Travel and expense management system integrated with enterprise ERP
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The Need
Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company, needed to modernize their travel and expense management processes which were creating administrative burden and limiting financial visibility. Their existing expense control system required manual reconciliation efforts, lacked real-time visibility into department-wise travel spending, and had lengthy bill approval cycles that delayed reimbursements and frustrated employees.As a multinational pharmaceutical company with employees traveling across multiple cities and countries, Novo Nordisk required sophisticated travel allowance (TA) and daily allowance (DA) logic that could automatically calculate appropriate compensation based on destination cities, duration, and company policies.
The challenge was to build a streamlined TA/DA expense control system that would integrate seamlessly with their existing internal ERP, automating monthly billing workflows, implementing built-in approval logic for better audit compliance and manager oversight, and providing controlled cost visibility with real-time insights into department-wise travel spend. The goal was to reduce the manual reconciliation efforts consuming finance team resources while accelerating bill approval cycles and enhancing expense tracking accuracy.
The Solution
We built a streamlined TA/DA expense control system that transformed Novo Nordisk's travel and expense management, delivering measurable improvements in efficiency and cost control.The Custom ERP Extension enhanced Novo Nordisk's internal ERP by integrating city-based travel allowance and daily allowance logic along with automated monthly billing workflows. Rather than replacing their existing enterprise systems, we built a custom module that plugged seamlessly into their ERP architecture, extending its capabilities specifically for travel expense management. The system maintains comprehensive databases of cities with corresponding TA/DA rates based on company policies, automatically calculates appropriate allowances when employees submit expense claims based on travel destinations and duration, generates monthly billing summaries for finance processing, and synchronizes expense data with the core ERP for consolidated financial reporting.
This integration approach preserved Novo Nordisk's existing ERP investment while adding sophisticated travel expense functionality without disrupting established financial workflows.The Smarter Bill Approvals feature implements built-in approval logic that controls expense entries for easier audits and manager oversight. The system automatically routes expense claims through appropriate approval hierarchies based on amount thresholds, department structures, and policy compliance. Built-in validation logic checks expense entries against company policies—flagging claims that exceed allowable rates, require additional justification, or deviate from standard patterns—before they reach managers for approval. This intelligent routing and validation dramatically reduces the time managers spend reviewing compliant expenses while focusing their attention on exceptions requiring judgment. Audit trails capture complete expense histories including who approved what and when, providing the documentation required for compliance and financial audits.
We delivered Streamlined Processes that reduced manual reconciliation efforts through automation of expense approval and classification. The system automatically categorizes expenses by type (accommodation, meals, transportation, etc.), applies appropriate TA/DA rates based on city and duration, matches expenses to budget codes and cost centers, and generates reconciliation reports that previously required manual compilation. Finance teams no longer need to manually validate TA/DA calculations, cross-check expense classifications, or reconcile individual claims with budget allocations—the system handles these tasks automatically while flagging exceptions for human review.The Controlled Cost Visibility capability provides real-time insight into department-wise travel spend, enabling proactive budget management.
Finance leaders and department managers can access dashboards showing current travel spending against budgets, identify departments or teams exceeding travel budgets before period-end, analyze travel patterns to inform policy decisions and negotiate better vendor rates, and generate reports for executive review and strategic planning. This real-time visibility transforms travel expense management from reactive reconciliation to proactive cost control.The measurable impact has been substantial: achieving 40% reduction in expense processing time and 50% faster bill approval cycle time, dramatically improving employee satisfaction with reimbursement timelines while reducing finance team workload.
The Challenge
The primary challenge was integrating seamlessly with Novo Nordisk's existing internal ERP without disrupting established financial workflows or requiring extensive re-training. The custom extension needed to plug into their ERP architecture, synchronize data bidirectionally, maintain data consistency across systems, and present a unified user experience that felt native to their ERP environment. Understanding their ERP's data models, APIs, and business logic required close collaboration with Novo Nordisk's IT team and careful technical discovery.Implementing city-based TA/DA logic that could handle the complexity of international pharmaceutical company travel required maintaining comprehensive databases of cities worldwide with corresponding allowance rates, handling edge cases like multi-city trips or travel across rate zones within single days, accommodating policy changes and rate updates without system downtime, and ensuring calculations were auditable and explainable for compliance purposes.
Building approval logic that was sophisticated enough to enforce policies and route appropriately while remaining flexible enough to accommodate legitimate exceptions required careful business rule design. The system needed to distinguish between clear policy violations requiring rejection, unusual but potentially valid expenses requiring additional scrutiny, and standard compliant expenses that could be auto-approved—all while maintaining audit trails demonstrating compliance with corporate governance requirements.Automating monthly billing workflows that previously involved manual finance team processes required understanding existing reconciliation procedures, identifying which steps could be safely automated versus which required human judgment, designing error handling for edge cases and data quality issues, and ensuring the automated workflows produced outputs meeting finance team requirements and audit standards.Delivering 40% reduction in expense processing time and 50% faster bill approval cycles required not just technical implementation but also change management—helping employees adopt new expense submission practices, training managers on using approval workflows efficiently, and demonstrating to finance teams that automated processes were reliable enough to reduce manual verification.
The Partnership
Our collaboration with Novo Nordisk was built on understanding both their technical ERP architecture and their business processes around travel expense management. We worked closely with their finance, IT, and travel management teams to map existing workflows, identify pain points, and design solutions that would genuinely improve operations without creating disruption.The partnership involved comprehensive discovery of their internal ERP system, understanding data models, integration points, and architectural constraints that would inform extension design. We collaborated with their policy and compliance teams to translate travel allowance policies into automated business logic that could be implemented in software while maintaining necessary flexibility for edge cases.
We focused on seamless integration with existing ERP components, building the custom extension using Laravel and Vue.js for a responsive, modular web interface that would feel familiar to users already working within their ERP ecosystem. Our team implemented the city-based TA/DA logic, approval workflows, automated billing processes, and real-time reporting dashboards that provide controlled cost visibility.Throughout development, we prioritized change management and user adoption, providing training for employees on submitting expenses, managers on approval workflows, and finance teams on using automated reconciliation features and reporting tools.The measurable success—achieving 40% reduction in expense processing time and 50% faster bill approval cycles—demonstrates how this collaborative approach created a solution that genuinely improved operational efficiency while maintaining the audit compliance and financial controls essential for a global pharmaceutical company.
The Tech Stack
We built the custom ERP extension using Laravel for the backend and Vue.js for the responsive, modular web interface. Laravel provides the robust framework for implementing city-based TA/DA calculation logic, approval workflow engines, automated billing processes, and integration with Novo Nordisk's existing ERP components. Vue.js delivers the dynamic, interactive interface for expense submission, approval management, and financial reporting dashboards. The modular architecture enables seamless integration with existing ERP systems while maintaining clear separation of concerns between the travel expense module and core ERP functionality.
We focused on building APIs and data synchronization mechanisms that ensure expense data flows smoothly between the custom extension and existing ERP components, maintaining data consistency while enabling the specialized travel expense functionality. The platform delivers the custom ERP extension that integrates city-based TA/DA logic and monthly billing workflows, smarter bill approvals with built-in validation logic for audit compliance, streamlined processes through automation of expense classification and reconciliation, and controlled cost visibility providing real-time department-wise travel spend insights—all working together to achieve 40% reduction in expense processing time and 50% faster bill approval cycles for Novo Nordisk's global operations.
