I recently was asked to write an article for Data Informed on the widespread adoption of purchasing cards and how companies can reap the benefits while minimizing the vulnerability they can bring.
It’s easy to see why annual purchasing card spending in North America increased from $196 billion in 2011 to $229 billion in 2013. P-Cards eliminate paperwork, lower processing costs, increase speed to payment and with the lowered bureaucracy generally make for happier employees. But, on the flip side, they bring new vulnerabilities, requiring companies to monitor transactions in ways that can handle the expanded volume and intrinsic risks.
Savvy companies are implementing cloud-based “on demand” monitoring to safely expand the use of p-cards for maximum cost savings and value while preventing loss and abuse. Cloud-based monitoring such as Oversight Insights On Demand™ makes it easy to incorporate information from multiple systems, including transaction details from the card provider, and perform analysis across disparate systems and data formats. In the article, I elaborate on the top 3 best practices for using procurement analytics with purchase cards: evaluate data from multiple sources, rely on multi-dimensional analysis to track patterns over time and remember, benchmarking can provide guidelines for setting policies and limits when initially implementing P-Card systems, as well as thresholds for monitoring purposes.
To learn more about how Insights On Demand can present a natural way to incorporate transaction monitoring into your organization’s purchase card program, visit our Insights On Demand Marketplace; and let us do the heavy lifting to find meaning in your data with a free test drive.
