A T&E program is four pillars on one foundation. Whatever state yours is in, there's a version of this work sized for it.
Four pillars. One foundation. Three ways to engage. One person doing all of it.
Buy one pillar and you own a very expensive column in a field.
Most campuses answer an audit report by shopping for a tool. A tool is one pillar. A program stands on four, and all four stand on a staircase of communications and training, which is what change management really is.
Policy & compliance
A travel and expense policy written in plain language, aligned to how your institution actually funds travel, and short enough that people read it. Audit rules and controls designed for sponsored research, fund accounting and federal requirements, by someone who used to answer to the auditor.
Example: a 41-page policy rewritten to 9 pages, with the same controls and half the exceptions.Duty of care
Knowing where your travelers are, and being able to reach them, because booking in the tool is what makes that possible. Booking behavior, TMC integration, trip registration, and the one metric your risk office cares about: how much travel happens where you can see it.
Example: out-of-tool booking from 44% to under 10% in two semesters.Technology & tools
Platform selection, configuration, ERP integration, card feeds, e-receipts, audit rules in the tool, the online booking tool and the travel management company (TMC) relationship behind it, and the mobile app your travelers will actually open. Platform-neutral, because I don't sell any of them.
Example: mobile app adoption from 31% to 80% in a semester after communicating the booking, receipt capture and report approval capabilities and ease of use.Payment methods
Travel cards, lodge cards for airfare, declining-balance cards for student travel, AP virtual cards. Take personal money out of the picture, let the card feed pre-fill the report, and let the rebate help pay for the program.
Example: university card share of T&E spend from 35% to 80%, and a rebate that covered the platform.Communications & training
Adoption is designed in from the start, not handled as a training issue after go-live. An advisory group before you need one, faculty reached where they already are, training that shows up just in time instead of once a year in an auditorium, and the department-by-department work that turns a live system into an adopted one.
Example: reimbursement cycle from 19 days to 6, with two approval steps removed and every remaining approver trained on why they're in the chain.
Pick the door that matches where you are.
Implementation
You're putting in a new platform and you can't afford to get it wrong.
The contract is signed or nearly so. You've seen what happens when a system goes live configured for a generic company instead of for a campus with sponsored research, athletics team travel, recruiting, study abroad, fundraising and faculty travelers. You want it built for how your institution actually works, and you want the people who use it every day to keep using it after month three.
I run the full cycle: requirements that start with your policy rather than the vendor's template, configuration and testing, the integration with your ERP, training built by role instead of by screen, and the go-live support that catches the problems before your provost's office does. All four pillars, and the staircase.
Optimization & health check
Your program went live years ago and never settled.
The policy predates half your staff. The approval chain has steps nobody can explain. Faculty book outside the tool, receipts still arrive stapled, and reimbursements take three weeks. It works, technically, and everyone works around it. You want someone to look at the whole thing and tell you what's worth fixing and what isn't.
A health check is a structured review of a program in production, pillar by pillar: policy, configuration, audit rules, card program, booking behavior, cycle times and the workarounds people have built. You get a written assessment with what's costing you money, what's costing you goodwill, and a prioritized list of fixes, most of which don't require a reimplementation. Optimization is the follow-on where I make the changes with you.
Advisory
You need a second opinion before a decision gets made.
A policy rewrite the committee keeps sending back. A platform selection where every vendor sounds the same. An audit rule that's catching more honest faculty than fraud. A card program you inherited. You don't need an eight-month engagement. You need senior judgment on a specific question, from someone who's seen the question before.
Advisory work is scoped to the question. Sometimes it's a day of working sessions and a memo. Sometimes it's a standing hour every other week through a budget cycle. I don't resell software or take referral fees, so the recommendation is the one I'd give if I were sitting on your side of the table.
Scoped to the problem, not to a staffing model.
Some engagements run eight months. Some run eight hours. Every one is scoped to what your program needs and priced for an institutional budget, not a corporate one. You'll have a fixed scope and a fixed number before you sign anything, and if the work turns out to be smaller than we thought, the number goes down, not up.
If you're a smaller institution and you've assumed this kind of help is out of reach, that assumption is the reason Clay Downs exists. Ask.