I found the Aberdeen Research article on Travel and Entertainment (T&E) Expense Visibility very intriguing to say the least. On one hand, businesses today are searching for new frontiers where they can drive out costs in their operations. When the recession hit a few years ago, businesses immediately focused on driving efficiencies in their value chains which permeated its way into how they sold to their clients/customers, how they manufactured their products / offerings (with many outsourcing their manufacturing operations), and how they managed inventory to not tie up so much cash in inventory on-hand while also increasing fill rates.
 
As businesses now recover from the downturn, you are seeing them invest wisely (and cautiously) into areas that will create growth, but at the same time they have not lost that lust to manage costs. As a result they are looking into unchartered waters for cost containment and Travel and Entertainment Expenses are on the short list.
 
It makes complete sense that visibility would be one of the top challenges in the T&E domain. I would go a step further however and state that I think businesses really want to understand where their T&E dollars are going and more importantly, are they getting a real return in the dollars they spend. 

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The delight of SHARING was evident on the happy faces of the staff in our India office when they got to dig in to a delicious dinner hosted by Mr. Mayur Shah (Executive VP of Strategic Solutions).The dinner proved to be a happy outing for the employees, fostering team bonding. Recognition amongst peers leads to higher employee satisfaction, and keeping this maxim in mind, Mayur took the opportunity to thank the staff for efforts which are reflected in India’s growth story. In addition to it he also declared Simple Seth and Sivaram Reddy as “Employees of the Month”.

On July 3, 2013, Bramasol celebrated the one year anniversary of purchasing Caarma Corporation and thus initiated a year of growth and expansion.

Last week I attended the SAP Manufacturing Industry Customer Value Network Forum in Chicago. It was an outstanding event attended by over 400 people including SAP Manufacturing Experts, Partners, and over 100 customers. I was blown away by the depth, breadth and variety of companies, as well as solutions and people who attended. SAP showed is expertise and leadership in the area of manufacturing with solutions such as Supply Chain Management, Asset Management and Environmental, Health and Safety. Three major themes came out of the conference: 

Churn and Burn No More

It's no surprise that the SAP Insider Manufacturing webinar about Packsize was well attended; their story is one worth hearing about. Founded in 2002, this company has had tremendous success, holding operations in twenty-six countries and serving clients like Staples.com, Emerson, Acuity, Mack Molding, Mity-Lite Inc., and Graphic Tech.