Pam Chuang, Ari Dukes, Leo Espindle
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Companies currently have very inaccurate methods of reimbursing people for mileage when they own their own cars. They currently estimate mileage and provide a Google maps link rather than a more accurate representation of mileage. In addition to the issues of inaccurate reporting, the expense reporting entry process to be very cumbersome. |
Our product will help to address issues for travelers, their managers, and auditors. For the primary user (the travelers themselves), we will make both business trip planning and reimbursement easier so that they can spend time working on the main parts of their jobs. Currently, if you consider a salesperson traveling regularly from Boston to NYC:
Our program provides the value proposition of planning, reimbursement, and auditing.
There are a few main personas to represent the main users of our product:
Phyllis the Traveler
Phyllis is a salesperson and an experienced traveler. She works late almost everyday and is always looking for new ways to make her daily job more efficient, especially for tasks that do not directly impact her performance at her job. She has three kids, and therefore wants to maximize the amount of time she spends at home. She is comfortable with using the internet from her daily job, but she is not necessarily up to date with the newest cutting edge technology. She finds that during reimbursements is the worst part of her day, and most of the time has to take care of her expense reporting at home, because she is not allowed to bill those hours to her work. Phyllis wants an interface that is easy to use and will save her a lot of time.
Juan the Auditor
Juan is an auditor who has to deal with multiple systems. Juan works in the finance department and has to transfer the data from expense reporting to the financial software used by the finance department for bigger expenses. Juan enjoys his job because of the analytical aspects of his job that he enjoys doing and therefore also enjoys finding mistakes that people make. Juan's primary role is to look at expense reports and compare line items to insure that there is nothing wrong between the receipts and expense reporting. Juan analyzes total travel expenses for all employees across the whole company and is always looking for incremental ways to improve travel expense reporting.
Mary the Approver (Travel Manager)
Mary is a manager who cares about dealing with her budget. She has ten employees and just wants to see the big picture and see how her employees are spending money. She generally only cares about big ticket items but will appreciate the improvement in her budget as long as she does not have to put in any extra effort. She’s a busy manager who does not check the individual line items and is constantly approving different line items. She is very busy at work and with kids, and she does not have time to analyze the line items but has to approve the expense reports. She consults with the traveler to help them plan where to go. She is part of the initial process and a user of the system herself. Phyllis is her direct report. She likes her job, and she’s older. Mary is less tech savvy than Phyllis. Mary drives a Cadillac.
There are a few main tasks involved with creating ReimburseMe. These tasks include:
Creating a trip
Goal: Enter a trip into the system for eventual approval
Preconditions
Time constraints
Frequency of use
Approve a trip
Goal: sign off on an amount for reimbursement for mileage
Preconditions
Time constraints
Frequency of use
Analyze trip
Goal: Look for discrepancies or unusual behaviors in mileage
Preconditions
Time constraints
Frequency of use
Lessons learned from the business consultant (Traveler persona):
Things already done well for expense reporting:
Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:
Lessons learned from VP of Sales (Approver Persona):
Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting:
Lessons learned from auditor (Auditor Persona):
Things that are not done well with regard to expense reporting: