Stadler

Stadler, a renowned Swiss railway rolling stock manufacturer, is dedicated to building reliable and safe trains that are tailored to customer needs while providing optimum comfort to their passengers. Headquartered in Bussnang, Switzerland, Stadler maintains a presence in 15 locations for production and components, and with over 80 service locations worldwide.

In their pursuit of financial excellence, Stadler embarked on a transformative journey with Perk.

Company overview

Bussnang, Switzerland

14’000 employees

19 entities live

12’588 users

Mobility

Perk Expense, Pay, Lodge Card

Challenge: Getting off track with manual expense management

Stadler’s paper-based expense management simply wasn’t cutting it. Employees and the finance team alike were dissatisfied with the process that simply failed to fullfil the requirements of managing high volumes of expenses that all needed to be validated and approved in an efficient and easy way. It was time for a new digital expense management tool.

After a trial with a promising provider, management decided to pause further implementation based on user feedback. Problems included insufficient user-friendliness, a lack of collaboration in spending processes, frequent manual intervention, and an overall lack of user-friendliness.

Solution: A tool so intuitive, even a child can use it

Stadler embarked on a new approach to spend management, convening a committee comprising IT, HR, finance, and production representatives across the company. Their aim: to implement a holistic solution for streamlining and automating business travel accounting, ensuring smooth data flow among the numerous ERP systems, a complex endeavor considering Stadler employs several distinct ERP systems only within its Swiss entities.

After reviewing a shortlist of seven expense management tools, Perk emerged as the clear frontrunner ahead of other bigger, more established players in the market. Simplicity and ease of use stood out for Kerstin Bejić, who noted, “We needed a tool that was easy to use and didn’t require any training, so I let my 8-year-old son try Perk. He was able to use it right away without any instructions.”

"We needed a tool that was easy to use and didn't require any training."

Kerstin Bejić, Kerstin Bejić, Assistant Group CFO

Beyond its user-friendly functions, Perk distinguished itself with its innovative approach and strong commitment to a close partnership. The collaboration between Perk and Stadler led to the expansion of the pay module, including the introduction of the Lodge Card.

This enhancement allows employees to efficiently manage all flight-related payments through a single lodged card, greatly simplifying the accounting process for Stadler’s finance team.   This marks the inception of Perk’s comprehensive travel package, streamlining the travel experience for both employees and finance personnel.

Impact: Fast-tracking spend management with Perk and third-party integrations

Perk Expense has revolutionized  Stadler’s expense management, which now runs like clockwork. “We hardly receive any support tickets from employees anymore. And as an admin, I can readily solve most of them myself.”, confirms Bejić.

Stadler’s finance teams now operate 3.5 times more efficiently than before, making a tangible impact on the business.

“At the beginning of the project, we worked with our partners at Travelbrain to formulate a business case. We came to the conclusion that the cost of each manual expense report was around CHF 120. But with Perk, we’ve seen a remarkable turnaround with an average estimate of around CHF 20 per expense report.”

Kerstin Bejić, Assistant Group CFO

This corresponds to an impressive cost saving of 83% through process automation.

3.5x

increased process efficiency

0 %

cost savings through automation

Moreover, Stadler has harnessed the power of third-party collaboration to its advantage.  Utilizing the ERP connector enables Perk to achieve full automation in calculating and posting payroll taxes, seamlessly incorporating the 3-month rule in Germany.

Additionally, the collaboration with a VAT recovery provider has proven to be financially advantageous, with automatic tax recovery from expenses. Due to the project, we took into consideration to spread out the VAT recovery for those countries where our entities are not registered and the VAT recovery of those invoices are exceeding Perk’s implementation costs and annual license fees. “So it was not difficult to make a compelling case for rolling out the automatic VAT recovery to the entire group,” concludes Kerstin Bejić.