If your company has benefited from your P-Card program, you aren’t alone. According to the National Association of Purchasing Card Professionals (NAPCP), switching from a traditional means of handling expenses to a P-Card system can mean efficiency savings that range from 55 percent to 80 percent of the traditional process cost.
P-Card programs are effective, both in time and costs. And if your program is currently complementing your business well, you might be at the point where you’d like your P-Card program to grow even bigger and better.
But can it be done? As you might already know, internal controls are extremely important in keeping your P-Card program successful — and your current commitment to those controls have probably contributed to your program’s success.
A big part of those internal controls is monitoring use for improprieties — a necessary step for your program to maintain its efficiency and continue to be worthwhile. But you might be finding that much of your time is already being used acting as “Big Brother” over your P-Card users, to make sure they aren’t using the system to their own benefit for their own personal expenses.
Managing such controls takes time and manpower — and so does growth. Trying to do both could be detrimental to your P-Card program. How can you focus on your program’s growth while still monitoring its users and their purchases?
Solution to P-Card Program Limitations
One important consideration is outsourcing your internal controls. Back in 2008, at a time when much of corporate America was looking at outsourcing as a way to save money during a rough economy, the New York Times ran an article that pointed out that outsourcing is not always about saving costs, but instead about increasing efficiency and shifting focus over to important core business priorities.
Every business has limitations. Outsourcing allows businesses to grow and expand — despite those limitations.
For P-Card programs, Card Integrity offers a specific solution — Data-Wise. Data-Wise alleviates the need for your managers to monitor P-Card activity by taking on that responsibility, thus freeing up your staff to concentrate on growing your P-Card program.
Data-Wise also allows for greater flexibility and growth of the P-Card program itself, with the ability to monitor many more transactions than you might be currently handling via your in-house management — as many as five million transactions per month.
And, using an outsourced program such as Data-Wise provides your P-Card program an independent, third-party review of expenses to help further protect your program.
For more information on Card Integrity’s Data-Wise and our other services for P-Card programs, give us a call at 630-501-1507 or click HERE to contact us via our website today!
