Im- Proving Internal Processes Using Digital Services – a Process Improvement by Digitalization, Emphasizing Chosen Quality Factors

Linköping University | Department of Computer and Information Science Master’s thesis, 30 ECTS | Information Technology 2021 | LIU-IDA/LITH-EX-A--2021/045--SE

Digitalizing the workplace: improving internal processes using digital services – A process improvement by digitalization, emphasizing chosen quality factors

Digitalisering av arbetsplatsen: förbättring av interna processer med hjälp av digitala tjänster

Madeleine Bäckström Nicklas Silversved

Supervisor : Jonas Wallgren Examiner : Kristian Sandahl

Linköpings universitet SE–581 83 Linköping +46 13 28 10 00 , www.liu.se Upphovsrätt

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Madeleine Bäckström © Nicklas Silversved Abstract

In recent years, the number of digital services and tools available has increased rapidly. When companies want to digitalize their business, they have the opportunity to browse a large number of existing platforms and applications available on the market to find a good match for their specific needs. However, when a company wishes to digitalize a work task that already has a well-established workflow, problems may arise. Due to this, a tailored digital solution may in some cases be the better suited option, rather than the ones available on the market. The intention of this work was to investigate the challenges that companies face in relation to digitalization of the workplace in general, and the challenges of a company’s expense management process in particular. As an example of how a workplace digitalization can take place, a collaboration with a forest industry company was conducted. An evaluation of their analog and internal expense management process was done, where the found challenges were assessed with respect to chosen quality factors. The evaluation and the found challenges regarding digitalization constituted the basis for a process mapping and a digital solution aiming to improve the company’s expense management process. The resulting work emphasizes how a digital solution can be tailored with simple means within a limited time frame, taking specific needs and existing challenges into account in order to digitalize the workplace. In addition, the work presents what challenges that exists within the concept of digitalizing the workplace and regarding expense management, and how quality factors can be used in combination with a process improvement in order to relieve and eliminate them. Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Richard Haag, Andreas Olofsson, and Soﬁa Edman at Holmen, for their valuable support and feedback throughout this project. A big thank you is also directed to everyone at Holmen who participated in interviews and user tests. In addition, we would like to thank Sogeti Linköping for the opportunity to conduct this work with their support. A special thank you is directed to Jonas Jaani who has been of great importance as our main contact and supervisor at Sogeti. We would also like to thank our examiner Kristian Sandahl, and supervisor Jonas Wall- gren at Linköping University for all their help. Lastly, we thank Mimmi Cromsjö and Linn Hallonqvist for their important feedback on our work.

iv Contents

Abstract iii

Acknowledgments iv

Contents v

List of Figures vii

List of Tables viii

1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation ...... 1 1.2 Aim...... 2 1.3 Research questions ...... 2 1.4 Delimitations ...... 2

2 Theory 3 2.1 Deﬁning digitalization ...... 3 2.2 Expense management ...... 4 2.3 Process evaluation and improvement ...... 6 2.4 Technologies ...... 10 2.5 Related work ...... 12

3 Method 14 3.1 Overview ...... 14 3.2 Digitalizing the workplace ...... 15 3.3 Digitalizing the expense management process ...... 15

4 Results 20 4.1 Digitalizing the workplace ...... 20 4.2 Digitalizing the expense management process ...... 25

5 Discussion 48 5.1 Results ...... 48 5.2 Method ...... 53 5.3 The work in a wider context ...... 54

6 Conclusion 56 6.1 Future work ...... 57

Bibliography 59

A Interview Questionnaire: common 63

v B Interview Questionnaire: cardholder 65

C Interview Questionnaire: attesting manager 66

D Interview Questionnaire: ﬁnance department 67

E User test template 68

vi List of Figures

2.1 Overview of the ﬁve phases of DMAIC...... 7 2.2 An overview of the method PDCA for the Improve phase of DMAIC...... 9

3.1 Overview of applied way of working...... 14 3.2 Overview of method analysis phase...... 17

4.1 Process map, card purchase...... 27 4.2 Process map, invoice receival...... 28 4.3 Process map, invoice handling...... 29 4.4 A simpliﬁed version of the current expense report...... 30 4.5 Wireframes of the initial prototype sketch...... 37 4.6 Home screen, cardholder...... 38 4.7 Home screen, manager...... 38 4.8 Creating a new expense, part 1...... 39 4.9 Creating a new expense, part 2...... 40 4.10 Invoices and receipts screen...... 41 4.11 Submitting expense report screen...... 42 4.12 Approve expense reports overview screen...... 43 4.13 Review submitted expense report screen...... 43 4.14 Decline expense report screen...... 44 4.15 Approve expense report screen...... 44

vii List of Tables

4.1 Process map notation descriptions...... 26

viii 1 Introduction

This section aims to give an overview of the work as a whole, introduce the motivation and aim, and present the research questions that are to be answered with this thesis.

1.1 Motivation

The constant development of new technology has over the years helped companies change their way of working, reduce their costs and improve their efficiency by making analog and time-consuming tasks digital. However, not only are there benefits with moving towards a digital workplace. In an article written by Parviainen et al. [32], both challenges and benefits regarding digitalization are discussed. The discussion is based on a literature study together with several case studies of companies that have made a digitalization journey. In order to get a broader understanding about these challenges and benefits, companies from various domains took part in the case studies. One of the benefits mentioned in the article is that converting an analog process that includes a lot of information into a digital process can reduce costs by up to 90 %. However, they mention that digitalizing a process could also be challenging since it might cause disturbance in the company’s current way of working. In addition to the previously mentioned benefits, Haddud and McAllen [22] explain that a digital workplace is said to have positive impact on an organization when considering productivity and employee engagement. Having a digital workplace can also be considered beneficial when facing issues regarding work at a physical site. Due to this, one can imagine that organizations can benefit from digitalizing analog tasks to reduce the need of working at a specific location. An example of this is the covid-19 pandemic [31] where the restrictions that followed forced many companies to work from home. This created a greater need for organizations to make it easier for their employees to work remotely. Digitalizing the workplace in order to make it more mobile for possible future challenges can therefore be beneficial. This thesis has been carried out in collaboration with Holmen, a Swedish forestry company that is in the middle of an ongoing digitalization journey to achieve, as they say, Digital happiness [48]. By exploring the possibilities of using digital services, they have managed to make it easier for employees to work from home, simplified how computers are distributed and updated within the company by moving services to the cloud. In addition, they have succeeded in creating an AI model that automates the distribution of invoices for employees’ expenses through email.

1 1.2. Aim

Continuing their journey to achieve digital happiness, they now wish to digitalize their expense management process. Today, this process consists of manual paper handling between different departments of the company as well as the need to log in to different applications in order to complete the task. The number of invoices that have been managed and reported has been approximately 4,000 a year for the past 3 years, spread over 750 company credit cards. The current process is described as time-consuming and tedious by the employees, which is challenging for the company as the employees may feel unmotivated to perform the task. Therefore, Holmen is looking to develop a tailor-made solution that is adapted to their current systems, requirements, and needs. Holmen wants to continue investigating the digital services already available for the company, so purchasing a system available on the market for this type of task is therefore not an option. This creates an opportunity to research how digitalization can be performed when prerequisites exclude the possibility of using existing solutions available on the market. The tailored solution should make the expense management process easier and faster to perform, reducing or removing the number of steps involving manual paper handling. Examining how digital services can improve the time efﬁciency of this process and making it easier to perform will hopefully work as a baseline for future digitalization in the company, and for similar organizations who wishes to move towards a more digital workplace.

1.2 Aim

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the challenges that organizations face when they wish to digitalize their workplace. In addition, the thesis examines if a common organizational process, in this case the process of managing employee expenses, can be optimized using digital services. This is done by researching common challenges regarding digitalization in general as well as of the workplace. The researched area is then investigated more specifically by mapping the current expense management at Holmen to identify potential challenges and issues in their way of working. Based on the process mapping, a search for quality factors that can be used to improve and optimize the process is conducted. The results are then to be evaluated in order to implement a high-fidelity prototype, solving potential challenges based on the sought quality factors for the company. The prototype implementation is then compared to the previous process to see how organizations can benefit from digitalizing their current way of working.

1.3 Research questions

From the motivation and aim presented above, the following research questions have been derived and are to be answered with this thesis:

1. What challenges do companies face when moving towards a more digital workplace?

2. What are the current challenges that exist within a company in terms of expense management?

a) What are the key quality factors related to the expense management process?

3. How can the process of expense management be improved using digital services, with respect to key quality factors?

1.4 Delimitations

Due to requests from the collaborating company in this work, only services provided by Microsoft have been taken into consideration when conducting research on digital tools and creating the prototype presented within this thesis.

2 2 Theory

Within this chapter, theory and background information for key concepts related to this thesis work is presented. In addition, research related to the area of concern is conveyed.

2.1 Deﬁning digitalization

The word digitalization can often cause confusion due to existing similar terms digitization and digital transformation. Even though the words have a syntactic similarity, their semantics are slightly different. Frequently, attempts to differentiate and reason about the terms have been made in articles and blogs since they can often be used interchangeably. In order to avoid confusion throughout this report, the three terms are now to be presented and semantically compared. In an article written by Savić[37], the author states that it is important to have a proper understanding of the scope and semantics of these terms when communicating human to human. In the same article, these terms are examined based on five different factors: focus, goal, activity, tools, and challenges. It is said that digitization can be seen as a way of converting analog data into a digital format while digitalization has its focus on information processing, concerning for example converting a process that includes a lot of manual work into an automated process. Lastly, digital transformation relates to knowledge leveraging which affects the current way that a company conducts their business. The main focus is re-thinking how things are done, involving new technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) or cloud comput- ing, and how to start doing things differently. Saarikko et al. [36] adds another perspective to the discussion about these three terms, describing them as different layers related to one another. Digital transformation is depicted as the outer layer, placing digitalization and digitization as sub-layers within. Digitization is said to have the same semantics as mentioned earlier but in addition, it is described as a virtualization of physical activities and it is often used when talking about the capacity of a technology. Digitalization on the other hand, can according to the authors be seen as a collection of technologies that are digitized and it is used to describe how the technology can be used in a process. Digital transformation is again said to target the organizational structure of a company, where the focus is to see how the company can adapt to both the digital technologies themselves, and to a new way of working.

3 2.2. Expense management

Since the work in this thesis involves all of these aspects in one way or another, it is important to create a common understanding of which term to use in order to define the work. Digitization might reflect the work regarding decreasing the manual paper handling used in the current process, while parts of digital transformation can be seen in the final results where the introduction of a digital process changes the day to day work of the employees at the company. Due to the fact that the transformation only covers a minor part of the company’s process, the term digital transformation is too broad. The main focus of this report is to find a way to convert, automate and improve parts of the process of managing expenses and due to this, the term digitalization is used to define the work. It is also common to use the word analog as opposed to digital. In this work, an analog task is defined as a non-computerized way of performing something, where an example would be using pen and paper to send a message. Another important distinction that needs to be mentioned is that digitalization in the workplace can relate to both internal and external aspects, depending on where the company seeks to make a change. Internal digitalization could be a way to refine a process or improve efficiency within the walls of the current organization, making employees shift focus to things that actually create value for the company. In contrast, external digitalization can be performed by using digital formats to create value for a customer or client [4]. The key to digitalization in the context of this report, is to add value to the company’s internal way of working, by refining an in-house process.

2.2 Expense management

To give an overview of the topic of the study conducted within this thesis, being expense management, this section aims to explain important foundations and challenges. The concept of expense management can be explained by describing what a business expense is to begin with. In an article by Brodin [6], who is working at SAP which is a company that has been in the business of expense management for over 25 years, a business expense is defined as any cost that an employee pays for, connected to the company and the employees’ daily job. Expenses could involve paying for a travel by train or taxi, for a night at a hotel, or for food and beverages when meeting with a client. Expense management is described by Taunay [44] at Rydoo, a company focusing on providing software for travel and expense management, as the way a business manages its employees’ business expenses related to travel, lodging, and meals connected to company purposes. The company can provide the employee with the resources they need to cover these expenses or use a reimbursement process for expenses that the employee would pay for with their own holdings. This definition is strengthened by Rao Kaki [24], working as a Content Marketer at an expense management software company. The author defines expense management as a system that a company can use to process expense reports and manage employee reimbursements in an efficient way that could benefit the company and the employees. Hav- ing a well-functioning process for managing employee costs makes it easier for companies to keep track of, control, and analyze costs for future budgets but it can also increase the employee productivity [44]. In 2019, Certify Inc. made a survey where they investigated the trends of travel and expense management in North America [9]. The survey was aimed at financial employees who worked at companies of various sizes, where the number of employees in the companies varied between less than 100 employees and more than 1,000 employees. The survey had more than 500 responses and the results were presented in a report where key takeaways were highlighted as well as recommendations for companies about using Travel and Expense management in their organizations. Some of their findings were that dedicated expense management systems is a good investment for organizations and that ease of use and mobility was prioritized when organizations valued a system.

4 2.2. Expense management

Similar findings are mentioned in a report from 2018 by PayStream Advisors Inc. [33], where a survey with more than 300 responses was analyzed. Their survey targeted organizations from various domains and industries, also in North America. One of their key findings was that the size of the organization had a significant impact on expense management, were smaller companies tend to apply more manual and paper-based expense management. A complication for many organizations was the lack of understanding regarding what was needed for effective Travel and Expense management, where many organizations did not intend to refine their expense management [9]. More than 40 % of the organizations that participated in the survey did not use expense management and about the same amount of organizations still conducted their expense management with manual reports. It was mentioned that organizations might not know about the inefficiencies that belongs to Travel and Expense management and that it is important to put effort in reviewing current processes, mapping out each step of it in order to find how organizations can benefit from refining it. Policy compliance was also mentioned as one of the key challenges for organizations using Travel and Expense management since a lack of policies makes the organization more accessible to fraud. The benefit of having a policy is to create a common understanding for all of the employees about the process as well as the potential consequences if the policy is violated [9]. Other challenges organizations face with expense management are, according to both of the surveys presented earlier, said to be: lost paper receipts and expense reports, reports submitted without receipts, reports that are not submitted on time, lead times in the overall process, submissions of incorrect material and a lack of overview about the expense data [9, 33]. It was emphasized that organizations who had moved from a manual Travel and Expense management solution to a technical one could see several improvements with the overall process. Increased efficiency of the employees, reduced costs connected to storage and postage and process accessibility on the go are some of the benefits mentioned in both of the reports [9, 33]. The most valued features with the digital solutions were the mobility of capturing receipts and creating and approving reports on the go. An automated expense management process is seen to reduce the costs and time it takes to process and create expense reports. Improved compliance to organizational policies connected to Travel and Expense management is also mentioned as one of the benefits in [9]. According to the survey, about 37 % of the organizations saw an improved satisfaction from their employees when adapting to a technical solution for managing expenses.

2.2.1 Legal requirements The expense management process is linked to various legal aspects in Sweden, and comply- ing with the laws and regulations that apply to the management of expenses can be quite complicated. The most important aspect in the context of this report applies to the storage of the original receipt, in paper as well as digital format, and the legal requirements that comes with that. According to the Swedish Book-keeping Act [1], a receipt must be stored in the format it was originally received for 7 years before the original receipt can be destroyed. However, if the receipt was originally received in a digital format, or if a paper receipt has been transformed into a digital format as a copy, the original one can be destroyed after approximately 3 years of storage as long as there exists a digital copy elsewhere. In May 2020, an investigation was put into place in Sweden, published by the Government Offices of Sweden [18]. The aim of the investigation, that is currently still in progress, is to bring forward propositions regarding simplifications of the regulations on the Accounting Act. In the investigation documentation, critique regarding the regulations on how to handle accounting information is presented. The regulations are described as not being adapted to today’s modern technology, and that they entail difficulties to use cloud services. The reason why it is difficult is due for example to the fact that the companies do not always know where the accounting information is being stored if they are stored on the cloud, where the servers

5 2.3. Process evaluation and improvement can be located elsewhere. This investigation could point to an upcoming change on how receipts need to be stored in the future.

2.3 Process evaluation and improvement

With the intent of this work being partly to understand and improve an internal process within an organization, this section aims to present concepts that can be used to perform such tasks.

2.3.1 Process and process mapping In order to establish a common terminology foundation for this work, it is of importance to define the recurring term ”process”. In an article by Hunt [23], the author states that a process can be defined as steps performed in a series in order to produce a product or service. In addition, the authors state that the term ”administrative process” can be interpreted as a type of process that serves the purpose of producing a product or service internally within an organization that is of importance for the management. In [42], Strnadl gives a partially different definition. The article defines a process as a series of steps that are performed to result in a desired output based on its input. The definition is bundled upon multiple recent works and is presented together with the additional definition given by Davenport as ”a structure for action” [12, p. 5]. In addition, Strnadl describes a business process as a collection of activities, that either results in deliverable value to a customer, or the fulfillment of a goal within the enterprise. In [23], the author describes that within the concept of re-engineering business processes, a reoccurring problem is the insufficient knowledge of the importance of understanding currently performed processes among business leaders. To be able to gain thorough understanding of how an organization performs a task, or process, process mapping can be used. Using this concept can help describe a business process, using diagrams and text. In addition, it can be of help when aiming towards improving and/or changing a currently practiced one. In [12], Davenport describes that processes have a cost and require time, deliver output of a certain quality and lead to a resulting customer satisfaction: if some, or any, of these factors are improved, the process itself is considered improved. With the presented definitions and descriptions in mind, the intent of this work is to use the following vocabulary with the following summarized definition: ”process” is a collection of activities that aims to fulfill a goal within an organization. This means that the terms administrative process and business process will be excluded to reduce the risk of confusion. When capturing practiced business processes in a process map, a known modeling notation standard for this is called Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). A BPMN process uses BPMN elements to describe the process in focus, which are divided into five categories: flow objects, data, connecting objects, swim lanes and artifacts [29]. Flow objects (events, activities, and gateways) are used to show how the process behaves, connecting objects (sequence flows, message flows, associations, and data associations) show how different flow objects are connected to one another, and swim lanes (pools and lanes) group the used elements. BPMN provides a graphical way of presenting and understanding performed business workflows and processes and communicating them in a standardized manner with external parties. The primary goal of BPMN is to provide a common language for the convey- ing of a business process, that is easy to understand for all involved parties, and it has become a standard for these types of diagrams [8]. The notation used within BPMN has some similarities to other business process modeling notations such as the one for Unified Modelling Language (UML) activity diagrams [13].

6 2.3. Process evaluation and improvement

Figure 2.1: Overview of the ﬁve phases of DMAIC.

2.3.2 Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) is called a quality strategy, that serves the purpose of improving a process [39]. An overview of the strategy is shown in Figure 2.1. DMAIC is both an important part of the Six Sigma method, and considered a standalone method [7]. In an article written by Tong et. al [45], the authors state that Six Sigma through the DMAIC approach has been proven to be successful for businesses in terms of for example reducing costs and eliminating defects. In [38], the method is described to take on a problem that has been found within an organization, and by the use of a collection of techniques and tools it delivers a solution that can be considered sustainable. With this, the author states that the found problem(s) should be considered either minimized or in some cases eliminated. This is done by applying the strategy on the chosen problem, that results in a solution that has had the root cause(s) of the problem as main focus. However, it is also mentioned by the author that an organization that wishes to use the method does not have to feel the need to eliminate a problem, but can practice it with the purpose of continuous improvement as well. The method has reportedly been applied to several different types of businesses, with the purpose of improving quality. In a literature review conducted by Srinivasan et. al [40], 23 papers regarding researches on DMAIC are reviewed, that all belong to a specific domain: manufacturing sectors, service sectors, or unconventional sectors. In the review, the authors present conclusions from the literature that point to DMAIC being beneficial from several points of views, including increasing profit, enhancement in customer service, and increase of performance of the supply chain. The strategy consists of five steps, or phases, describing the different parts that form DMAIC and the tools needed to perform the tasks [7]. The five phases, including a short summary of their corresponding objectives, are:

• Deﬁne, that serves the purpose of deﬁning the problem/project and the process, and identifying the area of improvement,

• Measure, investigating the current performance of the deﬁned process,

• Analyze, where the measures are used to determine the root causes of the performance impairments,

• Improve, that aims to eliminate the identiﬁed causes of the performance issues, and

• Control, keeping track of the improved process and how it can be maintained.

Each phase in the method builds on the results of the previous one(s), which all aim to produce a permanent solution. According to Berardinelli [3], the method is a good option for process improvement when the underlying problem is complex and/or there are high risks involved. In upcoming sections, a more in-depth (but still a simpliﬁed) description of each phase is given.

7 2.3. Process evaluation and improvement

Define As stated, the Define phase of DMAIC aims to define different aspects of the project overall. This includes defining the problem, the end goal, the process, and the user (customer) requirements [14]. In short, the phase is described by Shankar to begin with identifying the problem that is in focus, and end with an understanding of the scope [38]. Defining the problem can be done by creating a Problem Statement [14]. The purpose of this is to determine whether or not the problem is an appropriate subject to the process improvement and if its impact is substantial. The Problem Statement gives information about which process measurement describes the problem. This can either be related to lead time or quality. Answering if the wish is to make a business process faster, or to improve a product or service, can be used to find what measurement to use. In addition, the Problem Statement includes a description of the severity of the problem. The goal of the process improvement is defined by creating a Goal Statement. This statement describes the results that one hopes to reach. It should be simple and include something that is measurable. However, the statement can be subject to change in the Analyze phase. When defining the process, a process map (described in subsection 2.3.1) is created. This can be used as a basis when a process evaluation is to be performed. As a complement, a process walk, also known as Gemba walk, can be performed as well. The Gemba walk is a technique where one walks through the process with people who usually perform it and observe how it is executed in reality in a familiar environment [46]. With this technique, it is possible to find out how something is done in reality and not only how it is described in a manual [10]. Lastly, defining the user requirements deals with understanding what the users need, which is done by converting collected information from users to requirements that are to be considered.

Measure In the Measure phase, the goal is to ascertain the current performance of the process in focus. With this measuring, the baseline is created, which constitutes the data that is used when it is time to evaluate the updated process [14]. When the baseline has been established, a plan for how to collect the data is created. This includes defining where, how, when and who to collect the data. If multiple measures have been defined, each measure should have its own plan defined. Lastly, this phase includes collecting the actual baseline data. However, measuring will be present throughout all phases in one way or another [14]. One popular data collection method is interviews. Interviews can be categorized as structured, unstructured, or semi-structured. Collecting information when there are already known problems is best addressed with structured interviews which can contain a mixture of open-ended and closed-ended questions [51]. According to Wilson in [51], a structured interview is described similar to a questionnaire, but instead of filling out predefined questions in a form it is conducted with a conversation where the interviewer threads the questions to specific and prepared topics. There are both pros and cons when conducting a structured interview. It is quite easy and straightforward to conduct the actual interview and the data gathered can easily be compared between interviewees, but creating the relevant questions is a bit harder. Another negative aspect mentioned by the author is that the interviewee is quite locked, and it is harder to grasp previously unknown opinions and issues that the interviewee might raise. An unstructured interview is described in [51] as more of a loose conversation between the people involved and it is mostly used to gather as much information as possible without predictable outcome. One benefit with unstructured interviews is mentioned to be the amount of information that can be retrieved, but at the same time the relevance of the infor-

8 2.3. Process evaluation and improvement

Figure 2.2: An overview of the method PDCA for the Improve phase of DMAIC. mation can be questioned. When the topic and potential issues are known, semi-structured interviews might be the way to go since a combination of structured and unstructured questions can be used to dig deeper into the thoughts of the interviewee or to further discuss new topics and ideas that arise during the interviews without deviating too much from the topic. According to Gillham [21], there are drawbacks with in-person interviews and that is the amount of time it takes from starting the process, creating relevant questions, and setting up the interview until it is completely processed and transcribed. He states that the time it takes is underestimated, and that an interview that takes about one hour to conduct could generate another ten hours of work transcribing it. However, there are also advantages with the technique. Compared to questionnaires there is a greater likelihood that people would attend an interview than answer a questionnaire. With interviews, it is easier to ask open- ended questions where follow-up questions can be added to clarify, or point the interviewee in the right direction, or to gain greater insight about the answers.

Analyze The third phase of DMAIC is the Analyze phase. The goal of this phase is to find the root causes to the problems of the process in focus. Its intent is to reduce the risk of implementing what is thought to be a solution to a problem, which might end up not improving the process at all [14]. Given the information collected through process walks and the developed process map, this collection is to be reviewed with the goal to find pain points. The data can in turn be used to create visuals (such as graphs) that demonstrate insights about the process. The root causes that have been found are then to be verified. This can be performed through for example observing the problem happen, or by running tests.

Improve The penultimate phase of DMAIC is Improve. When this phase is entered, the root cause(s) of the problems within the process has/have been established and it is time to ﬁnd a way to resolve it/them. Solutions are produced, and data collections are again performed to assert whether or not the presented solutions solve the established problem(s). Finding the most

9 2.4. Technologies compatible and suitable solution can be done in many different ways and when the solution is decided upon, a new process map can be created. This new process map should reflect the new process, which shows the differences compared to the old process map. Throughout the improve phase, some testing can occur in order to be able to assess what improvements to the new solution that can be made. This testing can be done using a method called Plan Do Check Act/Adjust (PDCA), shown in Figure 2.2. In this strategy, four steps in a cycle are performed in order to continually improve a process. In the first step, Plan, the issue and root cause is defined. In the second step called Do, the fix to the problem is applied. Thirdly, in the Check step, one investigates whether or not the problem is remedied. Lastly the Act/Adjust step handles the refinement of the proposed solution. When the proposed solution has been evaluated and tested, it is time to implement it. This work also includes training its users and documenting, making the transition easier. Lastly, when the implementation is in place, another data collection is to be performed, to assess whether or not the new process has been improved compared to the baseline. This data collection can take a long time (varying from a week, up to several months), depending on how the new process can be evaluated [14].

Control The last phase of DMAIC concerns the maintaining of the new solution. Here, a way of monitoring the solution is established and it is used to deﬁne what actions to take if the performance decreases. The Control phase also includes ﬁnalizing the documentation. This documentation aims to make the transition easy for all its users [14].

2.4 Technologies

In order to provide a general understanding for technologies that are relevant within this work, this section aims to give an overview of such services.

2.4.1 Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure is a public cloud platform that provides online access to services and products in a pay-as-you-go manner that is scalable on demand [11]. A public cloud implies that it is the vendor of the service that is responsible for both maintenance and the hardware that is used for storing data. In addition, the vendor often provides different platforms that its customers can make use of. Within the cloud, Azure provides many different types of services. These services relate to central concepts of computer science such as computation, Internet of Things, big data, and AI. In upcoming sections, some of the more relevant services related to this work will be explained in more detail.

Azure SQL Database Azure provides multiple options for the storing of your data. One of these options is Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database is a part of Azure SQL, which is the collective name for the services within Azure that provide SQL cloud databases. SQL Database is a Platform as a Service database engine [41] based on Microsoft SQL Server database engine, which lets the user focus on only the database and has Azure responsible for the OS and server. With an active Azure subscription, a user can create an SQL database through for example the Azure portal.

Azure Blob Storage In order to store for example images and other types of unstructured data, also known as Binary Large OBjects (BLOBs), within Azure, Azure Blob Storage can be used [43]. Azure

10 2.4. Technologies

Blob Storage holds three different types of resources: storage accounts, containers within storage accounts, and BLOBs within containers. A storage account creates a namespace (that is unique) within Azure for the data that you want to store. When an object is stored in Azure Storage, it is given an address that refers to the storage account name. To be able to organize objects that are stored, containers are used. The containers can be seen as the directories inside a ﬁle system, and inside the containers, the BLOBs can be stored.

2.4.2 Low-code programming The traditional way of programming to create apps or software from scratch is done by typing lines of code in a coding environment with a language of choice and then compile this code so that a machine can use it, well-known as pro code, high-code, or traditional code. With the concept of low-code programming, applications or software can be created with drag and drop components using a graphical user interface, reducing the need of writing traditional code [20]. This creates a simple and more graphically appealing way of creating applications where most of the coding is already done by someone else, making it easier for people with lower programming skills to quickly create business applications that they want. Microsoft have used their own low-code language for some time, but the actual name for it was more or less introduced in March 2021 as the open-source language Power Fx [26]. This low-code language is both functional and declarative, and it builds on the direct simplicity and syntax used in Microsoft Excel to manage data and generate functions. Utilizing low-code development is beneficial for developers with any type of experience in the field, but especially for non-developers, since the general programming knowledge required to develop applications is significantly reduced. The ability to use predefined components without writing code increases the reusability and decreases the time it takes to create valuable applications.

2.4.3 Microsoft Power Platform Some of the products that Microsoft provides in their cloud services are grouped under the collective name Power Platform. These cloud services are: Power Apps for developing low- code applications, Power Automate for creating automated workﬂows, Power BI for analyzing business data, and Virtual Agents for creating chat bots [17]. In this work, Power Au- tomate and Power Apps are the most relevant services and they will therefore be explained further.

Microsoft Power Automate Microsoft Power Automate provides users with the ability to reduce the workload of performing repetitive processes by creating workflows that automates one or more tasks. It can be used to make decisions, sign approvals or schedule reminders - things that are commonly done in a regular workday. Tasks that are time-consuming and repetitive to do manually can be automated and managed by a computer instead [16]. This is done by using predefined drag and drop components that the user customizes and adapts towards the specific needs. The components can be set to depend on one another and can perform tasks such as retriev- ing rows from a database table, compose and send an email, or update a document. In short, the purpose of this service is to deliver an easy and effective way to reduce workloads so that people can put their time into things that are considered to generate more value.

Microsoft Power Apps Microsoft Power Apps is a visual tool for creating low-code applications for a mobile or tablet environment, where creation is mainly done by using drag-and-drop functionality of components and features that are wanted in the application [15]. Power Apps uses the open-source

11 2.5. Related work language Power Fx (section 2.4.2), to modify and customize the behavior of components in the application [26]. In Power Apps, there are a few premium or preview features that already have been developed and are ready for use, for example the AI-builder which includes services for text recognition, object detection or form processing. Applications can also be connected to other services like SharePoint, Excel, and SQL servers, in order to store and manage data for the application. In addition, connections to automated task ﬂows created with Power Automate can be established in order to move the workﬂow from the application to another task manager. Even if Power Apps is a low-code environment, there is room for more experienced developers to make changes to customize features or behavior with the use of traditional coding languages like JavaScript [15].

