Remy Cointreau: A Travel and Expense solution for a global company

This famous and historical French producer and distributor of alcohol gathers 1,800 employees based in 20 offices across the world. The bottles of Remy Cointreau are distributed in more than 50 countries for an annual turnover of 1 billion euros.

Why a Travel & Expense solution?

The biggest part of the workforce is made up of marketing and salespeople, in the field, who travel a lot. The problem was the high quantity of paper receipts that the financial department had to deal with at the end of each month, coming from all countries. Prior to implementing a Travel and Expense solution, Remy Cointreau had many issues to face:

• No global Travel & Expense policy within the group: The goal was to harmonize the expense process across the world (defining the amount of money you can spend for a lunch, or a flight, according to the country or city you are).
• No cost and expense control: The group then wanted to enforce this policy with cost control and also report to the line and top managers. The group needed to know how much was spent every month, how much money was lost due to the expenses.
• Poor Employee experience: Before, employees had to fill in an Excel sheet, send it individually to the accounting team with all the receipts attachment. Automating the process would offer a better experience for employees, but also for the accounting department.

Why SAP Concur?

Global leader in Travel & Expense management solution.

• Integration with SAP solution: Same accounting interface with data integration.
• Wide coverage: Integrates many travel agencies and supports any kind of credit card providers.
• Works in many different languages: Very useful when employees are based in many countries and speak various languages (French, English, Russian, Japanese, Chinese…).
• Powerful reporting capabilities: Thanks to many kinds of reports, the company is able to extract many KPIs to improve the budget control and reduce loss of money.
• Integration capabilities with other solutions: For example, an insurance travel agency, for Remy Cointreau.

Key Factors of Success for an SAP Concur project?

Choosing the right model to implement SAP Concur: Remy Cointreau has chosen the “wave” model (instead of “big bang” deployment) with US, Europe and then Asia.

Implementing Concur is not an IT project (except for technical part): It’s much more a business tool that employees use.

Having sponsorship from managers: It’s important to have top managers sponsoring and supporting the project by giving them visibility on it.

Change management: Communicate and assist users on how to use Concur, train and support them throughout the adoption period. Implementing the technical tool is not enough, people need to be trained on how to respect the policy by using the new tool.

Selecting the right partner: Choose a certified SAP Concur partner who will help and advise the company throughout the project.