Expense claim
The scenario
Council X have some 10,000 employees spread across 20 directorates. On a monthly basis, staff submit their expense claims to the finance department which then get paid the following month.
The challenge
The expense claim process is manual and paper-based. Each directorate has a different way they like their teams to submit expenses. Some use word documents, some use spreadsheets and these are submitted to the managers in-tray. The problem is that the expense claims can get mixed up with other documents and are invariably lost or submitted after the deadline. Also, managers can make amendments to the claim which causes issues within the finance department. Consequently, the finance department can spend a lot of time phoning and chasing managers to submit claims, sifting through various different document formats and re-keying information. Due to this mixed method of submitting expense claims, the finance department usually miss their Service Level Agreements and employees receive late or incorrect payment of their claim.
How the Transformational Government Accelerator can help
A standard InfoPath form is created with standard drop down fields which surfaces data from line of business applications. This form is held in a document library within MOSS. When an employee submits the claim a process is kicked off and the Accelerator automatically searches the active directory to match the employee to the right approver which then executes the task correctly. Escalations are automatically set so that the claim is submitted on time. Reports can be made on each department with regard to spend or timeliness of the claim approval. Once approved, the finance system is automatically updated removing the need to re-key data. The result – the employee receives prompt payment, the finance department achieve their SLA’s and data is more accurate and easy to access.