2.5 Related work

Within this section, related work with respect to different important aspects of this thesis is presented. First, earlier work in the context of analyzing and evaluating existing processes in organizations, as to be done in this thesis, is presented. Next, related work concerning digitalizing a process is presented. In order to optimize the expense management process in a large organization, the process needs to be analyzed so that challenges and issues are clearly motivated. Because of that, the right approach is needed so that the mapping of the process is performed in a thorough way, producing a proper map. J. Bal compares different tools that can be used to model a process [2]. Both paper-based and software supported tools are compared and one of the conclusions drawn is that process analysis tools are more beneficial when improving operational processes than strategic processes. Furthermore, the author states that a process has different characteristics depending on the perspective that the process is modeled from: the functional view, the behavioral view, the organizational view, the informational view, or the decisional view. The software supported tools discussed in the article might not be fully applicable on our work since the article is more than 20 years old. However, the article emphasizes the importance of investigating a process from different angles to get a broader understanding of where challenges and issues might be located. Reducing the amount of manual paper handling is one requirement when moving towards a digital workplace. In [30], Orantes-Jiménez et al. present an idea for the paperless offices for companies of various sizes in order to improve organization processes where the ”Internet and Communications Technology”, ”e-government” and ”Information Society” can be seen as central concepts. The authors discuss an issue with the transformation to a paperless office, being that the introduction of new technology or automation of processes might not reduce the actual use of paper. Misuse, reluctance to change and the misconception of value in digital documents are mentioned as potential causes to the issue. Further, they present a comparison between benefits and difficulties of transitioning into a paperless office. The benefits are categorized by if they affect the organization processes and services, the environment or the customers, companies, or other entities. Their paper shows that the approach of transitioning into a paperless office can reduce costs and make it easier to transfer documents electronically between different departments in the company, but it is highly dependent on a study of the organization so relevant information is used. The employees involved in the process to be changed are vital in order to determine where the essential information is located before a process change [30]. This strengthens the importance of mapping the process from different views, investigating the thoughts of different departments and the employees that are involved in the process to be refined. The discussion of reducing the amount of physical paper documents in the workplace is followed up by Mahendra et al. [47], presenting an approach for improving efficiency in

12 2.5. Related work terms of the time it takes to retrieve information in a Document Management System. The authors’ main focus in the paper is to compare different ways to tag, index and search PDF documents and their results can work as a foundation for companies considering possible alternatives to reduce physical paper management in their organization. With the previous articles in mind, looking at the presented challenges and solutions can be helpful when opti- mizing a process with the aim of reducing manual paper handling. In the article written by Falk et al. [19], an exploration of a digital transformation within the oil and gas industry regarding the maintenance documentation for systems of systems (SoS) is performed. The purpose of this work is to investigate how to streamline the process of producing maintenance documentation and the research is based on semi-structured interviews. The interviewees of this study are stakeholders working with for example documentation. Using the results from the interviews, requirements and personas are produced and are used to portray the needs of the users. Given the results, the study presents the complexity of the current process and proposes a three-step implementation to improve the current way of working. In addition, the work shows how personas can be used in order to evaluate how the introduction of digitization can be done. In a work by Bretting [5], a study similar to the one performed within this thesis is presented. The study aims to present important aspects to consider when an organization wishes to digitize currently manual processes. To reach the aim, a case study was performed with the purpose of investigating a manual process within a real organization that is to be digitized. The investigation is performed using multiple activities. To be able to analyze the process, the author conducts a ﬁeld study where employees are interviewed to be able to collect information regarding the way of working. In addition, a focus group performing braindrawing (shortly summarized as a graphical brainstorming technique [50]) is used to prototype an interface for the digitized design of the process. The work highlights the importance of developing an extensive understanding of the process in mind in order to digitize it so that it has the potential to improve the current way of working. This, to understand how an organization can beneﬁt the most from a digital transformation.

13 3 Method

This section presents information about how the work within this thesis was performed. This includes how the process mapping and evaluation was carried out, how a new digitalized process was produced, and how the new process was tested with its future potential practitioners.

3.1 Overview

The initial work within this thesis focused on gaining a basic understanding of the different areas of concern, being both within the concepts of digitalization and in expense management in general. This initial work created the baseline for the remainder of the work, both in terms of how to structure the method and knowing what areas that needed research. To be able to answer the research questions presented in this thesis (given in section 1.3), the way of working was somewhat separated into two different parts that were executed in parallel. This approach was chosen due to the slightly different natures of the research questions: the ﬁrst having a more theoretical and literature study-focused approach, while the second had more of an actual case study approach. The third research question can be interpreted as being dependent on the results from both previous research questions.

Figure 3.1: Overview of applied way of working.

14 3.2. Digitalizing the workplace

The first part involved research regarding common challenges in the area of digitalization. This research was performed mainly through the reading of blogs, websites, news articles and previous work in scientific reports and papers. In addition, this research was also extended into including some insights through interviews with employees working at the collaborating company. This is explained in more detail later within this chapter. The second part of the applied method followed the basics of DMAIC (section 2.3.2). Since the process in focus involves legal requirements, it is reasonable to say that it is to be considered a process that includes high risks. Due to the strategy DMAIC being an encouraged choice when the risks are high, as mentioned earlier, this method was chosen. This work included interviews with people involved in an expense management process at the collaborating company. The insights from the interviews were used as the foundation for the development of a prototype which aimed to investigate how a digitalization can improve the process in terms of the chosen quality factors. The initial research regarding challenges within digitalization created the baseline for the interviews and common challenges in previous research papers worked as inspiration when formulating interview questions. This approach was selected to get as much detailed information as possible about the process in focus from the interviewees. Summarizing and compiling the interviews made it easier to develop a prototype that would reflect the way the employees wished to conduct the process. Figure 3.1 gives an overview of the described working method and how it was conducted, which will now be explained in more detail.

3.2 Digitalizing the workplace

In order to find challenges that organizations face when moving towards a more digital workplace, a combination of literature study and qualitative interview study approach was chosen. This, to ensure that the results found were supported both by previous research done within the field, and applicable on real world examples in today’s organizations. The first step within this work was to study existing material within the field of digitalizing the workplace. This was done by collecting articles, papers, and other more recent sources (such as newspaper texts and blog posts), and investigating their similarities and differences. To find a variety of academic and non-academic sources about digitalization, the search engine from Linköping University’s own library was used together with both the standard and Scholar search engines from Google. Common search terms were "digitalization", "digitization", and "digital transformation" in combinations with "challenges", "issues", "workplace", "business" or "processes". In order to find relevant material, reports that seemed interesting were chosen by first looking at the number of citations in other papers and by reading the abstract of the reports. After reading the abstract and the report still seemed to be of relevance for this work, the result and conclusion of the report was skimmed through. Lastly, the information that was found relevant was gathered and summarized. The collected knowledge acted as the basis for formulating interview questions (see Appendix A). These questions served the purpose of investigating the attitude towards digitalizing a workplace among employees at the studied company. The interviews were conducted with three employees of the collaborating company, and they were to answer questions regarding their attitude towards digitalizing the workplace. By combining the results from the literature study with the interview answers, the information was used to draw conclusions towards answering the related research question.

3.3 Digitalizing the expense management process

In order to ﬁnd the current challenges that exist within an company in terms of expense management, the work of the strategy DMAIC that is used to improve processes was carried

15 3.3. Digitalizing the expense management process out. This approach was chosen due to the nature of the method being similar to the aim of the performed research. However, the method has been modified to fit the time frame and prerequisites of the thesis, and to match its purpose. In the upcoming subsections, the actions taken within each step of the followed method are presented and described. In addition, modifications compared to the followed method are presented.

3.3.1 Define The first step in order to define the problem and the areas of improvement involved two start-up meetings. The main purpose of the first meeting was to get a brief overview of the process in focus, to identify the areas that the company wished to improve and agree upon the aim of the work. This initial meeting was unstructured and conducted as more of a conversation with two of the employees at the company’s IT department and one employee from the finance department. Notes were taken throughout the meeting in order to create a base for the process mapping and future data collections. During the second meeting, which was more structured, a demo (or process walk) of the current process in focus was conducted by one of the employees at the finance department. The purpose of the demo was to get a deeper understanding of all the steps involved in the process as well as investigating potential problem areas and quality factors based on the point of view of the employees at the finance department. The second meeting was recorded so that important steps of the process was not missed when completing the process mapping. With the summarized interview basis as a foundation, the process mapping was performed. The result from this was a process map, displaying different actions and items that took place in the process. As stated earlier, that in order to get a full understanding of the performance issues within a process and how it can be improved, it is of importance to have a good understanding of the process itself. To achieve this, an additional check was performed by presenting the interpreted process to the studied organization. This was done by presenting the constructed process map and receiving feedback on the work. The resulting material from this phase was a process map of the entire process in focus and chosen quality factors that were to be used as a foundation for upcoming decisions, related to the refinement of the process.

3.3.2 Measure The process in focus involved employees with varying roles in three different phases of the process. As Bal [2] emphasizes the importance of investigating process characteristics from different point of views, the interviewees were chosen so that each of the three steps in the current expense management process of the company was represented: an employee in pos- session of a company credit card generating expenses, a manager responsible for attesting expense reports, and an employee responsible for expense accounting at the finance department. The interviewees had different roles in the company as well, where one is working as a manager at the IT-department, one working at the finance department and one working as a manager in finance and human resources. Two of the interviewees represented both the role as a cardholder and as an attesting manager and because of that, questions related to both of their roles were asked during the same interview session. Interviews with one employee from each of the three steps within the current process was conducted in order to locate as many potential challenges and issues as possible, spread across the entire process. Since there was already a brief understanding of the existing challenges in the process, semi-structured interviews were chosen in order to collect the thoughts of the employees. Semi-structured interviews gave the interviewees a chance to provide additional information about important areas for improvement that might have been unknown from previous data collections, which introduced the opportunity to ask additional questions to dig deeper into

16 3.3. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 3.2: Overview of method analysis phase. the thoughts of the interviewee based on the current content of the interview. Three interview templates, seen in Appendices B, C and D, were generated with a varying collection of questions depending on the role of the interviewee and focused on how the interviewee normally performs and experiences their part of the process. In order to get a general understanding of the quality of the interview questions, and of how much time an interview would take to conduct, a pilot interview was carried out. This pilot interview was performed with our primary contact at the company. The insights collected from the pilot interview were then used to improve the interview outlines for the upcoming interviews. In the beginning of each interview, a short introduction about the work and the purpose of the interview was given to the interviewee. After that, the interviewee gave consent to partic- ipate in the interview and gave us permission to record the interview, which was important in order to narrate better when their experience of the process, in relation to the quality factors for improvement, was analyzed. The collected material from this phase served as the data for the upcoming analysis phase.

3.3.3 Analyze To be able to determine the root causes of the performance issues of the investigated process, the data collected within the previous steps needed to be analyzed. In order to structure the phase, five different steps were constructed. An overview is given in Figure 3.2. For this work, the data in question to be analyzed are the recordings of the conducted interviews. Therefore, the first step within the analysis was to transcribe the material. To get a collective overview of the information, separate documents including answers to the questions were formed, where the answers from each interviewee was added. This, to be able to investigate what similarities and dissimilarities that were given to each of the questions. As stated earlier, the purpose of the conducted interviews was twofold: understanding the process and discovering factors that affects the overall performance. This resulted in two different steps being performed concurrently, as displayed in Figure 3.2. In the figure, two different approaches for the analysis are presented. One part of the analysis focused on finding the pain points within the process, i.e., within the process mapping that had been performed. Secondly, the analysis focused on evaluating the root causes for the previously found pain points. These root causes were then mapped to the chosen quality factors and the results of the evaluation constituted the foundation for the prototype sketching.

17 3.3. Digitalizing the expense management process

With the process map and the documented interview answers as basis, the work continued by concluding what root causes to the performance issues that were present and identifying quality factors. The quality factors that had been identified, were used to be able to track the improvement of the process, serving as an improvement scale when comparing the versions of the process. The root causes were concluded in order to find what is causing the issues with the process in general: focusing on eliminating these causes is said to be the aim of DMAIC. After having identified root causes, the last step of this phase was to construct a sketch of the system prototype. In order to produce a prototype that satisfied the needs of the users, the interview data and process map were again revisited to interpret what functionalities and features that were both mandatory for the system overall to work and what could be introduced to improve the workflow. In addition, the types of digital services that would be required in order to create the digitalized process was established. The sketch of the prototype was then briefly evaluated with the help of an external User Experience consultant. This brief evaluation was performed in order to get some general feedback on the idea for the digitalized process, making somewhat sure that it seemed like a reasonable approach from a user experience perspective.

3.3.4 Improve With the prototype sketches in mind, the initial prototype was created. An agile approach was chosen when developing the prototype so that it could be tested and refined in an it- erative manner. The prototype was continuously tested with external parties so that issues regarding the user experience could easily be discovered at an early stage of development, before testing the prototype with the actual employees at the company. In order to catch user perception aspects of important functionality of the system, the first prototyping phase only included a mocked behavior of its features. With this approach, less time had to be spent on implementing actual behavioral flows within the system application, making the process faster in determining how the application should work. When the basic idea for the application interface and how it should work in general had been established, the prototyping continued into developing its actual features. During the development phase, the prototype was tested against employees at the company to see if it actually would be perceived by its future practitioners as an improvement of the process in focus. This was an important step of development in order to get feedback from the users so that the prototype actually fulfilled its purpose. During this phase the previous way of conducting the process was compared to the results from the user tests with respect to the chosen quality factors and previously discovered pain points. Each employee that performed the user test was asked to answer questions regarding the experience of using the prototype, in contrast to the previous way of working in the process. In contrast to the participants in the conducted interviews during previous phases, the user tests only included participants that were considered being either cardholders or attesting managers. This means that process practitioners within the last step, being employees at the finance department, where not in focus. The final user tests were conducted with five employees at the company, three of them were men and two of them were women. The employees chosen were all target users of the application, representing both cardholders and attesting managers. The tests were conducted remotely, and each test user was given a walk-through over screen share in order to start the application before the test. After the initial setup, each user was asked a few questions regarding their previous experiences of digital expense management systems. After the initial questions had been answered, the user was presented with 5 to 7 different tasks to be performed using the new digitalized process implementation. The user test template containing all the tasks and questions can be found in Appendix E. For instance,

18 3.3. Digitalizing the expense management process the tasks involved the user to save a receipt in an expense, create a new expense and submit an expense report to the attesting manager. For managers, two of the tasks involved reviewing and taking action on submitted expense reports. During each task, the user was asked to think aloud so that their experience and thoughts about the graphical user interface and the flow of the application could be captured. After each task, the user was asked to answer some questions related to the performed task and the application. The test session was finished with some final questions about how the user experienced the digital expense management with the application, in comparison to the currently practiced one within the company. The results from the final user tests served as the baseline for evaluating the new, digitalized, process, with the quality factors as assessment basis.

