Chivas Regal: Expense processing solutions for global travellers

Overview
From its humble beginnings in a grocery store in Aberdeen, Chivas Regal has become the most famous premium whisky and is now appreciated from Tangiers to Tokyo and from Rio de Janeiro to Rome.

Travelling the globe
The Chivas marketing and commercial staff travel the globe, from their home in the highlands of Scotland to distant corners of South America.

Ian Barr, Finance Manager at Chivas, explains how this impacted on their expenses  process:

"Previously, our process was completely paper-based, which led to problems with the paperwork getting lost and an almost complete ignorance over where and when expenses were being incurred."

"Credit card statements were filled in with additional detail by hand, which meant that the accounts department was forever chasing the statements. We needed a systematic way of processing claims with appropriate controls."

A solution is found
Chivas determined that WebExpenses was the solution they were seeking and the implementation was completed soon after making the decision to proceed.

"We determined that WebExpenses met all our criteria. As the whisky industry is relatively low tech, we were concerned that some of our less computer-literate staff would object to a new system. However, the implementation went very smoothly and any objections soon faded."

"We were pleased that we were able to use the product off-the-shelf, as we’d become used to software implementations for which the changes were so great that by the end of the process you didn’t recognise the product as it appeared at the start."

Populating claims with Barclaycard data
Most of the staff submitting claims are able to populate their expenses with expense items incurred on their corporate Barclaycards. This credit card functionality is particularly well received, as there’s no thought involved on the part of claimants.

"At the click of a button, an employee populates a claim with the month’s credit card data, so there’s no thought involved, and that’s always a good thing."

Summary
Ian Barr maintains that the benefits have been considerable:

"The benefits for us have been considerable and tangible. We now have visibility over every single expense item throughout the organisation, which allows us the control we sought."

"We saved half a head in the accounts department alone. While we haven’t tried to quantify the cost savings outside the accounts department, there’s no question that the savings are considerable."

"The interface into J.D. Edwards is such that we consider it a single process, from capturing expense items on credit cards, to posting to the relevant ledgers."

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