Best Practices for Strategic Implementation and Adoption

Reimagine your travel and expense management future

In the relentless rhythm of today’s finance departments, finance teams across industries find themselves at a critical juncture: The traditional landscape of expense management—once defined by compliance, reimbursement, and reactive
back-office processes built on legacy systems—is now dramatically outpaced by the demands of real-time spend.

For many organizations, the reality is a fragmented operational chaos: finance teams regularly manage travel and expense
across multiple disparate systems, whether it’s a mix of different tools, homegrown ERP modules, or even manual, paper-based routines involving physical receipts and Excel spreadsheets.

These outdated methods are more than an inconvenience; they represent a significant drain on your financial resources and a constant burden on your employees, such as:

• Lengthy reimbursement cycles that frustrate employees
• Lack of centralized visibility into global spending patterns
• Persistent policy inconsistencies that invite fraud and compliance risks

These inefficiencies can accumulate, costing valuable time, fostering low morale, impeding productivity, and even leading to increased turnover. According to a recent Gartner survey, implementation-related issues continue to plague business buyers even after purchase. Among organizations that have deployed replacement solutions, 45% reported that the solution’s functionality did not meet expectations, while 38% of non-replacement solution buyers experienced similar issues.

Beyond performance gaps, provider-related issues have also surfaced as a consistent challenge. Nearly half of business buyers—49% of replacement buyers and 42% of non-replacement buyers—said extra effort was needed just to get provider services teams up to speed. Additionally, unexpected costs were reported by 41% of replacement buyers and 35% of non-replacement buyers, undermining budget predictability and increasing stakeholder friction.

Many of these challenges lead to scaled-back implementations or outright delays:
46% of business buyers with replacement purchases and 39% with non-replacement purchases admitted they had to reduce the scope of
their implementation due to these issues. Integration difficulties were cited by half of replacement buyers, and security concerns were raised by 44%—underscoring just how frequently deployments fail to meet enterprise
standards.

These findings highlight a recurring disconnect between provider promises and the realities experienced by finance teams, especially when implementation lacks strategic guidance, cross-functional alignment, and robust post-go-live support.

Implement with Expense Intelligence™

Finance leaders require data-driven infrastructure. Emburse accomplishes this through Expense Intelligence™, an AI-powered, strategic lens that orchestrates employee-initiated spend across travel, procurement, and reimbursements to deliver real-time financial control, empowered employee experiences, and organizational agility.

Leveraging specialized knowledge and direct experience with legacy systems, Emburse ensures a smooth, expert-led transition by tailoring solutions to your organization’s unique needs, utilizing your current exports and configurations for a successful setup.

This phased approach has successfully guided thousands of global and national companies through the implementation process, minimizing work for your team to effectively mitigate change fatigue and drive long-term adoption.

This guide offers a roadmap to future-proof your T&E strategy. It will delve into the essential elements of change implementation, including:

• Understanding the human aspect of change
• Planning strategic communications for internal teams
• Comprehensive training and robust data quality practices
• Phased rollouts that balance automation with human judgment

By following these best practices, your organization can confidently navigate its transition to Expense Intelligence™, transforming challenges into opportunities and securing a strategic advantage for what’s next.

Why a seamless implementation is crucial for organizational success

T&E is no longer a back-office function. In reality, it can be a strategic lever for visibility, compliance, and cost control. Likewise, a seamless and expert-led transition to a new spend management system is crucial for an organization’s
success, particularly when current processes or legacy systems are being outpaced by requirements.

But when implementation is rushed or misaligned among disconnected systems, many organizations suffer from:

• Fragmented data and manual processes
  such as stapling receipts to paper reports, data entry, and physical
  document transportation
• Poor adoption and policy noncompliance as well as difficulty in enforcing expense rules, which heightens the risk of fraud
• Limited visibility and control, which makes it difficult to track expenses in real-time or identify bottlenecks
• Delayed reimbursements and missed financial insights due to time-consuming processes and limited support

A successful implementation isn’t just a system swap; it’s a transformation.