The Walsh Group
Expense management integration simplifies account management and payment
Overview
While creating highways, bridges, railroads, hospitals, water treatment plants and federal and residential buildings across the United State and Canada, The Walsh Group’s need to simplify business buying grew. Headquartered in Chicago, the construction company’s 8,000 employees operate out of approximately 20 regional offices and active work sites. Utilizing Amazon Business solutions like account management tools and integrations, The Walsh Group was able to create an enterprise-level view of spending, save time and money, and empower its teams to purchase what they need and ship to the right location quickly.
Unifying employees under one account and payment method
As Jessica Richardson, a Walsh Group accountant and Travel & Expense Manager, approved employee expense reports, she and her team noticed instances of employees making business purchases while using their personal retail memberships and their personal credit cards. Some were expensing the cost of retail memberships for their business buys as well.
Simultaneously, IT equipment and furniture purchases for trailers at work sites needed to be streamlined. The IT team expressed interest in systems integrations and bulk buying benefits, like business-only Quantity Discounts. The finance team recognized consolidating expenses onto a single corporate card could be helpful to their oversight efforts and increase corporate card spending rebate opportunities.
Stakeholders from these teams participated in an Amazon Business supplier analysis, which included a product basket analysis and an overview of Guided Buying policies. These leaders found that having an Amazon Business account for their company allowed administrators to add buyers, and this worked best for them.
They moved forward with this account creation, meeting their business buying goals and giving them access to the millions of products available on Amazon Business. With Business Prime, they unlocked access to fast, free shipping and Guided Buying.
“Amazon Business is a one-stop shop for our business buying. We were already using it before. Now it’s accessible to us with one enterprise account,” said Richardson. “We also have access to a customer service team. Free shipping is great. We can ship anywhere we’re located.”
“Amazon Business brought in the right people to help us make the payment method decision. With one form of payment, we’re able to expense our business purchases through SAP Concur, and we’re getting a rebate from our corporate card, instead of employees using their own personal cards,” said Richardson.
Integrating with Amazon Business
With Amazon Business’ Single Sign-on integration, The Walsh Group’s IT team manages buyer login access. Buyers can use existing corporate credentials and passwords to access Amazon Business, rather than create separate accounts.
Amazon Business’ Reconciliation API integration with SAP Concur also simplified receipt management. Through this integration, Amazon Business receipts are automatically added to corresponding expense reports.
“A game-changer for buyers is the automatic import of receipts. It’s really a time saver and saves clicks. People don’t have to look through their accounts or emails. It’s definitely efficient and time-saving.”
— Jessica Richardson, Travel & Expense Manager, The Walsh Group
Empowering employee purchasing and implementing change management
To ensure employees are aware of and complying with the new enterprise protocols for business buying, Richardson walked employees through these changes during a training webinar and within her recurring internal e-newsletter.
“Once we completed our product basket analysis and had our IT peripherals in place, I announced this integration in my quarterly newsletter. There was one form of payment available. People were already purchasing through Amazon; it was a matter of getting them to go to Amazon Business.”
By being able to ship to many locations, employees could send the right products to the right work sites, providing increased efficiency, greater convenience, and more time to dedicate to their projects.
Learn more about expense management system integrations
