
BIC Group: digitisation and standardisation of international expense management with SAP Concur

Industry
Manufacturing
Issue
Standardize the management of expense reports in all countries of the group, deploy a core model.
Solutions
SAP Concur solutions:
- Expense module
- Concur Mobile
- ExpenseIt
- Intelligence
The BIC Group launched the global deployment of SAP Concur in 2019 to homogenise the management of expense reports. Accompanied by ARAGO Consulting, the global IT department, based in France, has taken care of the foundations of the project by taking the time necessary to set up governance and a core model that can be deployed throughout the world.
Context
As the world leader in stationery, lighters and shavers, BIC has been making everyday life easier for consumers for more than 75 years, with essential, high-quality products that are accessible to everyone, everywhere in the world. This vocation has enabled the group to make the BIC® brand, registered worldwide, one of the most recognized.
The BIC Group employs more than 11,000 people and had sales of 1,627 million euros in 2020.
Goals
- Respect the tax rules of the countries and the spending policy of the group.
- Offer a simple and intuitive platform for each group entity.
- Establish governance and a core model that can be deployed worldwide.
Solution
The choice to deploy the SAP Concur Expense platform was an obvious one for the BIC Group. The solution allows to :
- Address all the countries in the group
- Connect to other systems (ERP, IS and HR)
- Evolve in the Cloud (the group’s desire to deploy global tools in the Cloud)
- Optimise cost control through reporting.
The adoption of SAP Concur was an opportunity to rethink the accounting organisation at five levels: geographical area, country, department, cost centre, entity. The success of the project is based in part on the effort made to define a core model that can be adapted to each country, with a strong focus on the finance part (tax rules, group policy and charts of accounts) for international deployment.
BIC also chose to adopt SAP Concur Mobile, a real plus for users.
Benefits
- Rapid adoption and high user satisfaction
- Smoother processing for finance teams
- Simplification, time savings, improved compliance
Direct integration into ERP and automatic integration of employees from internal tools (HR, IT) into SAP Concur is an asset for accounting.
To learn more about the implementation of SAP Concur at BIC, download the full testimonial:
Discover also
SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Concur, Qualtrics, UKG