There are TWO great problems companies face when managing their IT expenses, according to John Adams, vCom’s VP of Expense Management. One, they spend too much time and money on managing their expenses, and two, they have little-to-no insight on what they are spending.
vCom’s recent podcast episode features John Adams sharing his thoughts on a better way to manage IT expenses. The bottom line: with increased visibility, organizations can make more informed decisions faster, so they can focus more on the core mission of their business. You can watch it below. Time is of the essence, so we’ve also inserted timecodes so you can jump to just the stuff you really want to hear about.
What is a quick summary of how vCom manages IT expenses?
John highlights that vCom’s Expense Management product pulls data from client invoices into our vManager software, building a foundation for managing costs going forward. vManager provides robust analytics and reporting that lets organizations know what they’re spending, where they’re spending it, and how they’re using their IT assets. What his expense management team does, John says, is “delivering that value of visibility.”
How is prioritizing expense management valuable to a business?
John highlights two key points:
- Organizations have better things to do than have a lot of people manually managing invoices and paying the bills. It takes part of your focus away from the core mission of your business and costs time and resources that could be deployed elsewhere. By even just automating tasks such as GL coding and AP posting, organizations get back more time in their day to do more mission-critical activities.
- Organizations aren’t getting the insight into the deep data that’s buried in these invoices. They aren’t breaking charges down by department, location, employee expense, etc. By using a system that provides better insight, companies can make better decisions.
He urges companies to ask, “How do I enable my core business to be more successful through the information I can get with better expense management?”
How does better expense management save money?
First and foremost, having clear visibility into expenses allow organizations to easily see expenditures that are unnecessary or are overpaid. And with better analytics, organizations can use the deep data to make cost-saving decisions down to the location or department. (BTW: vCom’s team of experts can help drive even more affordable pricing and work with more effective vendors.)
Using data to improve your IT environment over time
One thing organizations cannot get with manual processes is an overview of how things are trending. With vCom, businesses can see an accurate month-by-month report about how they’ve reduced costs based on the changes they’ve made. It’s a repeatable habit. For example, businesses apply their successes in one location and duplicate it in others with ease. Because of the systems that are in place, making decisions becomes faster, as they can quickly move new expenses into their system.
How vCom’s expense management has helped banks
Banks are notorious for M&A activity. If banks are selling branches to another bank, “normally they would have to go back through all of these spreadsheets to figure out what services at those locations and invoices they need to transfer.”
By working with vCom they have this information at their fingertips and can easily hand it over to the acquiring company, giving the the ability to quickly getting those expenses off the books.
How vCom’s expense management has helped organizations consolidate
Consolidating offices is easier when expenses are centralized. The organization can can see all the services they need to eliminate to properly consolidate. Without that visibility, it becomes a time-consuming manual process of mapping out the assets at each location. Things get missed, which can cost money, making the point of consolidation less effective.
Better expense management doesn’t just improve day-to-day processing, but it allows organizations to make more strategic decisions.
Gaining access to incredible reporting with vManager
With vManager, organizations can log in, click on charts, graphs, and reports, and get data broken down in many ways. Businesses can also create their own report directly out of vManager. John says, “We hear horror stories of teams taking days to get this information every quarter, especially with manual processes and errors.” Now it’s just a click away in vManager.Timecode: 17:34