3.3.5 Control The work described for the Control phase of DMAIC was in this work somewhat disregarded. This, due to the work not extending into including a long enough time frame. However, some work was performed within this phase. In order to be able to deliver a new digitalized process and a useful system, the system needed well worded documentation, making it easy to understand for its users, and its future maintainers. Therefore, this step within the work included documenting and creating manuals for how to use the system and how it was implemented. With this, the risk of having users feeling uncomfortable using the system would hopefully decrease and therefore a plan for how to control the future of the system was established. In addition, documentation on ideas for future improvements and additional features was presented, together with shortcomings related to both the digital services used and implementation ﬂaws. This documentation was introduced to make it possible for the company to further improve its new process and unveil what had not been dealt with.

19 4 Results

In this chapter the identiﬁed challenges that a company faces when moving towards a more digital workplace will be presented. Furthermore, the results from each step of the followed method regarding mapping, analyzing, and improving the process in focus will be presented. The result of the process evaluation, being the new digitalized process, will also be given.

4.1 Digitalizing the workplace

This section presents the challenges and issues with the digital workplace in general, based on the conducted interviews and the literature study of related work.

4.1.1 Literature In [28], Okkonen et al. conducts a survey that aims to investigate how the work of employees in Finnish organizations is affected by a digitalization of their workplace. Challenges mentioned by the respondents of the survey are that they experience a pressure to always be available no matter what, and that digital communications cause disturbance regarding the employees’ work as well as their time management. Other challenges mentioned in the survey are related to technological shortcomings, stress and well-being, procrastination, and information overload. Further, more challenges are presented by Kane et al. [25], who conducts an executive study and research project on becoming a digitally mature enterprise. Their study points out some of the challenges hindering organizations from making benefit of digital trends. Five of the most voted barriers are: too many competing priorities, security concerns, insufficient technical skills, lack of organizational agility, and lack of management understanding. They find that many unsuccessful digital transformations were due to companies not changing their mindset and processes. As described by the title of the article, the authors say it is not the technology, but the strategy, that guides the work of digital transformation of the workplace. Digitalization can also have various effects on an organization, and as mentioned by Saarikko et al. [36] it is highly dependent on how the digital technology is perceived. If there is a good understanding of the relevance of the technology, strategies tied to it and the

20 4.1. Digitalizing the workplace expected use within the company, the digital technology can be used to generate value both internally and externally. As mentioned in section 1.1, Parvainen et al. [32] study challenges and benefits with digitalization. Their literature study is followed up by the introduction of a generic model, or framework, that companies can use to gain benefits when going through a digital transformation. Their model consists of four different steps. First, the company must analyze the potential impact that a digital transformation might have and what their main goal is with it. Secondly, the company must review their current state and identify the gap from the current state to the expected state based on the outcome of the previous step. Thirdly, they must find solutions and actions for how they can close this gap between the current state and the expected one. The fourth and last step of the framework is to create an implementation and make a validation based on the defined goals with the digitalization. In their work, they reach the conclusion that digitalization has an increasing impact on businesses and empha- size the importance of being in the frontline of such journeys. Companies that end up behind their competitors in their digitalization journey risk becoming less competitive in the market. The authors discuss the impact and goals of a digitalization from the viewpoints: internal efficiency, external opportunities, and disruptive change. Björkdahl [4] discusses digitalization and long-term digital transformation together with the challenges that can be seen within manufacturing firms going digital. According to the author, it is important to address digitalization based on four key questions: Why, Where, What and How. By getting a proper understanding of the answers to these questions, the likelihood of a successful digitalization, or even long-term digital transformation, would increase. Further, the author discusses how digitalization can benefit integrated value chains and points to improvements targeting time efficiency, operational control, and traceability. Royakker et al. [35] discuss social and ethical issues that arise from a digital society, based on different technologies used in today’s world: Internet of Things, robotics, biometrics, persuasive technology, virtual and augmented reality, and digital platforms. Their study is based on an analysis of scientific literature and the focus of their discussion is related to six themes: privacy, autonomy, security, balance of powers, human dignity, and justice. In the aspect of privacy, concerns regarding responsibility over data is mentioned. Introducing smarter devices that are able to capture and monitor information about users might improve the man- ufacturer’s business, but in turn it causes transparency in environments that are meant to be private, threatening the privacy of the user. Questions regarding autonomy are raised in the article, where robotics, AI, and self-driven cars are discussed based on how much that can be automated without affecting moral decisions and areas of responsibility. If an autonomous process goes wrong, who is accountable for it? Additionally, human dignity is discussed from perspectives of dehumanization and unemployment, but also that technology can cause humans to unlearn moral skills. As an example, they talk about a driver support system that warns about speeding might reduce the human’s awareness of surroundings, putting too much trust into the technology. Furthermore, challenges regarding the balance of power between manufacturers and users as well as challenges related to justice is discussed. Discrimination, exclusion, and stigmatization are examples of challenges seen relating to justice. Unfair competition, exploitation and the relations between citizens, government, and industry are examples of challenges from the balance of power perspective of technologies used in the society. Security is a common theme of discussion in relation to technology, and it is a subject discussed by the authors in this article as well. They mention that the huge amount of collected data about users of the internet can provide hackers with access to sensitive information. One possible consequence to a leakage of sensitive information is identity fraud, which can be utilized in any number of ways. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the effects and implications with a digital society, from a societal and ethical point of view. Nabbosa and Kaar [27] use the themes previously presented by Royakker et al. [35] to further discuss the issues of digitalization from societal and ethical perspectives. In terms

21 4.1. Digitalizing the workplace of human dignity, they mention media discussions about people’s fear of losing their job to robots. A consequence of introducing robots to complete a human being’s work can lead to economic growth for the company, but it reduces prosperity because less work is needed by humans. Persuasive technology is often meant to help and persuade people to act for the better, but the impact of such technology is also discussed from two different points of views. On the positive side it can reduce the risk of people being exposed to danger, but on the negative side it can cause a behavioral change in people, as too much trust is added to the technology. The authors state that new technology improves efficiency but questions the costs due to the ethical and societal challenges that follows. In terms of societal and ethical perspectives regarding the digitalization of the workplace, other aspects are presented by Wells et al. [49]. The work investigates the perceptions on having electronic performance monitoring (EPM) within the workplace among the employees, with respect to different job-related factors. Since introducing a new digital service into the workplace could result in introducing a new type of collection of employee data, this could in turn potentially affect how employees perceive the digital service. In [49], the authors perform a study that is to evaluate what perceptions that arise regarding having an EPM system within the workplace, depending on what reasons behind having the system that was given. The study is performed in collaboration with a business organization that has an EPM system in place, where 330 employees answer a survey. The results of the study show that the purpose of the monitoring matters. If the purpose of the system is to help improve performance, it is well perceived. In contrast, if the purpose of the EPM system is to discover how and where employees are doing something wrong, the opinion on it was not as good. The authors conclude that if a monitoring system is introduced, together with a clearly defined goal that employees can benefit from, the employees will have a more positive perception of it. As for the digitalization of the workplace, the presented conclusion can point to the fact that it is of importance for employees to know what data is collected within a system, and what the data is being used for, in order to give them a good perception of it.

4.1.2 Outcome of the interviews The responses regarding digitalization in general and the interviewees’ previous experiences with digitalization related to the workplace varied a lot. The manager working with IT had more than 20 years of individual experience within the area and the finance manager had less individual experience but a good insight and knowledge about digitalization that had taken place earlier at the company. The finance manager explained that digitalization within their production environments had been in focus for some time where they had been working on smarter, easier, and automated processes, for example regarding how their paper machines run. In addition, it was mentioned they have initiated the process of digitalizing internal administrative processes, and that the focus previously had been more on the external customers. According to the finance manager:

“A journey of digitalization must be meaningful and provide something for the company, either more effective and resource efﬁcient processes or a higher value for the customers”.

According to the IT manager, the fear of change is described to be one of the main challenges with digitalization, based on previous experiences. Furthermore, it is seldom the technology itself that hinders digitalization. Often it is people’s reluctance to change that creates challenges. The interviewee says that people can be afraid that digitalization might cause too much of a change in their current way of working, and that they are uncertain about how the change will affect them as individuals. If a change was to potentially replace someone’s work, commonly seen when Robotic Process Automation is involved, the reluctance to change has naturally been seen to increase.

22 4.1. Digitalizing the workplace

The IT manager also talks about challenges in the beginning of a digitalization. When a process is to be refined and digitalized, a discussion about the process itself is commonly started. The discussion might not relate to the actual digitalization at all. By digitalizing a non-digital process, loopholes, such as not filling in a mandatory field in a paper form, have sometimes been revealed. In those cases, the digital solution has often been questioned by its users, when the process itself or the users’ knowledge about the process should really be in focus. Another challenge that the interviewee underlines is that it is easy to get caught up in the mindset of how things work today when trying to improve a process, but with new technology it would probably be better to do it in a completely different way. When the interviewees were asked about their attitude towards digitalizing the workplace, the response was overall positive, even though one of the interviewees had no previous experience within the area. The finance manager answered:

“Digitalization is the future. A lot of beneﬁts can be seen, but it can also be time- consuming to adjust to a journey of change. It requires that the company acquires a better understanding of their current processes, which might take some time and energy to collect”.

Continuing in the same path, the IT-manager talked about pros and cons when digitalizing the workplace:

Pros: “It adds more mobility and ﬂexibility. The pandemic (covid-19) has increased the process by forcing us to make use the digital tools available. If it adds value to the company, let us do it”.

Cons: ”It should not be performed just for the sake of it because it can cause other problems related to the individual work environment or psychosocial aspects”.

The IT-manager continues by providing an example scenario of having a digital process sending automated notifications or reminders that can cause stress for the user receiving the no- tification in the moment they get it, if they are not in a position to deal with the requested action right away. As the finance employee was asked about the attitude towards digitalizing the expense management process at the company, the answer was:

“I have asked for the process to be digitalized for a long time, so that would be appreciated”.

The word digitalization is also presented as a minor challenge by the IT manager, because of the fact that people interpret its meaning differently. Many consider the transition from having meetings in real life, to conducting them using video chats through a digital platform as digitalization. The simple meaning of the word digitalization can therefore create confusion and misunderstanding about what a digitalization should provide as an end product. For the IT manager, digitalization means to fully digitize and automate the way of doing something, leading to a behavioral change, whereas to digitize refers to the transition from doing manual and analog work, to a digital way of doing the same thing without changing the process itself.

Identified challenges with digitalization Based on the interviews and the literature findings, the following challenges related to a digitalization of the workplace have been identified and together with each challenge it is mentioned if it was mainly seen as a literature finding or if it was identified through the interviews:

23 4.1. Digitalizing the workplace

C1. Individuals might feel stressed about the availability that comes with a digital workplace. Identiﬁed in: literature & interviews.

C2. Individuals might be concerned or experience fear about how they will be affected by a digital workplace. Identiﬁed in: interviews.

C3. Dehumanization and automation of work might affect human dignity because of unemployment and decreased prosperity. Identiﬁed in: literature.

C4. Introducing data collections within systems regarding for example the performance of employees can be perceived negatively, when the purpose of the data collection is not thoroughly and properly presented. Identiﬁed in: literature.

C5. Individuals might not have the technical skills needed to fully appreciate and beneﬁt from digital processes or by a digital workplace in general. Identiﬁed in: literature & interviews.

C6. Individuals might experience an information overload when information is more easily accessible via digital tools. Identiﬁed in: literature.

C7. It might be time-consuming to understand current processes and working ways before a digitalization. Identiﬁed in: literature & interviews.

C8. It might be time-consuming to adjust to new processes and working ways after a digitalization. Identiﬁed in: literature & interviews.

C9. Individuals and organizations might find it difficult to change from previous mindsets and ways of working. Identified in: literature & interviews.

C10. Individuals might ﬁnd it more challenging to manage their time because of disturbance and procrastination that might come with digital tools. Identiﬁed in: literature & interviews.

C11. Individuals and organizations might experience security and privacy concerns because the digital accessibility of information. Identiﬁed in: literature.

C12. Individuals might be affected by persuasive technology, putting too much trust into technology. Identiﬁed in: literature.

C13. Ambiguities can occur when individuals interpret digitalization terms differently. Identiﬁed in: literature & interviews.

24 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

4.2 Digitalizing the expense management process

This section presents the results related to the process mapping and evaluation of the expense management process, and the implemented new process.

4.2.1 Define In this section, the process mapping is divided into three steps, described in words, and followed up with an analysis of the challenges found during the mapping. After that, the identified quality factors will be presented. In the Define phase of the work, several process maps were produced, each displaying different sub parts of the evaluated process. The process maps are shown in Figures 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3. In order to convey the process maps in a clear manner, short descriptions of each of the graphical components (notations) within the process maps are given in Table 4.1. The process maps have been produced by following the modeling notation standard BPMN (described in section 2.3.1). This modeling standard was chosen due to it being a well-known alternative when defining business processes. In addition, the BPMN elements are related to the ones used within UML, making them fairly recognized. To be able to refer to different tasks/activities within each figure, all tasks have been numbered (without any specific thought-out order). Each process map presented in the mentioned figures represent separate key scenarios for the process as a whole. Figure 4.1 represents the starting point. As shown, the process is started by the cardholder. When a card purchase is performed using the company credit card by a cardholder, the process for that certain purchase is initiated. When the purchase has been performed, the cardholder receives a receipt, either in digital or paper format, and the first part of the process ends. The cardholder must then be responsible for preserving the receipt until the purchase is to be reported. In Figure 4.2, the second part of the process is presented. This is initiated when a monthly invoice for the cardholder is received by the company. The second part of the process is therefore initiated at most once each month per cardholder. This part of the process is divided into two separate sections, each representing different scenarios of how the receival is performed. When a cardholder has performed at least one card purchase, this purchase is reflected in the next invoice sent to the finance department, addressed to the particular cardholder. However, different departments within the company use somewhat different systems for their invoices, introducing the two different cases shown in the figure. One note that should be made is that only case 1 has been taken into account within this work. This was due to the company being in the process of removing case 2 and converting the process into only being performed as in case 1. However, in order to clearly present how the process is performed in its entirety, case 2 is present within the composed process map. Within case 1, the finance department receives an email from the bank, including the invoice addressed to the cardholder. The receival of a new invoice triggers a concurrent task in the process flow where another application, called Gordon, reads the content of the email and the invoice, seen in task 2 in Figure 4.2. Gordon is a tailored application created by the company’s IT department, with the functionality to automatically perform necessary checks on the invoice information about expenses and the cardholder that the invoice is addressed to. The work of Gordon, seen in task 3, generates another concurrent task in the process flow, described by tasks 4 and 5 in the figure. A new invoice instance is created in the data storage of Gordon and at the same time Gordon sends an email to the cardholder that the invoice is addressed to, together with information about the invoice. After that, the automated job of Gordon is done for this process. At the same time as Gordon performs tasks 3, 4, and 5, new information is generated in another system, which is referred to as Invoice System A. The last step of case 1 includes task 7 where the invoice is manually paid by the finance department.

25 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Table 4.1: Process map notation descriptions.

