dmaic analysis on purdue travel procedure concur user integration improvement

DMAIC Analysis on Purdue Travel Procedure

CONCUR User Integration Improvement

By

Weng Kwong Chan

Jason Widgery

Kevin Chang

IT 446

Fall 2013

Table of Contents

IT 446 CONCUR User Integration Improvement

Pages

1. Introduction 3

2. Project Charter 4

3. Define 5

4. Value Stream Map 6

5. Process Map 7

6. Measure 8

7. Voice of Customer (VOC) 8

8. Analysis 12

9. Improvements 16

10

.

Conclusion 17

11

.

Acknowledgement 17

12

.

References 17

2


Introduction

After talking to Dr. Ragu and Debbie, our IT446 Six Sigma DMAIC Project, we decide to look

into Purdue University’s travel procedures for faculty. We originally thought of embarking on the

entire scope of the university travel reimbursement system. However, we soon realize that the

scope was too wide for our project. Hence, we narrowed down our focus to Expense Report in

Concur System for Technology Leadership & Innovation Department in the College of Technology.

Like all departments in a large world-class university, travel is an essential element of the

faculty, distinguished guests, and our graduate students. Consequently, a systematic and reliable

system must be set in place to ensure that the university process trip reimbursement efficiently and

accurately, while making sure all trips are in compliance with the regulatory and legal reporting

policies.

Since January 2013, the Central Travel Office has replaced the paperwork process with

Concur Travel and Expense across Purdue University, including regional campuses. Concur is the

leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions. In conjunction with

ALTOUR travel agency and the introduction of JP Morgan Chase Visa travel card, Concur intended to

provide automated booking, authorization, and reimbursement processes, thus eliminating Form

17 and Form 25, which were previously required in the paperwork.

Despite the lean effort from Central travel Office to redesign the travel procedures before

adopting Concur Travel and Expense application, we still receive informal complaints from

travelers and administrative staff after talking to them. Some of complaints involve around with

the complexity of the new system, account assignment and the continuous need of retraining.

Hence, our six sigma project commences by investigate the expense filing process which gives

CONCUR users the most issues and is critical for the reimbursement process.

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Project Charter

Business Case

The Central Travel Office has recently deploy CONCUR, a business travel and expense management

software to replace the time-consuming paperwork process. However, because of some of the non-

intuitive features of the CONCUR system and the fact not all Purdue faculty use CONCUR on a daily

basis and received sufficient training, we stepped in to investigate the expense filing process which

gives CONCUR users the most issues and effects on the reimbursement process most.

Opportunity Statement

The CONCUR system, oversee by Purdue Central Travel Office is relatively complex and not user-

friendly. Since the deployment of CONCUR, some of travelers receive non to a basic 2-hour training

while their delegates receive a more in-depth 6-hour training. Insufficient training and infrequent

usage of CONCUR system has often generate system exceptions that carry over to the

reimbursement process and hence affect the reimbursement duration.

Goal Statement

(1) Reduce cycle time (Creation of expense report to reimbursement)

(2) Simplify the process by identifying bottleneck and unnecessary steps

X: Workflow Cycle time

Y: Efficiency, users' satisfaction, users' training level

Project Scope

We are working on the CONCUR system's expense report filing process for TLI and CoT faculty.

Starting point: Return from trip

Ending point: Receive reimbursement payment

Project Plan

For this project, we will be focusing on the Define, Measure, Analyze, and Improve phase of the

DMAIC methodology

DEFINE: -Establishing contact with Business Office (2 weeks)

-Capture VOC, and convert them into CCR (2 weeks)

-Understand the current CONCUR system and process mapping (2 weeks)

MEASURE: - Develop comprehensive measuring rubric for various components (3 weeks)

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ANALYZE: - Use SPC tools to present collected data (2 weeks)

- Interpret statistical data (root cause analysis, process analysis, etc.) (3 week)

IMPROVE: - Post suggestions based from statistically significant data (1 week)

Team Selection

Dr. Ragu Athinarayanan - Project Sponsor

Debbie Tutak - TLI Administrative Staff

Steven Cain - Consultant

B.Gayle Stetler - Process Owner (Central Travel Office)

Emily Haygood - CoT Business Office Account Clerk

Weng Kwong Chan - Project member

Jason Widgery - Project member

Kevin Chang - Project member

Define

Our primary objective was to reduce the cycle time it takes from submitting Expense Report

to reimbursement. Our first step was to contact the Business Office, which we kept in contact for

over two weeks. From the business office, we established a connection in Central Travel Office with

Gayle Stetler, who is an Account Payable Mangers and also part of the Concur deployment team.

