For state and local governments, moving employee reimbursement programs and technology to automated and cloud-based systems represents one easy and effective way to use digital services to improve internal employee engagement and efficiencies.
But despite this opportunity, many state and local governments still use lengthy, inefficient and largely manual processes. In most circumstances, these agencies are still using paper-based methods for tracking employee initiated spend – which refers to any purchase an employee makes on behalf of an organization that is not managed by a purchase-order process, including procurement cards as well as travel-related and business expenses.
Not only do these antiquated processes delay payments, but they are also difficult to track, prone to errors and vulnerable to abuse. As state and local agencies look to modernize technology, a variety of issues related to employee initiated spending often prevents modernization of internal processes and platforms.
To better understand these opportunities and challenges, GovLoop partnered with Concur, a leader in cloud-based spend management, to survey state and local agencies and better understand what prevents them from modernizing technology to achieve a consolidated view of employee initiated spending. In the following pages, we’ll discuss the survey results of 411 public-sector employees largely at the state and local levels, gain insights from Matt Gibbons, Senior Director of Government and Government Contractor Sales for Concur, and understand the ways agencies can overcome obstacles to modernizing and improving their management of employee initiated spend.