Notation Description

Start event symbol, signaling the ﬁrst step of the process

End event symbol, signaling the ﬁnal step of the process

Shows the direction of the ﬂow, connecting ﬂow objects

Task symbol, displaying what is happening in the ﬂow

Parallel gateway symbol, representing two (or more) concurrent tasks in the ﬂow

Exclusive gateway symbol, representing conditional choice of ﬂow direction

Within the second case, the finance department receives the invoice information in a separate system, referred to as System B. The information found in System B is manually entered into System A and the email automated within case 1 is manually composed and sent to the corresponding cardholder by the finance department. In tasks 9 and 10 there is no involve- ment of Gordon when reading the invoice information and the name of the cardholder that belongs to the invoice. This must be done by an employee at the finance department. When the invoice has been paid by the finance department, the second part of the process is terminated. The third and last part of the process is displayed in Figure 4.3. This step of the process is started once a cardholder receives a monthly company credit card invoice by email, sent during the second part of the process. This part of the process can have different outcomes depending on several conditions that now will be described. When the invoice is received, the cardholder is responsible for providing the finance department with an expense report. This expense report is to include documentation about each of the purchases described within the received invoice and is to be delivered within 28 days.

26 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.1: Process map, card purchase.

The information about each purchase is to be filled into a receipt specification document (i.e., one receipt specification is filled in per purchase), shown in a simplified version in Figure 4.4. Depending on whether or not the cardholder decides to provide the finance department with the material on time, the process follows different paths. If the cardholder decides to wait more than 28 days, an email reminder will be received (shown in tasks 2 in Figure 4.3). When the cardholder has filled in the information necessary for the expense report, the material is to be delivered to the attesting manager. The attesting manager reviews the provided material and can either approve or decline the expense report. When the report has been approved, the attesting manager delivers the report to the finance department. The finance department reviews the material and can also either approve or decline the expense report. In the cases where either the attesting manager or the finance department wishes to decline the expense report, it is delivered back to the cardholder who has to revise the material and deliver it to the attesting manager once more. After the expense report has been received and approved by the finance department, the submission is entered into Gordon, the material is booked and the process for the particular invoice is terminated. If the cardholder decides to not provide the attesting manager (and therefore not the finance department either) with an expense report, the process takes another path. As mentioned, if no action is taken by the cardholder within the 28 days upon receiving the invoice, Gordon will send a reminder via email to the cardholder. If the cardholder receives a reminder from Gordon, they have another 14 days to fill in the material and send it to their manager before Gordon sends a second reminder to the cardholder. If the cardholder does not take action within 18 days from the second reminder, after a total of 60 days after receiving the invoice in the first place, a new concurrent task is generated in the flow of the process. The finance department discovers that the cardholder has not reported their expense, seen as task 19 in Figure 4.3. The finance department will perform a salary deduction and report the event to the manager of the cardholder, visualized in tasks 20 and 22. However, the process will not be terminated completely (as according to the figure, which has been simplified for readability) since the finance department will still need to receive the material and the process for the invoice will be kept ”open”. With the process mapping in place, the next step of the Define phase was to identify quality factors. These quality factors were to be used to track the progress of improving the process, and distinguishing what factors of the new and improved process that were considered the most important ones. An overview of key pain points within the current process will now be presented. As shown in the process maps, there are many tasks that are to be performed in the process. In addition, many of the tasks are prone to be time-consuming. From analyzing the tasks, one can read out that many of the tasks require a lot of manual work, mainly focused on the cardholder. In the third part of the process, shown in Figure 4.3, the cardholder will

27 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.2: Process map, invoice receival.

28 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.3: Process map, invoice handling.

29 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

ExpenseKvittospecifikationspecification ReceiptsKvitton tillfor Firstcompany Card credit fakturor card invoices

1. Nita/tejpa fast kvittot på baksidan av blanketten 2. Ange vad kvittot avser i kryssrutorna till vänster - användsGeneral för kontering instructions av HFC 3. Notera att vissa kostnadsslag kräver mer information tex deltagare och syfte, se nedan..

Place and date of purchase Inköspdatum

Personalrepresentation - enbart Holmenanställda - deltagare o syfte krävs Vänligen fäst kvittot på baksidan.

Extern representation - deltagare utanför Holmen - deltagare,företag,syfte krävs Vi är tacksammaPlace forom detstitching endast nitasreceipt fast ett kvitto per kvittospecifikation. Det underlättar den Resekostnader - Taxi vidare hanteringen på HFC. Resekostnader - Tåg Resekostnader - Flyg Kost och Logi - Hotell Kost och Logi - Övrigt - OBS Endagsförrättning ska gå via reseräkning Resekostnader - Övrigt Purpose / reason

Material IT - Tillbehör Material Kontor Material - Telefoner och tillbehör Material Övrigt Participants, company, profession/operation

Hyrbil - Korttidshyra + Drivmedel Förmånsbil - Drivmedel Förmånsbil List- Reparation of costoch Underhåll types to choose from Förmånsbil - Övriga kostnader

Annonsering Reklamgåvor Post/Porto Bankkostnader Kontokortsavgifter

Mässor och konferenser - deltagare o agenda krävs

Övriga externa kostnader

Övriga externa tjänster

Personal - Utbildning Personalgåvor - gåvomottagare ,företag ,anledning krävs Gift recipient, company Personal - Övertidsmat - deltagare krävs Personal - Övriga kostnader

Livsmedel/Dryck - på Holmens representationsgårdar

Övrigt:……………………………………………………………

OBS! Används endast för att ange avvikande KST jämfört med ditt egna eller tillägg av övriga koddelar avvikande från standard.

Figure 4.4: A simpliﬁed version of the current expense report.

30 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process need to print out all of the required paperwork and fill everything out, keep track of all of the regulations and requirements depending on the type of purchase that has to be reported, and deliver all the material to the attesting manager. The attesting manager will thereafter need to check that all the information in the submitted expense report is correct and deliver all the material to the finance department. Lastly, the same manual review needs to be performed by the finance department, before all the information on paper is entered into the system. Another factor that can be distinguished when reviewing the process is the need for involved parties to be at particular locations to be able to perform their required work within the process. Firstly, the cardholder is required to be able to get to a printer to be able to acquire the documents needed for the expense report. This could possibly require the cardholder to perform the work at a specific location. Secondly, when the expense report is filled in, the cardholder needs to get to the location of the corresponding attesting manager in order to submit the documents. This location was reported to most often be the workstation at the office. Thirdly, the attesting manager needs to get to the location where the expense report was left in order to perform the report approval. This action is followed by the requirement on the attesting manager to get to the finance department and leave the approved report. Lastly, if the expense report is declined by either the attesting manager or the finance department, the report needs to be returned to the cardholder, and the process is somewhat restarted. Many of the tasks present in the process are related to filling in (or reviewing) information that needs to follow certain rules and regulations. The rules vary depending on what type of purchase that a cardholder has made, and therefore the requirements on what information to provide the finance department within an expense report can vary. If a practitioner of the process is not well versed within the area of finance, the rules can be hard to interpret for both a cardholder and an attesting manager. With the acquired knowledge about the current process presented above, it could be seen that many factors relate to tasks being time-consuming, location dependent and error prone. With that in mind, the identified and chosen quality factors in focus when improving the manual expense management process were:

1. Time.

2. Mobility.

3. Correctness.

Time in this context should be interpreted as both the time it takes to actively perform tasks within the process and the total time that the process takes in its entirety, which also includes archiving time of the original receipt according to Swedish law. The tasks prone to being time-consuming, such as the ones requiring ﬁlling out paperwork, delivering the material to the correct recipient and reviewing the material was therefore in focus for this quality factor. Mobility in this context should be interpreted as being the wish to make it possible for affected personnel to perform the process tasks anywhere, reducing the need to move to speciﬁc locations in order to complete the work. Correctness in this context should be interpreted as how fault prone the expense reports are after they have been submitted, meaning that reducing the risk of having errors within expense reports was in focus for this quality factor. In the upcoming phases presented in upcoming sections, the quality factors constituted the focus on how the process was measured and improved.

4.2.2 Measure When the process maps had been created and the quality factors had been identiﬁed, the Measure phase was entered. Within this phase, qualitative data about the experienced process was collected.

31 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

The interviews showed that the current expense management process causes a lot of frustration among cardholders who have to report their expenses, attesting managers, and personnel at the finance department. The employee working at the finance department mentioned that it is common for cardholders to skip or miss filling in important fields, which are required due to legal requirements for the tax authorities. As the finance employee was asked about how they managed expense reports that were submitted with incorrect material, the answer was:

“Unfortunately, I have to send an email to the employee when I am reviewing the submitted expense report. This should be done when the material is received but it is usually done when I have time to manage a bunch of expense reports at the same time. It is frustrating when I have completed half of my work with a report and I am forced to put it aside, waiting for a revised version from the employee”.

That is one thing that creates frustration and consumes time because the finance employees might have to find the right information based on the material that is sent in. If they have problem locating the missing information within the reported material, they must send the documents back to the cardholder who reported it only for the cardholder to revise the information and re-send it. Returning documents to the reporting employee adds an extra layer of waiting time, forcing the employee responsible for accounting to put that report aside and keep track of where in the accounting process those documents were before finishing the job at another time. All of those extra steps are experienced to cause unnecessary lead times. The finance employee was asked about the consequences of incorrect material and missing receipts, and the answer was:

“We are not able to complete our work if we do not have the correct material. I would say that the cardholder is responsible to provide this information, but if they say that they have submitted everything we must sometimes be more ﬂexi- ble. Sometimes we have to complete the accounting without a receipt, but in those cases we cannot deduct VAT”.

Missing information in the reported material can affect the company financially. As mentioned that Value Added Tax (VAT) cannot be deducted if there is no receipt attached to the expense report. When asked about why information is missing in some reports, the answers are that documents or receipts can sometimes get lost when they are sent from the reporting employee to the finance department. As the current process is, a lot of information gets lost even though reporting employees sometimes claim to have sent it to the finance department. It is difficult to say where the documents have gone missing in the current process, making it hard for the finance department to create a rightful accounting, often leading to loss of VAT deductions. When one of the managers was asked if there are parts of the current process that is more positive or negative than others, the answer was:

“The process works quite well, in my opinion. But you hear comments about the reports that are to be ﬁlled in and matched with a receipt, that they are inconve- nient. It would be good if that part of the process was made simpler. A guess is that some people do not conduct the process very often, which might be a reason when things go wrong. However, it could be because of laziness since some employees think that the process is time-consuming and that they do not really know how to manage their expense reports”.

Further, the ﬁnance employee was asked if there are any pieces of information that are considered ”more important” than the other when conducting their part of the process, and the answer was they are grateful if the type of the expense is reported. That section of the expense report is tied to various rules that apply depending on which type of expense is

32 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process reported. If it is a trade fair or conference, a participant list and an agenda are required in the expense report. Missing this type of information can affect finances when they are not allowed to deduct VAT because of legal aspects but also because it makes it harder for the company to analyze their overall costs, which in turn makes budgeting more difficult. All of the interviewees mention that part of the expense managing process as the one that they perceive to be the most error prone, wondering if it is because of a lack of knowledge about what information is needed or because of pure laziness that information is not provided correctly. Another question to the interviewees was if the there are any steps in the process that are unclear, and for example if there is a lack of manuals or instructions on how to fill in the expense reports and the answer was no from the finance employee. With each company credit card, some guidelines are attached, and information is also attached together with the invoice. Nonetheless, it was described that the submitted material often includes what seems to be guesses on what types of purchases that the receipts should be reported as, and how. This type of error forces some employees working in finance to correct these types of guesses in a later step of the process. According to the finance employee, it is hard to say if things are unclear for the employees reporting their expenses, saying that everything that is needed to make a correct expense report is provided but maybe it is only obvious to them working with it from day to day. It is also perceived by the managers that there might be a need for clarifications about what information is necessary to report and above all why it is important. This, since a lot of people provide the wrong information or fill in the wrong fields of the expense reports, causing the need for corrections and in worst case extra lead times in all of the steps conducted of the process. The interviewees have also seen that employees are trying to find shortcuts when reporting their expenses, for example by checking a box that means you do not have to fill in other fields in the form, which are normally needed for that specific expense. Even if this saves the reporting cardholder time, it generates extra work later for the employee responsible for accounting. The interviewees say that the reporting employee might not know how much extra work their shortcut adds for the finance employee in a later step of the process. Questions about the interviewee’s own knowledge about the roles of the other employees in the process, and how they perceive those roles were also asked. One of the managers had good insight into the process as a whole as well as each step of the process and emphasized the amount of tedious work that the finance department is exposed to when correcting errors and translating paper forms into digital systems. One of the interviewees mentioned:

“Cardholders and managers sometimes think: ‘How hard can it be. It cannot make that much of a difference if I provide correct information. They (the finance department) should be able to fix it?’ . It can easily be perceived to be an easy task to correct a report if it is done once, but the finance department must manage many more and one simple error might cause more issues than one can imagine for someone else”.

The interviewees also perceived that employees can sometimes get angry if they get a reminder about not sending in the expense report, claiming that they already have done it, while others might be a bit scared or annoyed because they risk receiving a salary deduction if the material is not reported in time. One question that was asked was about the amount of time the interviewee approximately spends on completing their part of the current expense management process. The managers said that they spend around 15 to 30 minutes a month when they report their own expenses, but that the time varies depending on how many expenses they have. It was mentioned that some employees might have a lot more representational meetings than they have, so others might spend more time on managing expenses and keeping track of receipts and expense purposes because of that. The interviewee working in ﬁnance does not have an approximation

33 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process on the amount of time spent because it is scattered across different occasions, but says that it feels like a lot of time. In one of the early meetings conducted with the company, it was esti- mated that they allocate around 1.5 full-time jobs per month on expense management only in the finance department. As an attesting manager, the time spent approving expense reports is not very much if the information is correct. If the information is wrong, the manager must have a discussion with the employee and as it is now that part of the process is not supported by any appropriate tools. The manager and the employee might be located in different parts of the country, or even in different countries, and that creates another delay if the report needs to be returned to the employee for revision. Another challenge that is highlighted is the fact that the manager does not know if there are any expense reports to approve unless being at the office, finding them in the mailbox or at their desk. One of the managers continued on the same track, mentioning a drawback that is coupled to the lack of a printer at home, limiting the opportunities to report the expenses from outside the office and that often increases the amount of time it takes to complete the report. Sometimes when going to work and making time for managing the expenses of the month, the IT manager also explains being limited by the fact that the receipt is left at home, or vice versa. Some of the biggest challenges seen with the current expense management process according to the IT manager are:

• The process cannot be performed at any geographical location, and as a manager you must physically go to the location where the expense report is in order to review and approve the report.

• It takes too much time for the expense report to travel between the reporting employee, the approving manager, and the ﬁnance department when reports are incorrect.

• If not being at the location where the receipt and the expense report is stored or printed when the invoice is received, there is no way to complete the process at that exact time.