Gayle walked us through their current state and future state Value Stream Maps (Figure 1 and 2)

and also some of the new features and improvements over the previous paperwork system. Gayle

also helped us familiarize ourselves with Concur by giving us a demo session and walking through

most of the steps and troublesome features in the Expense Report. We have also collaborate with

Gayle to create a detailed process map (Figure 3) to understand each steps that happens between

submission of expense report and reimbursement.

5


Value Stream Map

Figure 1. Value Stream Map for Paperwork Process

6


Figure 2. Value Stream Map for Concur Travel System

Process Map

Figure 3. Process Map for Concur Expense Report

Performance Indicators: P1 – Date of expense report submissionP2 – Amount of expense reportP3 – Reason for Business Office RejectionP4 – Reason for Ad-hoc approver rejectionP5 – Reason for Disbursement Audit RejectionP6 – Audit StepsP7 – Date sent for payment

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Measure

In the previous paperwork system, the baseline performance of the Reimbursement

Preparation Process (comparable to Expense Report in CONCUR System) was measured by

interviewing processors and managers in Business Office and Central Travel Office. The process

time was estimated to be 78 hours while the lead time ranged from 11 to 28 days.

To initiate the measurement process for the current Concur system, our team gathered

multi-dimensional data from the end-users and the Concur system. For end-users, we distributed a

Qualtrics surveys in order to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The results of the survey are

used as Voice of Customer (VOC) to further analyze and translate into Key Customer Issues and

eventually into Critical Customer Requirements (CCR). In the survey, we asked specifically about

the amount of training (in hours), user experience, and also 2 open-ended questions for travelers or

delegates to express their concerns.

On the other hand, since Concur is an automated application, Emily Haygood and Gayle

Stetler helped us to obtain quantitative data such as cycle time (in days), the reimbursed dollar

amount, and approval duration (in days) and etc. using the CONUS reporting service. With these

data, we utilized statistical process control (SPC) tools to analyze and evaluate the results which

will be discussed the analysis part of this report.

Voice of Customer (VOC)

External costumers are defined as the end-users (traveler or delegate). We collect the voice

of customers by distributing a survey, and also take our own experience with Concur and online

resources into account. One of the biggest concerns for all Concur users is their ability to use the

system effectively. Due to the fairly recent implementation of the new process, frequency and

proficiency of the system is on a steep learning curve. A common voice across methodologies was

training, retraining and access to information. As seen in Table 1 all information acquired after

training was from the Business office while online resources are available. It was noticed through

observation, that the information is not only difficult to find, but the information is also not clearly

interpreted. While overall user experience was good (67%), according to the survey, access to

useful training documents was a “must” in order to use the application efficiently.

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Table 1: Initial training and Information access survey results

When asked how long it took them to file an expense report within the Concur system a

88% majority of respondents takes four hours or less. However, end-users still state the process

does take longer than the older paper process (Table 2)

# Answer %

1 Much shorter 11%

2 Shorter 11%

3 About the same 22%

4 Longer 44%

5 Much longer 0%

6Don’t know, I haven’t use the CONCUR

or the paper process before11%

Total 100%

Table 2: Concur Expense Reports compared to paper process

We also performed a simple Kano analysis on the specific details of the end-user experience

and satisfaction of an improved process. Figure 4 suggests an increase in end-user satisfaction if

information availability and clarity and user interface were improved.

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Figure 4: Kano Analysis on Voice of Customer

The VOC was further translated into a Critical Customer Requirements (CCR) in a CCR

matrix (Figure 5). First and foremost, clear and concise training documents are a key requirement

to end-users satisfaction. In addition, improved training would also minimize other attributed

activities (discussed later) when creating expense reports through Concur. With increased training

level, end-users would also be more familiar with Concur’s user interface and environment and

hence reducing time needed to create an expense report. Although it is possible to communicate

with Concur to improving the interface and automating some features, the changes are limited to

the system architecture. Another concern that was raised is that end-users were bombarded with

exceptions and daily email reminders that frustrate them.

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Figure 5: Critical Customer Requirements (CCR)

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Analysis

The first thing we did to analyze the data, is to perform a Pareto analysis on the Exceptions

that occur in the Expense Report. Exceptions are warning or error codes that Central Travel Office

created to address some of potential issues while filing an Expense report. Although only level-99

Exceptions (Unused advanced cash, Invalid approver, Future date report) forbid users to submit

their Expense Report, most Exceptions carry through the submission of the Expense Report.

