Elsevier: Overcoming Global Finance Complexities

A global footprint is indicative of an organization’s success. For finance teams, expense management across international locations can lead to many frustrations. Multiple currencies. Varying tax systems. Country-specific regulations. The list goes on and on. For Dutch enterprise information solutions provider Elsevier, such challenges became easier to navigate by replacing Oracle iExpense with Emburse Chrome River. 

Elsevier’s global operations faced complex expense management challenges, including:

• Varying processes and rules for different locations
• Confusing user interface and lack of a mobile app
• Inflexible system required line-item audit but did not allow single-line returns

Elsevier’s Travel and Expenses Manager details how they tackled issues and enabled positive change with Chrome River Expense in our latest customer success story.

"Emburse Chrome River streamlined expense management across our global locations and helped users and finance gain efficiencies."

Maria Garcia, Travel & Expenses Manager, Elsevier

 

Ending global workarounds in favor of unified efficiency

Limitations in Oracle iExpense forced Elsevier’s finance team to create workarounds for each country in their footprint.

A staggering number of expense categories piled up, making processing infinitely more daunting.  Receipt and invoice details were manually recorded since there wasn't a mobile component to their system's ecosphere.

The system also blocked single-line rejections. With more than half a million annually to review, process efficiency lacked severely—especially for resubmissions due to user error.

Elsevier began looking for a more configurable, innovative solution. “Emburse Chrome River was eager to work with us to create custom country-specific rules and workflows to address all our unique needs, all within one central system,” said Garcia.

Once implemented, the team:

• Reduced expense categories by 75%, leading to a significantly easier allocation experience and greater data accuracy
• Centralized global processing of expense reports (45,000+ annually), considerably cutting time and energy wasted performing menial tasks
• Simplified remote work and reporting with enhanced mobile feature

From an operational perspective, Chrome River helped Elsevier address country-specific requirements—including their most complex use cases in Germany. Automatic translations and built-in rules simplified the audit process. They also eliminated the need for finance to check every expense, which empowered the team to focus on more strategic work.

You can read more details about Elsevier’s dramatic efficiency gains by downloading their customer success story.