Our customers are transforming T&E Management with AI

At last week’s AppZen on Tour in Frankfurt, Germany, our customers shared experiences and best practices for putting AppZen's AI-powered expense audit solution to work for them. The interactive session featured representatives from two prominent European companies talking about their transformative journeys with AppZen’s Andy Foster and an engaged audience.

The Finance Director of a multinational energy company and the T&E Leader at a global life sciences company highlighted their businesses’ efficiency gains. The Finance Director stated, "When we talk about efficiency, we talk about speed; [we’re] a lot more efficient with AppZen. It's a lot more precise and relevant in terms of findings. That's how it transforms our business."

One of the key drivers for using AppZen was the need to improve audit performance and reduce manual reviews. The T&E Leader explained, "AppZen will give you the comfort that controls are done in the background. You mitigate them, and even improve them because you are going to be able to identify much more [spend waste] than you were able to before."

The discussion also explored the cultural shifts required to optimize AppZen's potential. Andy Foster emphasized the importance of rethinking manager approvals: "Managers don’t necessarily need to approve every single thing. I think they need to be shown what breaks exceptions, and have some kind of reporting capability or messaging that highlights, 'This is what you need to look at.' You don't necessarily need to be involved in every expense report."

The Finance Director shared insights into their global deployment strategy, which involved a phased approach. "We started with basic audit models. We did not activate all the 17 that are available. So it's pretty straightforward; a missing invoice is a missing invoice. There's no training needed for this. Duplicate invoices, the same thing, because they show up."

The panelists also discussed the challenges of change management and the importance of AI-driven insights for transparency and accountability. The T&E Leader at the global life sciences company noted, "The important thing is the transparency that this AI is bringing up. And how transparent I can be towards the local organizations about those findings that, in the past, were put under the carpet."

It was clear that the audience was interested in how AppZen's AI-powered solutions transform travel and expense management for global organizations, including automating audits, improving compliance, and providing valuable insights. We were proud to hear the tangible benefits and strategic value our panelists have found in embracing AI for expense management.

Join us at AppZen on Tour later this year to see our newest offerings, hear more success stories, and learn best practices tips and tricks alongside your peers in Chicago and London. Hope to see you there!