Frequency 128 56 1 11516322871124 858 807 634 210 199Percent 0.6 0.3 0.0 0.070.610.7 5.2 4.0 3.8 3.0 1.0 0.9Cum % 99.7100.0100.0100.070.681.3 86.590.5 94.3 97.2 98.2 99.1

Exceptions

Allocat

ion Re

quired

Accoun

t Assign

ment

Fare C

lass

Hospita

lity AN

D Allow

ance

Mileage

Rental

Car Cla

ss

Car Re

ntal Pr

eferre

d Vend

or

EXP >

TR

Contra

Expen

se

Trip Re

quest M

issing

Duplica

te Ent

ry

> 60 d

ays old

20000

15000

10000

5000

0

100806040200

Freq

uenc

y

Perc

ent

Pareto Chart of Exceptions for 2013

Figure 6: Pareto Chart of Exceptions for 2013

From the Pareto Chart, we can clearly see that two of the Exceptions: greater than 60 days

old Exception and Duplicate Entry Exception make up more than 80% of the total exception fired.

Greater than 60 days old exceptions indicates that the Expense Report is submitted more than 60

days of the actual travel and might cause some tax implications of the traveler him/herself. The

second Exception is to warn users of potential duplicate entries. While both of these Exceptions

were not critical errors and still allow users to submit their Expense Report, we think it necessary

to minimize the occurrence of these two Exceptions as it might cause confusion among end-users.

Furthermore, we also look at the relationship between the amounts approved (travelling

expenses) with the amount of days it takes to get approval. Initially, we predict that these two

variables would have a positive correlation: as the amount approved increases, the time takes to

approval them also increases, and the scatter plot (Figure 7) suggest that a positive correlation may

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exist. That would be reasonable as the amount of expense increases, Business Office and Central

Travel Office would take extra time to evaluate the spending related to that trip.

403020100

80006000400020000

403020100

8000600040002000

0

ECET

Approval (Days)

Appr

oved

Am

ount

MET

TLI

Panel variable: Department

Scatterplot of Approved Amount vs Approval (Days) Between Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27, 2013

Relationship between Approved Amount and Approval(days) from CoT Department

Figure 7: Scatter plot of Approved Amount vs. Approval (Days) Between Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27,

2013

According to the individual value plot (Figure 8), the average approval days among ECET, MET and

TLI department were rather consistent, all around 5-6 days, while TLI department has a greatest

standard deviation of approval days of 5.9 days, followed by MET’s 4.7 days and ECET’s 4.5 days. In

our data, we also observed that faculty in TLI department travelled 94 times in the given time

period, almost twice as much as MET and ECET department. Some of the trips, possible for couple

months or multiple destinations, could explain some of the outliers in the individual value plot for

TLI department.

TLIMETECET

40

30

20

10

0

Department

Appr

oval

(Day

s)

5.9255365.34694

Individual Value Plot of Approval (Days)

363024181260-6

2015

1050

363024181260-6

2015

1050

ECET

Approval (Days)

Freq

uenc

y

MET

TLI

Mean 5.347StDev 4.489N 49

ECET

Mean 6StDev 4.703N 53

MET

Mean 5.926StDev 5.888N 94

TLI

Histogram of Approval (Days)Normal

Panel variable: Department

Figure 8 and 9: Individual Value Plot of Approval (Days) and Histogram of Approval (Days) Between

Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27, 2013

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From the control chart of approval (days) (Figure 10), we are fairly confident that approval

process is in control and most of the numbers of days for approval fall within the 6 range.σ

However, the process capability analysis further reveals that the process failed to meet the initial

target duration they initially set in the lean meetings. During the multiple lean meetings the Central

Travel Office before adopting Concur, they expect the lead time for the reimbursement process to

improve to 1 to 7 days (our LCL and UCL). In reality, with a C p value of merely 0.20 indicates that

the 6 spread is greater than tolerance spread. Although the process might be exhibiting naturalσ

variations, we conclude that the process is incapable of meeting the initial expectation set by the

internal customers. Furthermore, Cpk value of 0.06 also supports that the process is not meeting

expectation, even though the process average fall within the specification limits. Since C p ≠ Cpk, the

process is not centered, as showed in Figure 11.

