Case Study: How a Fortune 500 company saved $460,000 in yearly ground transportation costs

For our corporate clients, it can be challenging to handle all of their international and local business travel needs in one place. When it comes to tracking rides, managing employee expenses, negotiating with suppliers, fraud detection, travel policy compliance, and ensuring billing accuracy, things can get even more complicated.

That’s where HQ SummitGround comes in to make things simple and streamlined with one dashboard for everything. Our system automatically flags ride price errors and overcharging that too-often slips through the net, and ultimately, impacts our client’s bottom line. With inflation and fuel prices the talk of the town, now it’s more important to save on business travel and cut ground transportation costs.

The Client

Our client is a Global Fortune 500 company with offices in over 70 countries and clients worldwide.  With over 17,000 employees globally it is one of the largest financial institutions in the world.  As a result, it has over 2,000 different employees who use car service each year for business and local travel, both in major financial markets such as New York and London but also throughout the world.

The Challenge

Due to the fragmented nature of ground transportation, it is still challenging today to manage & track ground spend across various suppliers & geographies. This leads to billing errors, and out-of-travel-policy charges that are costly, and impact the company’s bottom line.

That’s why one of the world’s leading investment management companies turned to HQ to help reduce their travel costs and identify areas for further savings while simultaneously creating a better employee experience.  Our client needed greater visibility regarding employee spend, travel policy compliance, and a streamlined solution to replace manual invoicing and expense reporting.

The Solution

HQ was able to solve the client’s needs by onboarding their preferred suppliers to our HQ SummitGround system, and implementing the clients’ agreements with their suppliers to our platform. Every month, the HQ SummitGround system reviews and validates all the invoices and each individual ride submitted by suppliers for payment and checks them before payment. In addition, HQ processes the payment to the different suppliers as part of our central payment process.

The Results

Client saved $80K through HQ’s billing validation process

 

• HQ  captured over 300 rides and invoices that were mistakenly billed to the client.

 

• Mistakes included duplicative invoices or rides, incorrectly billed accounts, and other issues.

 

• HQ SummitGround identified the improper invoices and rides and the supplier never submitted them again.

 

Client saved $380K due to our identification of 800+ ride & invoice issues

 

• We identified, flagged, and requested the supplier to resubmit the invoices with the correct information.

 

• Errors identified included incorrect base rates, wait for time charges, service charges, tax charges, toll charges, and many others.

 

• The suppliers resubmitted the invoices and rides with the correct amount saving the client $380K.

 

Client saved 2,000 labor hours of accounts payable time

 

• The HQ SummitGround invoice review process saved the client about 2,000 hours of accounts payable team time, reviewing 25K+ rides that year.

 

• On average it would take a team member 5 minutes per ride to review and additional time to contact and discuss with a supplier for resubmission.

 

• Our billing and payment software replaces these time-consuming tasks with an automated, seamless, and technology-driven process.

 

“HQ is truly one of our trusted business partners with our travel program.  In the years we have worked with them they have not only helped us achieve significant cost savings and greater transparency in our ground transportation program but have provided us invaluable insight into our program and the industry.”   – Fortune 500 Client 

With business travel continuing to boom month on month, and the pandemic appearing in our rearview mirror, it’s time to ensure that your company’s business travel is as efficient and effective as it should be. Reach out to our HQ team today to discuss how we can build a custom solution for your organization.