Asking the ﬁnance employee about the current process and if there are any parts that are more positive or negative than others, the answer was no and that they are more than happy if everything can be handled in a better way than what is done today. One of the interviewees questioned the fact that employees have a credit card connected to the company, saying that employees who make company related expenses with their private credit cards may be more likely to report correct information and in time, as it is their own money in motion. On the other hand, one of the interviewees mentioned that it is convenient to have a credit card connected to the company, since those expenses are not mixed up with private ones. However, the same interviewee also mentioned that a company credit card might not reduce the time it takes to complete the process when it is not about the employee’s own money.

4.2.3 Analyze Within the Analyze phase, the aim was to find the root causes of the perceived problems within the process. As within earlier sections, the analysis of the process is divided into three different parts, each focusing on a sub part of the entire process. By analyzing the created process maps and reviewing the interview material related to how the process is perceived by its users, challenges with the current way of working were identified. These relate to both the expense management regulations and how the process is performed today. Given below is a summary, without any specific order, of the identified key challenges with the process:

1. Original receipts need to be stored in its original form due to legal requirements for at least seven years.

34 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

2. If required information is missing, or reported incorrectly within the expense reports, it can complicate:

a) the understanding of the reported expenses, both for attesting managers and the ﬁnance department, and b) future budgeting work.

3. Since all material (i.e., expense reports, receipts, and additional documents) is physically stored and used throughout the entire process, it is prone to being lost, both when being stored and when being delivered to the next person or department.

4. What information that is needed from the cardholder when an expense report needs to be submitted can sometimes be difﬁcult to interpret, for both the cardholder and the attesting manager.

5. When an invoice reaches a cardholder, some of the registered purchases might have been performed a month ago. This means that when an expense report is to be submitted, the cardholder sometimes needs to recall something that happened a month ago.

6. All material that is to be reported in an expense report needs to be in physical form, meaning that a cardholder needs to have access to a printer to be able to complete the task.

7. All information that is to be entered into the expense report needs to be entered manually using pen and paper.

8. Some tasks that are considered time-consuming and frustrating by its practitioners are:

a) manually having to provide information, with pen and paper (reported by cardholders), b) having to transfer expense reports between departments and personnel (reported by cardholders and attesting managers), c) reviewing and manually entering information in different systems (reported by ﬁnance department personnel), and d) having to ask for changes in an expense report when it is incorrect (reported by ﬁnance department personnel).

9. It is difﬁcult to know the status of an expense report:

a) When an invoice has been sent to its corresponding cardholder, the ﬁnance department cannot check whether or not the cardholder has submitted the expense report to its attesting manager, if the material has been lost, or if it has not been submitted at all. b) Reminders can accidentally be sent out to the cardholder saying that the expense report has not been submitted, even though it might have been sent to the attesting manager or might just have been delivered to the ﬁnance department postbox.

10. If a cardholder and the attesting manager work at different geographical locations, the paperwork needs to be transferred between the practitioners in order to perform the attesting of the report.

11. If the ﬁnance department is located at a different location than the attesting manager (or cardholder), the expense report and the receipts need to be sent by mail.

35 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

The found challenges presented above are all challenges that one would wish to eliminate. Eliminating, or reducing, the challenges could potentially both improve the process experience for its practitioners and improve the quality of the produced material. The majority of the found challenges can be connected to the quality factors presented in section 4.2.1. By connecting the found challenges and deciding on how to tackle them, one is hopefully able to reduce the risk of introducing them into the new process. By analyzing the identiﬁed challenges presented above, the following connections can be made to the identiﬁed quality factors:

1. Time: challenges 2a, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8a, 8b, 8c, 10, and 11.

2. Mobility: challenges 3, 6, 7, 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d, 9a, 9b, 10, and 11.

3. Correctness: challenges 2a, 2b, 4, 5, and 7.

Challenge number 1 presented above is difficult and it somewhat leaves the scope of the found quality factors to focus the process improvement upon. This is due to the fact that its requirements are found within legal aspects. However, if a digital copy of a paper receipt is introduced, you are able to reduce the requirement of storing the original paper receipt from 7 to approximately 3 years. Due to this, the challenge was kept as one to reduce. With the presented connections between the quality factors and the identified challenges with the expense management process, the focus for how to improve the process was formed. By focusing on improving the process with respect to the three identified quality factors, the challenges are hopefully reduced or eliminated.

4.2.4 Improve Based on the analysis, a prototype was created as a digital representation of the analog expense management process of the company. A brief overview of the goals of the prototype will be presented from two different point of views, in order to improve the process in focus with respect to the identiﬁed quality factors. The overview is followed by a description of the prototype sketch and the implementation that was created to fulﬁll the goals. The target group of the prototype was mainly the cardholders and the attesting managers, where the main goals of the prototype from their point of view, were decided to be:

1. Give the employees the opportunity to prepare or manage their expenses immediately when they have made an expense or when a new invoice arrives.

2. Simplify the way reports were transferred in the process.

3. Provide the users with feedback about the status of an expense report.

4. Make it easier for the cardholders to provide correct information in their expense reports.

The goals where established with the purpose of improving the process with respect to the chosen quality factors. Goals 1, 2, and 3, can be considered to improve the process with respect to Mobility and Time, while goal 4 improves it with respect to Correctness and Time. The ﬁnance department on the other hand, was not the main target of the prototype, although they are the most vulnerable and affected most by errors generated in earlier steps of the process. Nevertheless, the prototype should indirectly facilitate their part of the process without them actually using it. The goals of the prototype, from the point of view (building upon the list of goals given for cardholders and attesting managers) of the ﬁnance department were to:

5. Reduce the amount of incorrect information provided by the cardholders.

36 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.5: Wireframes of the initial prototype sketch.

6. Provide the ﬁnance department employees with an easier way to review expense reports and translate the information from the expense report to the accounting system.

7. Simplify how incorrect material can be returned to the cardholders for revision.

Goal 5 can be considered to improve the process with respect to Correctness and Time, goal 6 with respect to the quality factor Time and goal 7 is considered to improve Mobility.

Prototype sketch The analysis of the process map, the found challenges, and the identified quality factors together with the goals of the prototype mentioned above, led to the initial prototype sketch which is displayed as wireframes in Figure 4.5. The figure shows a vague overview image of the structure and the intended workflow of the initial prototype. In order to address the challenges of not being able to conduct the process at any geographical location and to reduce lead times when the material is sent between departments, a suitable solution was to create a prototype of a mobile application representing the digital way of managing expenses. The wireframes display an overview of the invoices and the invoice rows about expenses that a user has to report. The user is given the ability to add a receipt and some information explaining their expense in a digital form. Receipts are then to be mapped to their corresponding invoice rows, making each invoice row associated with its own receipt. With this solution, it is made clear to the attesting manager and the finance department what information for a receipt document in the expense report to check with respect to the invoice. When all the invoice rows have a receipt, the digital expense report can be signed and sent to the manager for approval. Before implementing the prototype, the initial sketch was reviewed by an external User Experience designer consultant and the contact persons of the company, and their feedback led to the graphical interface of the prototype implementation. The more general feedback concerned the amount of information on the screen. Both the consultant and the contact person explained that some of the screens included a lot of text and components, making the interface somewhat difficult to take in. This feedback resulted in many changes, due to the fact that a simple interface was desirable: a new home screen

37 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.6: Home screen, cardholder. Figure 4.7: Home screen, manager. was added, in order to introduce a screen with fewer options to start with, and the number of components and text objects in overview screen for invoices and receipts was reduced. As for the buttons, the consultant gave valuable feedback regarding the choice of button design. In order to provide the user with clear information, it was pointed out that text explaining the purpose of the buttons (either by having the buttons itself include text, or have text adjacent to the button symbols) can increase the understanding. Thereto, the placement of buttons was discussed. The consultant explained that in order to create a more natural flow in the usage of the application, actions that need to be taken should go from top to bottom. This feedback resulted in the moving of some of the buttons, and a thorough review of the flow of actions in the application was performed. Some of the discussion that took place concerned the choices of color. In some of the parts of the interface, red had been chosen as the color to indicate when something was incorrect. Due to the fact that the majority of the employees at the company are men, which are more likely to be color blind (and therefore have difficulties depicting red) than women [52], this choice of color was questioned. After having reviewed and evaluated the received feedback, the prototype sketch constituted the basis for the prototype implementation.

Prototype implementation The prototype was implemented as an application created with the Microsoft Power Platform where the graphical user interface was created using low-code programming in Power Apps. The application is targeted to mobile devices, making it available regardless of the users’ geo-

38 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.8: Creating a new expense, part 1. graphical location as long as there is a connection to internet, improving the process according to the identified quality factor: Mobility. The Microsoft environment for low-code programming was also chosen since the company already used other Microsoft services, such as Azure and Office 365 where all the employees have their work email connected to a Microsoft account. The account enables information about the employee to be stored in the Azure Active Directory (AD). Connecting services to the Azure AD makes it possible to retrieve stored information about those users within other services, such as their unique user id, their full name, email, job title and manager. The Microsoft account simplifies the access to the application as well since it can be shared with every employee through their Microsoft account. The employee can then sign into their account in Microsoft Power Apps in order to start using the application. In the backend of the application system, information from received invoices together with created, submitted, and archived expense reports is stored in an Azure SQL Database. The database was connected to both the application and to automated flows created with Microsoft Power Automate. Further, each invoice PDF and receipt image is stored within Azure Blob Storage. The application also makes use of Microsoft Power Automate in order to create workflows for submitting, approving, or declining material but also to archive expense reports that have been managed. In the same way notifications to the users are also sent using automated flows. In Figures 4.6 and 4.7, the home screen of the application can be seen, where Figure 4.6 is shown to users without attesting responsibilities and Figure 4.7 is shown when an attesting manager has some expense reports to review. On the home screen, the user has access to the features that was evaluated to be the most frequently used ones. As the given names of the buttons entail, the users can from the home screen find their received invoices and saved receipts, create a new expense, and start the camera and take a photo of a receipt. In addition, the user can see received messages from either the attesting manager or the finance department related to previously submitted and declined invoices, as shown as an example in Figure 4.6. As mentioned, the attesting manager has an additional button available. With this button, the attesting manager can see what expense reports that are to be reviewed. In Figures 4.8 and 4.9, the view that the user is presented with when creating a new expense is shown. This view can be reached through either clicking the buttons specifically taking the user to that screen, or by first taking a photo of a receipt and automatically being

39 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.9: Creating a new expense, part 2. redirected to that view. Here, the user is to provide the information about the purchase that has been made. This digital way of filling in the required information is a representation of the current expense report that is printed and filled out on paper, seen in Figure 4.4. The fields to fill in relate to what invoice the expense and receipt relates to, where the purchase was made, and what type of purchase it was. Depending on what type of purchase, different fields become visible on the screen. As shown in Figure 4.8, the example purchase is denoted as being related to ”Fairs and conferences”, making the agenda and the participants list required fields. To reduce the risk that receipts get lost from the point in time for the actual purchase to the time when the invoice arrives, the users are given the possibility to prepare their expense report at the time of the expense, without having to wait for the invoice to ar- rive. This is done by providing the opportunity to mark a receipt as being connected to the next invoice, and not one that has been received. This digital form compared to an analog one makes it easier to demand that the user provides the correct information, because fields in the form can be set to be required, as demonstrated in the second and third image of Fig- ure 4.9. Without the user providing the specific information that is required by the finance department, the cardholder cannot finish and submit their expense report. A digital form will not remove the possibility to find shortcuts where the users avoid filling in certain fields so that they can save time when managing their expense, which have been mentioned as one of the reasons for delays and frustration in the process. However, a digital form forces the cardholder to make an active choice to cheat the system. An example would be typing only one character in a field that requires the purpose of an expense, just so that they are able to send their report. The required fields make it easier for the finance department to prove and question such shortcuts in a later step. Previously, such actions could easily be excused by the cardholder saying that they did not know that the information was needed for the expense. Implementing the required fields and the feedback, presented in the second image of Figure 4.9, fulfills one of the goals from the cardholder and managers point of view, making it easier to provide correct information in the expense reports. Because of this, the digital form will improve the process according to both of the identified quality factors: Time and Correctness. Not only does a digitally stored receipt reduce the time it takes to locate the receipt when managing the expense reports and ease the reporting of them as explained above, but the total time required for storing the original receipt according to legal

40 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.10: Invoices and receipts screen. aspects is also reduced from 7 years to approximately 3 years of time. This implementation aspect therefore improves the process according to the identified quality factor: Time. Further process improvement that was made regarding all of the quality factors, was to simplify how material was transferred in the process. When the submission of an expense report is represented by manual paper handling and sent either by post or transferred from hand to hand, things can easily get lost in transit. A digital form reduces the risk that any of the submitted material is lost when transferred from the cardholder to the manager or from the manager to the finance department, no matter the distance between them. A mobile application does also enable managers to take action and review submitted expense reports as soon as they are available in the application without having to physically move to the location of the expense report currently found at their desk or in the mailbox at the office. This reduces the time it takes to return, both correct and incorrect, material when it does not have to be transferred physically from one location to another. When a user has created expenses and added receipts, the user can locate them in the view called ”My invoices and receipts”. An example of how that view can look is shown in Figure 4.10. By choosing what invoice to view in the drop-down menu located at the top left of the screen, the user can see what purchases had been registered for that particular invoice, and what receipts the user has entered for that invoice. When all information has been entered correctly for a particular invoice, the user can click the button ”Submit expense report” to submit the material. However, before submitting an expense report, the user must sign and certify that they have followed the instructions that apply to the use of the credit card provided by the company, where the view for signing can be seen in Figure 4.11. When the user has submitted the expense report, the process for the cardholder has been completed. With this, all actions required by cardholders have been digitalized and therefore the need to use pen and paper to submit expense reports has been eliminated. Another benefit with a digital solution is the opportunity to provide the users with instant feedback about new invoices to manage as a cardholder, about submitted material that has been declined by a manager or about newly received expense reports that managers must review. An example of such feedback can be seen displayed in the message box visible in Figure 4.6, where the user has received a message from its attesting manager about a declined expense report. When the user wants to revise the expense report that was declined by the manager, they can view the message and in order to re-submit the invoice they are asked

41 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.11: Submitting expense report screen. take action according to the message sent by the manager. This may potentially reduce the amount of time it takes for the users to revise or manage their expense reports, indicating a potential improvement with respect to the quality factor: Time. As mentioned earlier, the home screen of the application looks a bit different for an attesting manager. In the example shown in Figure 4.7, there are two expense reports that have been received by the manager, waiting to be approved (or declined). The manager can review and choose to either decline or approve the submitted reports, as demonstrated by the views seen in Figures 4.12 and 4.13. It was previously mentioned that the manager can choose to decline the submitted material and provide a message back to the cardholder who sent the expense report and the view for that is shown in Figure 4.14. However, if everything is correct in the submitted expense reports the manager can approve it by digitally signing it, as seen in Figure 4.15, which is similar to when an expense report is submitted in the first place. In addition to the previously mentioned benefits, this strengthens the possibility for the digital solution to improve the process from both the perspective of Time and Mobility, as managers do not have to move from one physical location to another in order to retrieve submitted expense reports or return incorrect ones to the cardholder. By looking from the point of view of the finance departments, the new digital process aimed to make it easier for the employees working within that department to review and translate expense reports into their accounting system. This is not directly targeted by the presented application since the department already has access to Gordon where they currently mark expense reports as submitted. Because the expense reports will be sent in a digital format, they are ready to be displayed to the finance department in Gordon. However, due to the fact that Gordon is already in production, this part of the work will be left for the IT department of the company to complete.

