Notably, while payroll, business expenses, and staff claims are constantly top-of-mind for human resources (HR) teams, only the first two are core processes that businesses cannot do without. The latter is not viewed as critically necessary.

In fact, HR teams in most businesses still place the responsibility on its workforce to submit their claims in the right format and order. This includes following specific processes that consist of long-in-use traditional practices, such as:

• Recording and keeping physical receipts
• Matching each expense to a specific project
• Putting the right data into extensive claims forms

Optimising the Necessities

These long-standing processes, which have not changed over the last few decades, are now considered a time-consuming affair that is both tedious and prone to errors. One of our recent regional reports on expense management challenges sheds much-needed light on these issues.

As for businesses in Asia, specifically in Singapore, these are the questions that often come up – how can HR teams make expense processing more efficient? What should they consider as part of the streamlining?

While there are many options out there, one of the best strategies that businesses can consider is to deploy next-gen digital tools. This one critical change can help businesses achieve the following:

• Simplify the process of making claims
• Provide insightful and seamless tracking
• Ensure all processes are error-free

Deploying Enhanced Processes

Here are some tips that will improve claims processing and also address current and new needs:

• Updating policies and standard operating procedures for claims processing
• Setting up automated processes for tracking and approval
• Deploying digital solutions that data-driven decision-making

Clearly, managing and processing personnel expenses is now a complex affair for Singaporean business owners. Let’s dive into the key pointers that can help simplify the user experience:

Streamlining Claims Processes

As the Singaporean workforce now expects flexible work arrangement and high engagement from management, there is a real need for operational change to ensure businesses can address these trends. More importantly, they only have one specific demand that must be addressed – to go through the entire expense processing in a more streamlined manner.

Having these one end-to-end platforms that offer such capabilities can ensure maximum efficiency and, subsequently, enable businesses to properly focus on achieving two key goals – managing time more effectively and boosting overall productivity.

Automating Expense Controls

As Singaporean businesses continue to digitalise their HR capabilities, they must also look at all operational functions. After all, certain processes are already overlapping; working with and managed similar data-sets; and becoming inter-related across different departments.

In pushing forward its digitalisation efforts, HR teams can automate most, if not all, of their processes. In fact, with the right digital tools, high-demand functions, like categorisation, analysis, and tracking, can be made accessible for all. As such, this will provide better expense management.

More importantly, businesses would have gained better expense controls and improved budget management oversights, such as deep analytical insights and on-time updates for every expense request that is being processed.

Managing Digital Change

Introducing and accelerating these optimisations for expense management is easy to do as there are multiple digital solutions that can help enhance these processes. Some can even improve policies and ensure maximum compliance with current and new regulations.

As businesses consider the options that are available, it is best to keep in mind how these digital platforms must help achieve specific priorities, such as streamlining expense management; automating the claims submission and approval processes; and providing insights that enhances overall decision-making. An all-in-one system that offers intuitive features, fully automated functions, and comprehensive deep-dives into personnel and management expense trends will make short work of these demands.

There is no doubt that ongoing digitalisation within the Singaporean workplace cannot ignore core functions like payroll and talent engagement. In this digital age, expense management must also be included in this transformative phase so it will truly be paperless, smarter, and become more time-efficient.