could not have completed the work without them. We did not believe that 500 people could really start working with the system on Day 1. It was great teamwork between LLP and the 3 or 4 staff on our side.“
„expense@work is absolutely user-friendly and very easy to use. During the first month or two users had various questions about which button to use, etc., but after this initial period, there was no problem at all in using it.“
All employees of Roche’s Pharmaceutical division who incur expenses use expense@work. Implementation began in Russia with 500 users. Kazakhstan and Belarus followed and today there are over 600 expense@work users within the firm.
‘Accuracy in reporting has improved significantly. Reports are viewed online, and corrections are made more rapidly. All necessary documents are provided more quickly. We have reduced the time spent on approving and correcting forms by about 50%’, says Marina Nekrasova.
Special reports have also been created for tracking employee expenses over a given period, enabling tighter budget control.
The following key processes have been automated:
Medical representatives use expense@work on their iPads, approximately half of all employees from the 500 users in the Moscow office. Everyone in the firm who incurs expenses is using the system.
