As a government agency with complex rules and regulations, SCC needed a modern expense management solution that could be customized to fit its specific needs.
- Industry:
- Government
- Employees:
- 100
- Service:
- EXPENSE
The Challenge
As a part of its strategy to provide modern tools through digital transformation, the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) sought to gain efficiencies by automating its expense report processing system. During the RFP process, SCC looked for an expense solution with the following capabilities:
- Cloud-based system to enable work from anywhere and on any device, including laptops, tablets and mobile.
- Easy receipt capture for travelers, including built-in OCR technology and automated import of credit card transactions.
- Simplified, integrated workflow with tracking and reporting for both travelers and approvers.
- Access to analytics around expense types and spending trends.
- Integration into accounting system to eliminate data entry and data entry errors.
SCC selected Chrome River EXPENSE not only because it met all of these requirements, but because the solution was more cost-effective and adaptable than other providers.
As a government agency, we require a lot of complex rules and approval workflows. Chrome River took the time to really understand our needs, and this level of support was fantastic.
Overview
SCC is responsible for developing, testing, and promoting national and international standards and accreditation services to ensure better, safer, and more efficient products. Its mission is to strengthen Canada’s competitiveness and social well-being in order to improve quality of life for its citizens.
The Chrome River Solution
During implementation, Chrome River collaborated closely with SCC to evaluate and optimize its existing rules, make best-in-class recommendations, and build custom controls and workflows within the system. This resulted in more streamlined approval processes, and greatly reduced the risk of errors.
According to Dan Goldie, Finance Manager at SCC, the fact that Chrome River is so customizable has been a key factor in the agency’s success: “The solution was configured to fit our specific needs, instead of us having to change our processes to work with the system.”
The Results
On the finance side, integration and automation from Chrome River have significantly reduced the need for manual data entry and system updates. For example, National Joint Council per diem rates for Government of Canada travel are automatically updated within Chrome River each quarter in accordance with public policy, and data feeds between Chrome River and SCC’s financial system are automatically updated daily. This allows the finance team to invest more time in analytical, value-added activities, instead of being overwhelmed by manual data validation.
From the user perspective, Chrome River makes it possible for SCC travelers to submit expense reports from their mobile devices, while empowering them to track reports through the approval process. Approvers are able to quickly and easily approve reports via mobile or email. As a result, the expense reimbursement process went from taking an average of two weeks with SCC’s old system, to now just under one week with Chrome River – representing a 50% time-savings.
Additionally, in the midst of a global pandemic when SCC employees were sent home to work, the agency allowed them to purchase home office supplies to help ease this transition. According to Goldie, SCC would not have been able to offer this benefit without a cloud-based solution like Chrome River that enables remote expense processing.
Chrome River helped our organization show compassion during a global pandemic, by allowing remote employees to expense home office supplies and get reimbursed within just a few days. This made a very challenging time feel more human.
Why Chrome River
Chrome River met SCC’s unique expense management requirements as a government agency, while also supporting its need for an automated, mobile solution.
- Humanized work by enabling remote employees to expense supplies during a global pandemic.
- Streamlined processes, resulting in 50% faster expense reimbursement.
- Automated per diem rate updates and other government-specific rules.
- Provided robust reporting features to support public agency audit standards.