918273645546372819101

40

30

20

10

0

-10

Observation

Appr

oval

(Day

s)

_X=5.93

UCL=20.45

LCL=-8.60

1

1

1

Control Chart of Approval (Days) Between Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27, 2013

TLI Department

Figure 10: Control Chart of Approval (Days) Between Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27, 2013

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30.022.515.07.50.0-7.5

LSL USL

LSL 0.04Target *USL 7Sample Mean 5.92553Sample N 94StDev(Within) 5.90413StDev(Overall) 5.88828

Process Data

Cp 0.20CPL 0.33CPU 0.06Cpk 0.06

Pp 0.20PPL 0.33PPU 0.06Ppk 0.06Cpm *

Overall Capability

Potential (Within) Capability

PPM < LSL 127659.57PPM > USL 287234.04PPM Total 414893.62

Observed PerformancePPM < LSL 159418.56PPM > USL 427796.89PPM Total 587215.44

Exp. Within PerformancePPM < LSL 158768.11PPM > USL 427604.68PPM Total 586372.79

Exp. Overall Performance

WithinOverall

Process Capability of Approval (Days) Between Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27, 2013

TLI Department

Figure 11: Process Capability of Approval (Days) Between Jan 27, 2013 and Nov 27, 2013

Improvements

Since Concur Travel and Expense application is a fairly recent implementation to replace

the previous paperwork system, we would certainly expect some form resistance for users who are

used to the paperwork process. However, regardless of their preferences, we think that Central

Travel Office and Business Office should educate the end-users and develop their knowledge about

the system. Despite rolling out Concur systematically with piloting groups and awareness

presentations, end-users, especially travelers receive minimal training. Most travelers only went for

basic 2-hour training, while designators or administrative staff attends in-depth 6-hour training.

While it’s impossible to make professors and deans to sit through 2-hour training, we would highly

recommend that Central travel Office would make a training video accessible to Concur end-users.

This would allow travelers to learn about Concur at their own time or when they feel there’s a need,

rather the having them sign up for a training session.

Furthermore, from our survey, we also observed that almost all users would consult their

local Business Office for advice or direction when facing issues or trouble with Concur. No

respondents in our survey used the online resources, even though the Central travel Office believes

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that their training web site would have most, if not all the information to complete the Expense

Report. Users could be unaware of the resource/training website (Figure 12), or the website was

too clustered and difficult to navigate, and users just refuse to use it. In addition, concise step-by-

step instructions and cheat sheet specifically for each department could also be seen as a quick-

and-dirty way to elevate users’ experience with Concur. As users are more educated about the

operation of Concur, from exceptions to the troublesome account assignment, and the integration of

ALTOUR and Purdue Visa travel card, and uploading your receipt using your mobile device, we

would expect an improvement overtime in the approval time as users fully utilizing the features of

Concur and reduce the occurrences of exception, and hence having users to complete their Expense

Reports in one go.

Figure 12. Home page of Travel and Expense Online Resource

As we mentioned earlier in the report, the changes that can be made to Purdue’s Concur

system is limited to the Concur’s system architecture. However, Central Travel Office should

identify unnecessary exceptions codes, or at least clearly displays the severity of exception codes to

the end-users. While we understand that exception codes are useful in indicating issues or errors to

end-users, excessive exception codes would cause confusions among users. Also, the integration

between Concur and SAP could also be improved, especially for the account assignments as the

number of account assignments would throw some inexperienced users back. Another suggestions

that we can provide, is to ask Central travel Office to think on the line of travel booking sites, such as

Expedia and Priceline. Most of the features in those websites were very intuitive as consumers

don’t require any prior knowledge of their system in order to book a trip. While we didn’t went

through each steps in the whole process (from trip request to reimbursement), and we certainly

understand there are some compliances and regulations to meet, this suggestion could only use as a

guideline in improving the Concur system.

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Conclusion

For those experienced users, the new travel process is considered an overall improvement

over the past paper process. However, even the experienced few find that filing their end-of-travel

expenses tedious and all too meticulous. Furthermore, end-users should be aware of possible

exceptions from the forthcoming audit, and how to identify them, fewer may be made. A better

understanding the Concur system will increase effective use, save valuable time and perhaps even

some monetary resources. Further or increased training and accesses to clear, step-by-step

instructions for end-users would hasten and improve Concur experience and improving SAP

integration with Concur decrease the laborious nature of the system. Effective communication with

third-party development is also crucial to improve Concur’s interface and would eventually result a

more pleasant and intuitive user interaction.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank:

Dr. Ragu Athinarayanan for the project opportunity

Debbie Tutak for providing project ideas

Steven Cain for insightful experience

B.Gayle Stetler for allowing her time and expertise

Emily Haygood for being a life-saver

Dr. Chad Laux for the guidance and the challenge

References

Business@Purdue: Travel Expense (2013). Purdue University. Retrieved from

https://spa.itap.purdue.edu/Business/businessatpurdue/Pages/travelexpense.aspx

Meet Minitab 16 (2010). Minitab.

Summers, D. C. (2011). Lean Six Sigma: Process Improvement Tools and Techniques. Prentice Hall.

Travel (2013). Purdue University. Retrieved from http://www.purdue.edu/business/travel

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