Chrome River CURRENTS

Implementing virtual card accounts in your corporate travel process can offer better travel data collection, prevent fraud, and improve your existing expense management processes. In the world of corporate travel and expense management, it’s the next big thing.

There are plenty of news items about corporate fraud involving supplier kickbacks and dishonest expense report schemes.  Most of the examples are concerning because of the depravity, but some are rather funny. 

Pot, weed, mary jane, cannabis, edibles – or as they call it today – “medical marijuana,” doesn’t seem like a likely item to turn into your boss on a expense report, does it? But, that’s exactly what a TV reporter from KPIX, a San Francisco CBS affiliate, did when he submitted $600 worth of expenses for all kinds of “high-quality medical marijuana.” Interesting expenses, right? If you were the reporter’s boss, would you approve these expenses? Well, turns out, the expenses were actually legitimate.

We tend to assume that technology will help speed up whatever we’re doing, right? We can share photos with our families and friends in seconds rather than days, shift money from one account to another without stepping inside a bank, and so on. But sometimes the reverse is true of technology—think of how painful it can be to navigate through a complicated voicemail system.

A new report this week indicates that over half (53%) of large enterprises are either already moving Big Data within their organization to the public cloud or are considering a move to the cloud for analytical processing. Further, only 13% of enterprises say they would only use private data centers for processing all analytics. Clearly, there is a concerted push to the shared public cloud.

It’s natural for most of us to want to do things better. We want to be better managers, better co-workers, better employees and, in general, better people. Unfortunately, it’s also just as easy for us to get lost in the hassle of daily life and simply waste time. As any executive knows - time is money. The less your department or team procrastinates, the more productive your organization will be and the more it will benefit. Whether it’s making sure each employee enters data accurately into your expense management software or delivers the weekly report your client needs - here are some surefire ways to curb procrastination and increase efficiency. 

With the convergence of Big Data, the Internet of Things and the quest for analytics from different departments, CIOs are being forced into the additional role of coordinating the various data experiments occurring at any given time in an organization. 

A 2014 study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found that upper management accounts for close to 30% of reimbursement fraud cases. It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to know that behaviors (good or bad) that are exhibited by top managers will eventually be modeled by employees. Couple poor behaviors by executives with lax expense reporting procedures and you have a recipe for systemic expense fraud in your organization. Whether you’re currently dealing with this situation or seeking preventative expense controls, you can take steps now that will help crush expense report fraud in 2015.

Money, money, money! Where does it go? Keeping track of expenses can be a challenge, and it's vitally important for any organization to keep a close eye on the outflow of funds. However, training staff to track expenses can be tricky, especially when it's done manually. When your expenses aren't tracked properly, it costs your organization time and money. Using expense management software can make your staff feel much more financially savvy and will help control your expenses.

Many companies have employees who regularly travel for business. Top execs may need to be on-site to manage multiple offices, specialists may need to attend conferences and give workshops, and sales, customer service, and technical support reps may need to visit customers to generate sales and foster business-client relationships.