42 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.12: Approve expense reports Figure 4.13: Review submitted expense report overview screen. screen.

Final user tests During the first test session of the final user tests, conducted with one of the male employees, some minor adjustments had to be made because of time-consuming and unexpected issues regarding the remote setup of the application. The overall outcome of the test was considered as good: the first test user explained that he could easily navigate through the application and had no problem completing the tasks. But he had some questions regarding expense management terms used in the application and asked for some minor clarifications, for example by replacing the term “Approve” with “Attest” to make it more similar to the terms used today. He was also asked about his experience of using the digital version for managing expenses, and he said:

“It has all the potential to be really good and the application fulﬁlls the purpose of making it easier for the cardholders to present their expense reports, solving many of the time-consuming challenges that comes with the manual paper handling of expense reports”.

When further asked about how he would compare the digital version with the current way of managing expenses, he answered that:

“It is light years away from the analog version, which I have made. It was my way of solving the problem more than 10 years ago, but it has happened so much over the years. The application is more or less intuitive and I do not think that the users will have any difﬁculties when using it for managing their expenses”.

43 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

Figure 4.14: Decline expense report screen. Figure 4.15: Approve expense report screen.

However, it was also mentioned by the user that the solution would not solve the challenge related to the legal aspect of storing the original receipt for 7 years of time, only reduce the amount of years needed to store the it. When asked if there was anything that he thought was missing in the application, the answer was:

“I would like to have the alternative to provide a comment about why a receipt might be missing in the submitted material, so that my manager can see that it is justiﬁed. And maybe, another color might be used for buttons that are only meant for managers”.

The second user test was conducted with the finance manager, also a male employee, and he was interviewed earlier in this work as well. It was seen that he had some difficulties to locate feedback messages displayed in the application. After conducting the task of completing an expense report, he was asked if he noticed any indications about fields where information was not filled in. However, he answered that it was nothing that he thought about during the task. As a follow-up question, he was asked if he noticed that there was a red border around fields, indicating that information was missing, and he answered:

“No, I did not see that, but I am colorblind so in that case I might have missed the red part”.

Apart from that, the second test user found some parts of the application to be more difficult to understand than others. The first screen was said to be simple, but he claimed that it was not very intuitive to conduct the task of submitting an expense report. Nevertheless, he justified that by saying that it might be easier once the application has been used a few times.

44 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

When asked if there was anything that he thought was missing in the application, the answer was that:

“It would be nice to separate the functionalities that are available for managers and non-managers in some way”.

Continuing to explain how he experienced the digital version of managing expenses and how he would compare it to the current way of managing expenses at the company, he said:

“It was not 100% intuitive without a short introduction, but I believe that it might be a lot easier once it has been used before. It will be nice not having to print a lot of documents and manually attach receipts at the expense reports. As a manager, it will also be nice not having to move to the actual location of submitted expense reports in order to review them. However, I like to have the invoice in one hand and the expense report in the other, side-by-side, so that I can review the material in order to guarantee that everything is correct”.

Because of that, some indications of distrust to the application’s way of reading the invoice information was noted. Moving on to the outcome of the third test, the result was similar to the ﬁrst test, again conducted with a male user. Some minor suggestions regarding general improvements and clariﬁcations of terms regarding expense management were mentioned, but there were no major challenges for the user to complete the tasks.

“I wish that I could explain or comment why my receipt is missing when I create an expense report. Maybe there could also be a feature for leaving a comment when I approve submitted material as a manager”, he said.

Other than that, the user found it simple and intuitive to manage own expenses, as well as approving and declining material submitted by employees. As stated, the tests were conducted remotely with the user sharing their screen, but it was mentioned that the application was perceived to be convenient to use in a mobile phone.

“It is quite self-explanatory, a much more convenient way of managing expenses than the traditional way of doing it and the best part is to be able to store information about an expense directly at the time of the purchase. Today, I take notes on the backside of the receipt so that it is easier to remember when I receive the invoice”, he said when asked about how he would compare the digital version with the current way of managing expenses.

The third test user also mentioned that the application would make it a lot easier to manage expenses when traveling, saying that it will probably be easier over time, once you are familiarized with how things work. The fourth test session was conducted with one of the females. She found the application quite easy to navigate but wished for a feature to add comments to expense reports, which was also mentioned as a suggestion in the ﬁrst and third test sessions. In comparison to the current way of managing expenses, she mentioned that:

“It seems good because you are able to store and submit material faster, so that time can be spent on other tasks. It will also ease the challenge where a lot of documents and receipts go missing”.

The ﬁnal test, also conducted with a female employee, was the only one where the test user had some previous experiences of managing expenses with a digital solution. She mentioned that it was much appreciated compared to analog expense management and questioned why it had not already been implemented in the company.

45 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process

“I see no benefits with the company’s current way of managing expenses. It takes too much time and it is difficult to keep track of all the documents and receipts. Also, it is difficult to keep the receipts in a good and readable condition”, she said when asked to compare the digital version with the current way of managing expenses.

The cons with the current way of managing expenses was mentioned to be that it was time- consuming, inflexible, and unnecessary. She also mentioned that she is usually located in the same city as the finance department, but her attesting manager is located in another town. Once she has completed an expense report, it must be posted to another town for approval and then posted back to the first location again for the finance department to look at it. Those steps are said to be very unnecessary and negative in terms of time, cost, and environmental aspects of sending things around the country.

“A lot of employees are not at the office, they work outside, and it must be difficult for them. They must print documents, fill in the information, attach their receipts, and post it. Then a manager is supposed to sign it and forward it again...how many days does this take?”, she continued.

Further, she mentions the colors indicating when things were incorrect, for example when an expense was missing some information, to be a good feature in the application. She was also asked how she would compare the tested application against the previously experienced digital solution:

“This one is less complex; the ﬁrst page is very simple and easy to understand. It does not need to be a lot of information everywhere”, she said.

As a summary of the user tests, the application was indicated to be quite intuitive and easy to use for managing expenses. All of the users perceived it as an improvement from their current way of working but some wishes for improvements were mentioned, which were discussed and considered carefully before ﬁnishing the work. According to the feedback from the user tests, the main improvements were:

• The addition of a ﬁeld for commenting the reason of not submitting a receipt when creating expense reports.

• A different color and term for the button on top of the screen shown in Figure 4.7 which is only available for managers.

• A check box was added to the expense forms, indicating which ﬁeld attachments belong to when creating expense reports.

Previously, the choice of using red colors in the prototype sketch was questioned by the User Experience designer, but it was also seen as a challenge for one of the male users during the ﬁnal tests. In order to make the interface easier for people with color blindness, it was decided that the components that used color changes to demonstrate that something was incorrect also had to include another signal, such as an increase of border thickness of the component, or changing the size of the component.

4.2.5 Control An important step to be able to deliver a useful digitalized process to the company, which the employees would both be able to understand and further develop after this work, was to create accurate instructions and documentation about the application and how it is meant to be used. To ease the use for the employees that have little or no experience of digital expense

46 4.2. Digitalizing the expense management process management systems, guide manuals were provided to the users. These manuals were represented both in terms of videos and as documents with text and pictorial representations, showing step-by-step how to perform different tasks in the application. Providing such documentation hopefully reduces the uncertainty that could be seen with digitalization, making the users more comfortable with the changes that follows from the digital way of managing expenses. In addition, thorough documentation regarding the system infrastructure, application components and its environment as well as other important aspects of this work was given to the company IT department. This was done, to make it possible for them to ﬁx unforeseen bugs more easily or in other ways unwanted behavior if needed. By providing the company with this information, the risk of having them go back to the old way of working is hopefully reduced. Furthermore, documentation containing information about known drawbacks and limitations in the application, but also suggested improvements for future development was given to the IT department. Providing them with this information would hopefully make it easier for them to modify, develop or update the application later on.

47 5 Discussion

In this section the results will be discussed, both from the perspective of digitalization in general, and from the perspective of expense management and the implemented digital solution in particular. This will be followed by a discussion regarding the beneﬁts and limitations of the chosen method. Lastly, a discussion about the work in a wider context is provided.

5.1 Results

A digital solution where receipts can be captured with images and stored in a database as copies does not remove the legal requirement of storing the original receipt for some time, which was previously mentioned in section 2.2.1. However, since the new digitalized process enables making a digital copy of the original receipt to be stored, the amount of years required for storage of the original paper receipt is now reduced from 7 years to approximately 3 years. Nonetheless, it is still of importance for the company to decide on how to deal with the storing of the original receipt in the future. Whether it is up to the employee to mail the receipts to the finance department or store them on their own is omitted in this report. Only a change in the current law can completely remove the requirement to store the original receipt, and maybe that will be the case in a near future, which is plausible due to the ongoing investigation mentioned in 2.2.1. In addition to the reduced amount of manual work with expense report management, which was one of the main results of introducing a digital solution, the reduction of storage time of original receipts can be seen as another step towards the paperless office, mentioned in section 2.5. The digital storage for the receipts, as well as for the expense reports, also introduces an increase of the company’s control over reported material, reducing the time it takes to find a report in case of a potential inspection by tax authorities. However, storing information digitally is not completely risk-free, since it can pose threats related to security and privacy. One can assume that the storing of digital information creates an increased risk of data leakage of perhaps sensitive information regarding expenses made through the company, if the information is not stored and managed in a secure way. Because of the risk of data leakage, questions regarding the privacy of the employees may also arise with the digital storage. When specific expenses tied to an individual can be exposed to digital attacks, it should be treated as a risk related to both privacy and security. However, the risk is also present for

48 5.1. Results the analog way of managing expenses since unauthorized people could potentially access the expense reports when being posted or placed at a desk of the office. It is further emphasized by Orantes-Jiménez et al. [30] that misuse or reluctance to change might lead to the manual paper handling not being reduced when new technology is introduced in a company. Reluctance to change was also one of the challenges mentioned in the interviews within this work, which strengthens the choice to deliver thorough documentation to the company about the process as described in section 4.2.5. This, to give the employees a better understanding about why they must perform the process correctly, as well as how to do it. With this, hopefully the risk of having the participants of the process revert back to the old one has been reduced. Furthermore, Saariko et al. [36] mention that the result of a digitalization was highly dependent on how the technology is perceived and understood by its users, but the positive effects could generate value both internally and externally. Proper documentation to ease the understanding of the technology and the process itself for the employees is therefore justified even more. However, the analog process currently used could probably have been improved as well, solving many of the identified challenges seen in literature and according to the interviews, only by re-assessing and adding better documentation about it. Moreover, users’ trust in technology is mentioned in the literature in section 4.1.1, where a digital and automated process can affect the trust in the technology in different ways. Lit- erature showed that a consequence of persuasive technology could contribute to the users putting too much trust in technology [27, 35]. In this work, one of the main purposes with the digital solution was to reduce the amount of incorrect information provided in expense reports by prompting the user about adding missing information. However, users are also provided with feedback when all the information of an expense report is provided. The users’ interpretation of such feedback can affect the trust in the application. A user might provide all the required information, but the actual information provided might still be incorrect from the finance department’s point of view, forcing the user to revise the expense report. Hence, such situation might be a consequence of users putting too much trust into the technology, not reviewing the information they provide properly before submitting. Another consequence might be that the user experiences distrust in the technology due to such event, since the application feedback said that all the information was provided when it was not. Highlighting the importance of having a common understanding about terms and processes related to digitalization can also relate to the trust and confidence in a digital service. This can be distinguished from the results of the literature study, and it was also clearly shown with the results of both the interviews and the user tests. Many of the challenges that were mentioned by the interviewees during the interviews originated from the employees finding it difficult to understand the terminology in the expense reports. In addition, there seemed to be a lack of understanding regarding why one had to provide certain information as well. This could also be seen in the final user tests where some of the used terms were questioned, and buttons were perceived as difficult to understand at first glance. However, when the users were given a proper explanation about terms and the purpose of some of the buttons, they did not find it as difficult to understand anymore. This demonstrates that increasing the knowledge of why and how a process is performed can lead to both an increased satisfaction amongst its practitioners and result in a more efficient way of working. With this, thorough documentation being given to the company upon delivering the digitalized process and a use of well-established terminology is encouraged. The opinion on employees having access to a credit card connected to the company dif- fered between the interviewees, where one described that it might be better if employees made the expenses using their own money in order to, perhaps, reduce the time it takes to get expense reports delivered to the finance department. At the same time, another user believed it was good to use company credit cards, making it easier to distinguish what expenses that are work-related. With this, there seems that the disagreement might be based on the ex- ecution of, and the challenges related to, the analog expense management process more than

49 5.1. Results the company cards themselves. Due to the limited amount of time to evaluate the digital expense management process in this work, it can be difficult to determine the cause of the disagreement. However, it would be interesting to see if the opinions would be the same if the application created in this work was to be implemented and then evaluated after being used during a longer period of time. One of the components within this work was working with, and following chosen quality factors. The chosen quality factors have been motivated; however, it is reasonable to point out that the choices could have had an impact on the remainder of the work, and that other quality factors could have been considered as well. Security, Privacy, and Usability could have been considered as additional quality factors to focus on. However, Security and Privacy were not used because it is reasonable to say that no information that is provided by the process practitioners to the application should be considered particularly sensitive. In addition, the information about the employees, which can be seen as sensitive in this aspect, was already stored in Azure AD where the security is managed by an external party. Furthermore, to access the application, the user must log in to their Microsoft account within Power Apps using two-factor authentication, which reduces the risk of information being leaked to someone unauthorized. Usability could have been well-worth using as a quality factor to focus on. However, the authors believe that in order to fairly evaluate the usability of the implemented application, the application has to be used and tested by the employees in production for quite some time. Since the aim of this thesis was to deliver a digital solution for managing expenses, that had to be produced in a limited time, focus was chosen on other quality factors instead. It is however reasonable to state that if the time frame of the project would have been larger, evaluating the digitalized process with respect to usability would have been to expect. To summarize, Security, Privacy and Usability have been discussed and reasoned throughout this work but not to the extent that they were treated as quality factors that were worth focusing on due to the limited time available when performing this work. If the application is to be improved and further developed in the future with the use of quality factors, the factors that are in focus may need to be re-evaluated. If other quality factors had been chosen, perhaps the way of working, and the result of the work, would have been different. One can imagine that if the quality factors had pointed to the process needing other digital services or other functionalities, the resulting digital implementation could have looked very different from the one presented. In addition, it would also have been possible to work with a higher number of quality factors, perhaps to increase the scope of the improvement. With such change, the digitalized process might have been perceived as covering even more aspects of improving the process. However, one always has to make a final choice in order to complete a work, and the quality factors are believed to be well-motivated and suitable for this work. Evaluating the improvements in relation to the quality factors correctness and time was somewhat difficult due to the application not being implemented and tested in the real-life company scenario of managing expenses. Because of the similarities to the previous discussion about the quality factor Usability, it can be questioned why Correctness and Time was in focus instead of Usability. Since many of the challenges found in the analog way of managing expenses at the company were in relation to Time and Correctness, and the company had no previous digital solution to compare and evaluate Usability against, the choice of quality factors in focus were by the authors believed to be justified. Evaluating the improvements regarding the quality factor Mobility was easier due to not being as dependent on the need to see how the application was perceived over time. This, since the digital process can be performed from any physical location, making the improvement of the process with respect to Mobility more or less obvious. In addition, having the introduced application being suitable and compatible for smartphone devices made it easy to have the new digitalized process satisfy the need for mobility. However, the literature showed that digitalization might affect the employee’s well-being, causing stress related to

