How a Fortune 500 company achieved a 500% ROI & saved $460,000 in yearly ground travel costs

Industry:

Financial Services

Client Size:

18,000 Employees

Location:

New York

Company Background:

Our client is one of the world’s largest and most respected asset managers.  Their services include investment management, risk management, and advisory services to institutional and retail clients.  The company has over 18,000 employees with 70 offices across 30 countries.

The Business Need:

As one of the largest financial institutions in the world, our client’s employees rely heavily on ground transportation for their corporate travel needs.  In particular, the use of car services in the global financial centers of New York and London.  Prior to the partnership, our client struggled to gain a single view of all global ground transportation activity.

Until this partnership,  our client found it challenging to manage and track ground travel spend with corporate rides across multiple geographies and numerous suppliers.  Without a centralized platform,  out-of-travel policy ride bookings, supplier invoice issues, billing errors, and ride price mistakes were common occurrences.  All of which negatively impacted the company’s bottom line, leading to increase costs and inefficiencies.

The Solution​​:

We created a custom-made dashboard that centralized all of our client’s ground transportation activity.  This included corporate rides at their New York corporate headquarters and internationally.   Based on the client’s request, our tech-first solution focused strongly on cost-saving opportunities, including invoice and billing error identification.

In building the solution, we provided real-time spend visibility with dedicated dashboards for invoice and expense management, supplier billing validation and verification, supplier payments, and scheduled and on-demand reports and insights.  For employees and travel managers, there was an easy ride booking experience that was consistent across all devices locally and internationally.   The state-of-the-art booking platform included a user-friendly mobile app so employees could request and ride on the go.

For billing and payments, we designed the system to review and validate all invoices and rides submitted by our client’s suppliers prior to payment.  As part of this, our sophisticated billing validation process quickly identified and safeguarded against invoice discrepancies and errors.  In the case of an error, the system automatically requested the supplier to correct and resubmit the invoice with the correct information. This diligent billing functionality resulted in significant cost savings, time savings, and enhanced spend visibility for our client.

The Results:

• Saved $80K through HQ SummitGround’s billing validation process by flagging over 300 rides and invoices billing errors, including duplicate invoices, rides, and incorrectly billed accounts.

 

• Saved $380K due to HQ SummitGround’s identification of over 800 ride and invoice issues.  Ride and invoice issues included incorrect base rates, wait time charges, service charges, tax charges, and toll charges.

 

• The HQ SummitGround invoice review process saved the client approximately 2,000 hours of accounts payable team time.  Without this automated process, it would take their accounting team an average of 5 minutes per ride to review.  Moreover, additional time would be required to contact the supplier, and request a resubmission.

 

• Advanced reviewing process resulted in a 500% ROI on HQ SummitGround’s cost for our client with increased transparency and greater spend control throughout the business.

Client Testimony:

“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.”  –  Travel Manager, Financial Services Client