In the world of purchasing and procurement, especially as it pertains to corporate credit cards such as P-Cards and travel cards, we have a tendency to focus on the negative.
Fraud. Misuse. Abuse. Maverick spend. Split transactions. Wasteful spending. It makes sense to spend a lot of time thinking about problems that could be plaguing your corporate card program. When you have a lot of cards at your organization, it becomes progressively harder and harder to sufficiently ensure strong policy compliance.
We have discussed these matters in depth. Click on the supplied links within the text above to learn more about them. In this article, we are going to take a break from critical red flags, and, in the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, talk about green flags instead.
What are green flags in your spend data?
Green flags are, essentially, instances of “good cardholder behavior”. You can define this at the service level, such as that the cardholder shows consistent alignment with the policies and procedures of your organization’s card program. However, you can define “green flags” at a deeper level too, such as by cardholders who generate the most rebate dollars, utilize contracts and preferred suppliers, who uses allocated funds efficiently, and similar instances of good cardholder behavior that bring legitimate benefits to your organization.
Identifying green flags
To identify green flags, you need data that is complete, cleansed, useful, and easy to understand. With the proper controls and implementations in place, you can find insights like rebate dollars generated by cardholder, and other “top performer” metrics that get to a deeper level that simple policy compliance that shows the cardholder in question didn’t break any rules.
The same internal controls and best practices that allow you to identify red flags can help identify green flags, too. It’s all about obtaining a holistic view of your spend data. You then need to ensure the data is cleansed and categorized properly to be entirely useful. That kind of visibility can lead to a surprising amount of different avenues for insight.
Benefits of identifying good cardholder behavior
By looking for and sharing green flags, you are demonstrating to your cardholders that their actions and efforts do not go unnoticed or unappreciated, and it provides tangible benefits to your card program for three different reasons.
For starters, and most obviously, it encourages policy compliance. It is important to let cardholders know that their card activity is monitored – and if they know that proper usage also gets noticed, it makes them more likely to engage with the card program in a positive way.
It also instills a sense of appreciation for compliance among your card program. When anything has a long list of policies and procedures, as a corporate card program does, it can make people antsy about engaging with it. Noticing and appreciating good cardholder behavior helps to reframe that energy positively.
The final, and most beneficial, benefit for communicating green flags to cardholders is that it helps break down barriers that may exist in different areas across the card program.
The final and arguably the most beneficial result of communicating green flags to your employees is that it lessens the barriers between employees and cardholders. A successful card program is one where cardholders feel comfortable and incentivized to ask questions and clarify issues they may encounter. This type of awareness and appreciation can be a great stepping point to better communication with your cardholders more broadly.
As an example of a way to show appreciation, check out our free cardholder recognition certificate template below! It’s perfect if you’re looking for something tangible to give your cardholders to show that their good cardholder behavior does not go unnoticed.
Don’t leave it up to luck
With spend visibility, organizations tend to get out what they put in. Meaning to get your organizational spend visibility to a point that you can glean useful insights out of it, it requires quite a bit of work up front. Card Integrity has helped organizations improve their organizational spend visibility by being a third-party solution that works as an extension of their procurement team.
To learn more about our services and how we help organizations get a better hold on their spend visibility, contact us via the form below.
After all, who knows what could be lurking deeper within your organizational spend data? You may find issues, of course, but you may find a pot of gold in the form of great cardholder behavior as well.
