June 18, 2015
1. Please share the brief about the Expense Management programme by American Express?
In today’s environment it is important for mid-size organizations to find ways to sustain profits and continuously look at opportunities to control cost, in order to maintain their financial health and to be better prepared for the future. Our expense management solutions streamline purchasing and simplify reporting and reconciliation processes for business related expenses.
Through our expense management solutions we provide mid-sized companies with seamless access to pre-negotiated discounts and savings on everyday business spending including travel, dining, shipping and conferencing services. These solutions help, drive tangible savings for businesses; streamline processes to reduce time and cost; offer extended payment terms; facilitate efficient administration of expense management programs using online tools and maximize control and improve compliance with purchase policy.
And, it is all supported by superior 24-hour worldwide service.
2. Elaborate the benefits of expense management program and how does it help the SMEs to grow?
Drawing on its extensive experience, American Express® has developed a range of expense management solutions to streamline purchasing and simplify reporting and reconciliation processes for work related expenses.
With American Express expense management solutions, travel expenses, entertainment, and business related costs can be recorded in a complete expense management system. This provides complete transparency of company expenses, allowing management to more effectively achieve objectives such as – consolidating suppliers and identifying savings opportunities; driving compliance and identifying out of policy spends; setting individual limits by staff and expenditure type; leveraging insights to compile best practices; integrating expense management and management information systems; simply and pro-actively discovering trends and improving extended payment terms.
We help mid-sized companies who often seek but can’t secure the lower rates usually reserved for large corporations, as well as suppliers who are often looking for ways to better promote their products and services to the middle market. Moreover, many companies may not realize it, but business travel and entertainment are among the top controllable expenses in an organization. Hence, managing expenses on this front is as important as growing revenue. Our expenses management solutions are central to effectively control and monitor business travel expenses. They also give businesses flexibility around when to make payments, which enable companies to manage working capital and cash flows for investment in business growth.
3. What are the key challenges faced by SMEs in terms of managing travel and entertainment expenses? What can they do to overcome these challenges?
As per the recent American Express and Jet Airways Study on SMEs by CRISIL, as SMEs chart out growth plans spurred by improved economic sentiment, 80% acknowledge that business travel and lodging, which account for 10-15% of their overall spend, is highly important for the growth and development of the business. A third of the respondents see a 5-10% increase in this area this fiscal.
One of the key challenges that mid-sized corporations face is managing expenses effectively. This is where the American Express Corporate Card program comes in as an effective tool to help mid-market companies – both in facilitating ease of payment processes and in driving savings. Besides brining savings, the program also provides various liability options as well as user defined spend controls and limits that help companies control expenses.
Business travel is highly important for the growth and development of the business specifically within the SME segment. A substantial spend gets directed towards business travel and lodging. Marrying this business need with spend cuts is an important challenge for SMEs – and that’s where American Express’ expense management solutions come into play.
4. How do you take this solution to the market?
American Express provides consistent products and solutions to mid-market companies and large corporations worldwide. We issue local currency Corporate Cards in more than 65 countries and territories, Global U.S. dollar and Euro Corporate Cards in approximately 100 countries and territories, and offer Corporate Cards issued through our Global Network Services partner relationships in an additional 35 countries and territories.
5. What is the market share of American Express?
We issue a number of core card products as well as co-brand card products. Globally, we serve 63 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
6. What are the crucial changes that need to be incorporated in the spending behaviour of SMEs?
Financial discipline can help companies tackle slower business growth even in a slackened economic environment. SMEs today should look at their businesses from a long-term perspective and put in place efficient financial management systems and processes.
7. What is the response of the SME’s to the solution?
As per our long standing policy, we cannot disclose client related details. However, American Express Corporate Card program targets a diversified set of companies – Indian companies, SMEs and MNCs, across industries like IT, Retail and Manufacturing. We already work with several mid-sized companies across the country to deliver expense management solutions, and we are seeing an increased demand from tier 2 cities.
Our expense management solutions have received a very favourable response from the companies and SMEs in India. We continue to receive requests and queries on an ongoing basis.
8. How do you see it expanding?
We are represented in 12 cities across India currently and plan to extend our solutions and offerings to newer cities this year.
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