From XU Magazine, 
Issue 27

Q&A with with Sunil Nigam (CEO) of ExpenseOnDemand

The ExpenseOnDemand app offers global businesses a simple solution for automating their employee expenses thus, helping them create a paperless & contactless environment to work in.
This article originated from the Xero blog. The XU Hub is an independent news and media platform - for Xero users, by Xero users. Any content, imagery and associated links below are directly from Xero and not produced by the XU Hub.
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Q) Why did you choose to offer a pay on demand service?

A) Having worked for numerous businesses prior to launching ExpenseOnDemand, I was acutely aware that companies often get stuck in long term inflexible contracts with multiple suppliers. And often not utilising the services or being able to scale up (or down) as their demands changed and inevitably wasting money. 

To address this, we wanted to offer a solution that allowed businesses to take control and be able to change or cancel their contracts on a monthly basis. 

This was perceived as a risky solution as we weren’t ‘trapping’ our clients in long-term contracts, but this simply hasn’t been the case. The flexible solution proved very popular and business quickly realised they could not only save money but could simply amend their requirements as they used the service.

“Pricing is great, as we only pay for what we use – nothing more, which helps us plan the cost for the service.  I have an option to trial any new function and turn it off all on demand.  Would I recommend it to SMBs – Yes.” Jon Butterworth – Healthier Weight

Q) Why are Pay On Demand solutions so important now?  

A) The pandemic has seen a huge increase in the demand for its ‘Pay as You Use’ model as businesses leaders and finance directors are sourcing solutions that allow their businesses to automate the process, whilst being able to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and ever changing COVID-19 business landscape.

As businesses look to the post-vaccine future and the potential return to offices, a recent survey by ExpenseOnDemand highlighted that nearly 30% of financial experts will be focussing on automation this year.  They will be actively sourcing solutions that offer cutting-edge technology and flexible ‘pay as you use’ subscription models, so that they can keep the costs down when the service requirements reduce. 

As automation increases, businesses also need to know that their data is safe and secure, and this is something we offer at ExpenseOnDemand. The information being uploaded to our servers from employees and businesses is stored in a secure cloud solution. 

“ExpenseOnDemand has been supportive, responding to business change and acquisition requirements throughout this timeframe.   They have also imparted knowledge of how the system can work most effectively for us.” Joanna Benjamin - Eurofins

Q) How has the pandemic impacted your business? 

A) Since the outbreak, businesses have had to adapt quickly to survive, manage their day-to-day processes and ensure their staff can work seamlessly whilst working remotely. This adaption has been made possible by sourcing tech solutions to automate and digitise parts of their business which had not been updated for years. 

The pandemic has also caused a huge increase in demand for the ‘Pay as You Use’ model as business leaders and finance directors are sourcing solutions that allow their businesses to automate processes whilst being able to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and ever changing COVID-19 business landscape. This has meant we have had a surge in demand for our services and we have seen many businesses choosing to move to our solution from less flexible offerings. 

“Their ability to respond and adapt at speed has always been a mainstay but this has never been more apparent than in these past twelve months; always available (even during a pandemic), supportive, generous with their time and passionate about their business.” Lady Blackwood

Q) Name 3 challenges that your system resolves for businesses

A) The first is flexibility – Many businesses are looking to expand post-pandemic as economies bounce back which will mean a sudden increase in staff but many of these will be on short-term contracts as they gauge how much they need to expand. Our solution allows business to scale up and down as required and with no penalties or additional cost.

Remote Working – As our app is so easy to use it makes managing expenses from multiple locations easy for the business and employees to manage.

Finally, and most importantly for many businesses, is cost. We offer a very competitive and cost-effective solution that saves our clients time and money

“Our company has been working with ExpenseOnDemand now for nearly 1 year. I can say working with the team has been fantastic, very organised, easy to work with and very open to all ideas.” Cherelle Khassal – Empire Digital Service. 

“As a telecommunications company, our employees are out on the road building networks. We were dealing with a lot of paper until we moved to ExpenseOnDemand. It is very easy to review, approve and pay expenses.” Lidea Budean - Kelly

Q) How does your system deal with expense fraud? 

A) We give our clients the control and power to simply manage this by offering a variety of policies on our app. These include expense capping, duplicate rule, pay night limits, pay per person limit on entertainment and many others. 

The feedback from our clients on our policies is really positive as it offers an easy but very effective solution to control expenses and manage employees especially while they work remotely.

Q) What does the future hold for ExpenseOnDemand? 

A) The team at ExpenseOnDemand has been adapting our market leading app since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and we have been working hard to make it easier for finance leaders and staff to manage expenses in the new normal, especially with so many employees working from home. Our systems are continually being updated and developed to ensure we can offer our clients solutions that are current and work for them no matter where their staff are working. 

Q) You claim that your expense system easily integrates with third party apps – how does a customer benefit from that? 

A) At a simple level, ExpenseOnDemand integrates with Xero, Sage, QuickBooks and Tally seamlessly.  

In addition, as technology continues to rapidly impact business processes, many businesses will need to collaborate and offer open APIs to allow seamless integration and for multiple software’s to be able to talk to each other. This has been happening across many sectors, such as, FinTech for years as accounting, expenses and internet banks integrate to allow a completely coherent solution for businesses. To address this, ExpenseOnDemand offers Open API, which can “talk” to any accounting, payroll, HR or CRM application, to pull or send data between ExpenseOnDemand and the target application.  

We continue to expand our offering, to ensure this is the best possible service to our customers. We have recently introduced Bitcoin as a currency option for employees to use when managing their expenses and are the first expenses solution to provide this. We will continue to innovate and lead the way. 

Why leave it there?

To find our more about ExpenseOnDemand

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