Europe’s most fashionable tech company focused on the best user experience

Zalando began its search for a new travel expense claim tool to improve employees’ way of working and their satisfaction.
 

As a digital company, Zalando prioritises providing the best possible user experience for its customers, as well as for its employees. This means optimizing internal processes to ensure that they are efficient and that employees are happy. In less than ten years, Zalando has managed to  become a leading fashion platform in Europe. Today, more employees than ever before are traveling for business for Zalando. Since implementing Concur Expense, Zalando has been able to  intelligently automate approximately 20,000 travel expense claims every year.

Intuitive and intelligent instead of complicated: That’s why Zalando depends on Concur Expense

Zalando’s history tells a unique success story. But as it grew economically, it also grew in complexity, with eight technology sites, ten logistics centres and roughly 4,200 employees who travel as part of their work.

Up until now, travel expense claims were time consuming, riddled with errors and completely lacked transparency. With Concur Expense, it has been possible to raise the user experience to a new level, with quick, intuitive and transparent processes. Around 4,200 Zalando employees travel regularly and around 1,750 travel expense claims are now processed automatically each month. Reclaiming expenses went from 28 days to 5 days.

"Any company that grows as quickly as us has to ­offer ­its ­employees­ intuitive­ applications­ with an excellent user experience. That way, they can focus on the important matters."

Daniel Frobeen, Lead Accounting Project and Process Management, Zalando Group

Previously: complicated, non-transparent and riddled with errors

Zalando employees were bogged down by long processing times, while managers complained about the effort required to approve claims. The manual process was also far from intuitive, extremely complicated and prone to errors. It wasn’t uncommon for receipts to get lost.
The task was clear: Travel expense accounts had to be automated in a way that was both intelligent and user friendly.

"It’s simply not possible to run a digital economy while using little bits of paper for everything. That’s why we opted to intelligently automate our travel expense accounts."

Daniel Frobeen, Lead Accounting Project and Process Management, Zalando Group

Why SAP Concur

When choosing a digital solution, employee satisfaction was at the heart of the decision: “SAP Concur makes travel expense claims easy and simple so more time can be spent on value-adding activities,” Daniel Frobeen explains. Because of Zalando’s rapid growth, scalability and the potential for integration were also key deciding factors: “A niche solution was out of the question for us. But SAP Concur integrates seamlessly into our existing SAP system environment and is so comprehensive that we are also perfectly equipped for the future.”

Now: intelligent and intuitive

• User friendly and transparent: Thanks to the mobile app, it’s possible to submit, check and approve expense claims at any time and from any place.
• Fast: The average time it takes for expense claims to be reimbursed has decreased from 28 days to just five.
• Compliant: With auto-approval, travel guidelines are applied automatically. In around 80% of the cases, this means that managers no longer have to manually approve the claim.
• Automated: Thanks to innovative technology, photos of paper receipts can be converted into complete expense claims, which significantly reduces the amount of time spent and the number of input errors.

Excel spreadsheets, physical signatures, paper receipts sent by internal mail: Manual travel expense accounts cost Zalando employees a great deal of time and energy. With Concur Expense, their time spent was reduced to a few minutes. Using the mobile app, travel expenses can now be processed and submitted at any time and from anywhere in the world.

“Zalando is still on track to grow. With SAP Concur, we have a scalable solution that can easily grow alongside us, and it’s international."

Daniel Frobeen, Lead Accounting Project and Process Management, Zalando Group

Zalando depends on SAP Concur solutions

Get rid of the paper. Manual travel expense accounts using an Excel spreadsheet are time consuming and riddled with errors. But what exactly do rapidly growing companies – that want to minimise the complexity of their processes – need? Below, you can see which SAP Concur solutions Zalando opted for:

• CONCUR EXPENSE: Recording, analysing and reporting travel expenses, all with Expense. Find out more here
• CONCUR EXPENSEIT: Expense details are automatically recognised from photos of receipts and then assigned to the right expense category.
• CONCUR SERVICE ADMINISTRATION: 24-hour customer service and support from experienced SAP Concur experts. For quick and simple roll-outs, around the globe.
• TRIPLINK: Thanks to TripLink, 100% of the travel bookings can be recorded – even those that are completed outside Concur. The details are transferred to the Concur system and can be compared with the travel guidelines retrospectively. Find out more here

 
About SAP Concur

SAP® Concur®, an SAP company, has been offering innovative, integrated solutions for commercial travel management since 1993. Our cloud-based and mobile services simplify the planning, booking, accounting and reporting processes and make expenses transparent. The integrated approach goes beyond simple automation: SAP Concur consolidates data on commercial travel as well as on ERP, accounting and credit cards into one system. As such, companies and travellers can concentrate on what really matters. Find out more here.