Ecocert, dematerialized expense reports for greater efficiency
The Ecocert group had special requirements for managing professional expenses. A total of five subsidiaries were involved, each with its own expense policy, representing 700 employees in total.
The group needed a solution to manage all of its business expenditure flow, subsidiary by subsidiary, while ensuring regulatory compliance.
About Ecocert
Ecocert is a group specializing in certification on environmental labels, with the best-known ones being the European organic label Eurofeuille. These pioneers of organic farming are celebrating their 30th birthday this year.
The goal: greater speed and mobility
"We wanted a solution that was as dematerialized as possible, that prioritized the user experience and was easy to manage." – Christophe Manaud, Head of Accounting, France Region
Ecocert’s challenges in terms of professional expenses were manifold: different expense policies for each subsidiary (five in total), a need for multi-user management, and a relatively complex organization to set up, due to the presence of several different companies and a different level of reimbursement depending on the employee. As for the categories of expenditure, they weren’t harmonized.
In addition, the group wanted to go further with financial reporting, particularly regarding the analysis of accounting data. Finally, it sought to focus on digitization via a quick and easy-to-use tool that would achieve a good buy-in from employees and not generate delays in accounting processing. Two goals were clearly defined: mobility and speed.
The Jenji project teams, therefore, designed a process adapted to Ecocert’s constraints (in particular multi-user management), based on automation and detailed reporting. The aim was to set up an ongoing process, receipt by receipt, to eliminate the very concept of expense reports. Thanks to the automated payment flow, Ecocert can now process each expense report in real-time, which avoids the need to embark on the time-consuming task of verifying receipts at the end of each month.
Better management of payment flows
Ecocert’s defining feature is its organization, structured into several distinct subsidiaries. It was, therefore, necessary to adapt to this “multi-user”, “multi-company” structure, which can complicate payment flows.
One of the challenges was the configuration of the tool, due to the different expense policies. In an identical category, it needed to be able to display alerts corresponding to each of the subsidiaries’ policies. The goal was therefore to implement a flexible and effective professional expense policy.
Efficient automation
The implementation of Jenji was immediately welcomed by employees, who had been awaiting a simple and easy-to-use solution. The possibility of adapting the tool to employees’ needs and requests while maintaining a common core was particularly appreciated. Finally, automation made it possible to eliminate paper expense reports and improve efficiency. This automation quickly achieved the goal of better managing payment flows and moving to real-time management, much faster than “deferred” management.