50 5.1. Results mobility and the perceived feeling of being available all the time [28]. That might be one of the downsides with the digital implementation and the mobility of the process, but the risk can hopefully be reduced if proper documentation and explanations about the process are given to the users. If the company is aware of how its employees may experience the transition towards a more digital workplace, it is easier for the company to help their employees deal with such challenges. With this, it will be of importance to clearly explain that the employees will not be obligated to report their expenses during their spare time, and instead that the mobility aspect of the digitalized process serves the purpose of making it more available when needed. As mentioned by Davenport [12], presented in section 2.3.1, a process relates to different factors and if some or any of those factors are improved, the process itself is improved. The final user tests gave an indication of such improvement since the digital process would make it easier to provide correct information, conduct the process at any time and location, as well as reduce many of the identified challenges related to time. As improvements can be seen with respect to each of the identified quality factors, it is fair to conclude that the process itself also should be considered improved, using digital services. In theory, a well-functioning process for managing expenses was mentioned to improve budgeting control, and to increase employee productivity as well [44]. Furthermore, according to Björkdahl [4], time efficiency, operational control, and traceability was mentioned as positive effects from a digitalization. Such benefits, from both digitalization and well-functioning expense management processes, was also reflected in this work by the created application. Further, an interesting observation regarding the final user tests were that many of the test users mentioned having no previous experience related to digital expense management systems. However, they all indicated that the digital solution was intuitive and easy to use, especially after getting a short explanation when something was perceived as difficult. This strengthens the need to provide proper documentation about the digital process. In addition, this points to the fact that it does not necessarily have to be the introduction of a new digital service in the workplace that is the cause for negative response, but more how the introduction takes place. During the final user tests, an observation that was made was the difference in level of technical skills and knowledge amongst the participants. This observation indicates the importance of thoroughly investigating the level of experience using digital services within the company to digitalize before initiating the work. With this knowledge prior to implementing the digital solution, one can more easily distinguish how complex the application can be without creating confusion, and without making it ”too easy” to understand, for example by having such a level of simplicity within the interface that it causes frustration. In addition, having this knowledge about the practitioners of the process, could point the process improvement in different directions. An example of this can be found within one of the answers given by one of the test users (an attesting manager). During the user test, it was mentioned that the user would have preferred having the invoice information presented side by side with the expense report, indicating that the user did not completely trust that the application had mapped the expense report information correctly to its corresponding invoice information. This could point to the fact that if the developed application would have been even more automated, this could have led to distrust amongst users with little knowledge on digital services. Even if the user tests were only conducted with a few employees out of the very many in the target group of the application, the results may indicate a reduced risk for individuals not having enough technical skills to appreciate or benefit from the application. The test results also indicate a reduced risk for individuals experiencing that it is time-consuming to understand and adjust to the new way of working. Of course, there are many other ways that this process could have been improved with the use of digital services, for example by creating a web application with standard web development in a similar way, or by creating an app in any other platform for developing mobile applications. One could also consider redoing the process altogether, perhaps avoiding em-

51 5.1. Results ployees having company credit cards. There are probably advantages and disadvantages regardless of the approach, but the chosen approach felt time efﬁcient and appropriate considering the relatively short time frame for implementing such solution. Power Apps made it easy to start prototyping with only a small amount of previous knowledge about low- code programming as well as the Power App system. The low-code environment facilitated prototyping and enabled rapid changes to the graphical user interface with little effort and that made it quick and easy to create a simple application with the visual appearance of the revised wireframes, possible to test with potential users. The results of deciding to use a low- code platform indicates that the work of digitalizing the workplace does not necessarily have to be highly extensive with respect to time, and with the learning curve being quite gentle, a digitalization does not have to be as complex and hard to take on as one might think. Investigating what digitalization might result in, apart from the beneﬁts, can hopefully give insights to what one perhaps needs to take into account when introducing such change. To summarize the acquired knowledge from both previous works and presented information from the study conducted in this thesis, one can somewhat see patterns and depict different categories and patterns related to challenges regarding the digitalization of the workplace. When evaluating the results collected within this thesis related to the found challenges (presented in section 4.1.2), one can discover that some common denominators are present. In order to make the challenges somewhat easier to grasp, the following groupings can be established:

• Challenges C1, C2, C6, C10 and C12 relate to the Individual employee.

• Challenges C4 and C7 relate to the Company.

• Challenges C3, C5, C8, C9, C11 and C13 relate to both the Individual employee and the Company.

It is of course difﬁcult to claim that the challenges only can be grouped in this type of way. However, to be able to make an effort into presenting possible solutions to the challenges, one has to try to make the distinction one way or another. When wanting to tackle the challenges, it is plausible to imagine that different measures relate to different types of challenges. The challenges that the authors believe mostly are related to the Individual employee are possibly handled by making changes that has the individual practitioner as its main focus. Many of the challenges related to the individual point to the experiencing of negative emotions, such as stress, fear, and a sense of uncertainty. With that in mind, it is plausible to say that proactive measures that focus on the point of view of the individual hopefully can reduce the risk of these challenges. By putting effort into establishing a clear communication between the company and the individuals that are to be affected by the future digitalization, the authors believe that one can more easily reduce the risk of having employees experience such emotions, making the effort of good and extensive communication the main focus for this group of challenges. When discussing the challenges that were presented to mainly relate to the point of view of the Company, some of the common denominators that the authors believe exists are the prerequisites that the company gives their employees, and the attitude the company shows towards the employees regarding digitalization. One can imagine that if the company improves its conditions prior to introducing the digitalization, they are able to tackle such challenges. This could for instance be done by thoroughly preparing the employees, prior to even starting the work of digitalization as a whole, by presenting the changes to come and how the changes will affect concerned personnel. Moreover, by also providing thorough documentation and guidelines regarding the digitalized process to its practitioners, the company hopefully is able to mitigate the risk of introducing the presented challenges. In addition, the authors believe that by doing so, the company shows transparency, which potentially could make everyone feel more comfortable with the situation.

52 5.2. Method

To summarize, the authors understand that it is not easy to ﬁnd one correct answer as to what a company should consider and do when digitalizing the workplace with respect to the challenges that can emerge. Nonetheless, the authors still hope that the results presented in this thesis have contributed to an improved understanding of existing challenges and how one can keep them in mind when digitalizing the workplace.

5.2 Method

Within this section, the intent is to present and discuss the method that has been performed in this work, and what aspects that are of importance to highlight. With this work, to generate an increase of the knowledge in the field of digitalization was desirable, and the strength of the thesis lies in that it is theoretically based on published work. The literature was chosen in a way that the work presents various points of views since it builds upon peer-reviewed papers as well as information from blog posts and websites. A downside to this is that parts of the information in this paper can be seen as less reliable. However, one can imagine that the information from non-reviewed sources still have generated valuable insights for the discussion, highlighting challenges and benefits seen within digitalization and expense management over the years. Nonetheless, browsing news sites and blogs shows that many of the general discussions regarding digitalization and its pro- gression within the workplace takes place in more relaxed forums, where for example companies highlight their experiences. By presenting information from such sources, one can get a broad perspective on the general thoughts on digitalization today, that can be seen as a good complement to validated works. However, when discussing the aspect of reliability of this work, it is important to keep in mind, that some of the literature is also referenced from companies working with expense management where they provide information that might be biased and portrayed in a way that benefits them. Regarding the performed interviews, some areas of improvement can be seen. The number of interviews could have been higher, in order to be able to provide a wider perspective regarding the challenges connected to both digitalization and expense management at the company, which could have resulted in a more reliable result overall. As for the interviewees, one could imagine that it would have been interesting to interview some employees that have a lot of expenses to report on a regular basis, and that are not in a manager position at the company. The employees that were interviewed in this work showed a good understanding of the current expense management process, and especially the reasons behind why it is of great importance to the company to provide thorough and correct information within expense reports. Since all of the interviewees described incorrect reports as one of the reasons that the expense management process was considered time-consuming, interviewing more cardholders could have provided greater insights about the challenges and issues that arise in the early stage of the process. In addition, in order to widen the perspective on the challenges regarding the digitalization of the workplace, one could imagine that including interviewees that have no connection to the collaborating company could have been beneficial. With this, the results could have been more applicable on a wider set of contexts and companies. However, it is mentioned by Gillham [21] that in-person interviews can be time- consuming to conduct and due to the time limitations, this extension of the work had to be discarded. When the work was performed, several methods for process improvement were reviewed, and it was concluded that DMAIC was an appropriate method to follow. However, it is still of importance to highlight what other options that are available and other strategies that could have been chosen, and what impact the choice of method might have had on the process improvement as a whole. In a literature review presented by Rashid and Ahmad [34], an overview of methods for process improvement that are considered common and important is given, and comparisons on their respective qualities are presented. The methods mentioned

53 5.3. The work in a wider context are: Model-Based Integrated Process Improvement Methodology (MIPI) (Generic Model), Super Methodology, Benchmarking Methodology, PDCA Methodology, Six-Sigma Methodol- ogy (DMAIC), Lean Thinking, Kaizen Methodology, and Total Quality Management (TQM). In the review, it is concluded that none of the strategies can be considered perfect, and they all have weaknesses as well as strengths. In addition, it is mentioned that the choice of method should be influenced by the prerequisites within for example the team and organization, and the method chosen might need to be modified in order to fit the project. The article also sum- marizes some of the strengths of each method, and upon reviewal one can read out that many of them are similar to one another. After having thoroughly reviewed the methods, both in terms of how well documented they were and how complicated they appeared to be, the authors of this work decided on following DMAIC. In addition, it is of importance to highlight the prerequisites of the team performing the process improvement, which in this case concerned the authors. The authors had the opportunity to be supported by experienced external parties within the consultant business that had experience working with DMAIC. With this in mind, the choice of method was considered sensible, easing the learning curve of process improvement. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to say that if another method would have been chosen as baseline, the results of the work may had looked different, since small differences in how something is performed potentially can have an extensive impact. How- ever, due to the fact that all methods have similarities, and all have the same end goal, one can argue that the impact of choice of method (if choosing among well-known ones, with documented similarities) should not have had a substantial impact. In order to be able to improve and evaluate the process that has been in focus in this work, quality factors were introduced. As for the choice of method, other approaches than using quality factors could have been chosen. One approach that potentially could have been of interest is personas. In 2.5, a work by Falk [19] was mentioned, where personas were used in order to map the needs of concerned parties. As shown in the results of this work, the process in focus had three different types of practitioners, and this distinction could potentially make the approach of using personas appropriate, and interesting. It is plausible that by following this approach instead, the needs of the practitioners within the process in focus could have been more evident, and that it would have introduced different results. Nonetheless, by using quality factors, the authors believe that the areas of concern with respect to what to improve is made clear, and appropriate for this type of work. As for the work as a whole, a discussion regarding the replicability of the performed method needs to be addressed. Since this thesis was conducted in collaboration with a company, and much of the information is based on the opinion of individuals, parts of this work might not be applicable in a more generalized context. With this, it is plausible that a similar work would not reach the same results when it comes to the resulting digitalized process, since some of the decisions made throughout the work were based on company specific needs and requirements. However, if one evaluates how the work was performed as a whole, it is reasonable to imagine that no matter what digitalized process that would be the result of the process evaluation and improvement, it would improve its precursor with respect to the quality factors followed within this work. In addition, it is likely that the presented benefits of using a low-code platform when implementing a digitalized process such as the one presented in this work would arise if the work would have been replicated.

5.3 The work in a wider context

Digitalization has over the years had an impact on society in various ways, and both beneﬁts and challenges have been demonstrated. In previous studies [35, 27], challenges with digitalization are viewed from societal and ethical perspectives that could affect security, privacy, and human dignity to mention a few. In addition, [49] discusses how digital monitoring can

54 5.3. The work in a wider context be perceived by employees within a company depending on its presented purpose. There- fore, the digital solution in this work should also be assessed from similar perspectives. In relation to digital monitoring, parallels to this work can be drawn. When introducing a new digital service within the workplace, questions regarding what types of data that is being collected regarding the usage might arise. In addition, why the particular data that is collected is being collected affects the opinion on the data collection. With this, it is reasonable to point out that when digitalizing the workplace, it is important to inform concerned parties thoroughly regarding why the data is collected. If the data collection is done to be able to provide feedback to its practitioners with respect to, for example, improving the service for its users, employees are less likely to believe that the data collection has a negative impact on them. However, within this work, the data collection might not be seen as a big concern, since the data might not be perceived as personal. Nonetheless, if the application was to be expanded even further, privacy concerns may arise. Digitalized and automated processes have been seen to affect people’s trust in technology [35, 27], which makes one wonder if it could also affect people’s trust in non-automated processes conducted by humans. Automated processes have also introduced insecurity among employees who fear that their jobs will be dehumanized, with the consequence that they risk losing their jobs. A lost employment might affect the human dignity of that employee. This work in particular will not reduce the number of employments in the company. However, the work presents opportunities to further digitalize other processes in the company using relatively small funds. Those opportunities are not company specific, and this work can be used as an inspiration for any organization that wish to digitalize analog processes. There- fore, it can be assumed that it will be of great importance for the company or organization to carefully assess how their employees might be affected by such digitalization at an early stage. This in order to maintain a good relationship with their employees. As mentioned earlier, legal requirements put a limitation on only storing copies of receipts digitally. However, one could imagine that due to the digital growth and progress in our society today, this legal requirement might be prone to change. As mentioned in 2.2.1, an investigation regarding simplified accounting was started in year 2020. This could point to the fact that there could be a change regarding the legislation of storing receipts. With this type of change, the work of the expense management process would be simplified. An additional question that can arise related to changes that make daily work more digital and location-independent is if such a change will, or can, affect the work environment over time. One might ask if it is possible that people will only work from home and lose a large part of the human interaction that takes place in everyday life. Subsequently, could that affect human well-being in any way? It is not possible to know how the future workplace might look. However, considering what different positive and negative consequences that digitalizing the workplace might have is of great importance.

55 6 Conclusion

In this thesis, a study regarding the digitalization of the workplace has been performed, with the purpose of investigating what challenges companies face when converting analog and manual processes into digitalized ones. In addition, a study in collaboration with a company was performed to investigate the journey of digitalization and exemplify what concrete challenges that can exist, and what positive outcomes the digitalization of a process can result in. By performing a process evaluation, and introducing key quality factors for the evaluated process, the work has investigated how digitalizing a process while aiming towards improving it with respect to quality factors that were appointed as the most important areas of improvement can be performed. This purpose was summarized using three research questions, presented in section 1.3 that are now to be concluded. What challenges do companies face when moving towards a more digital workplace? From the literature study and the conducted interview, challenges related to both the individual employee and the company could be seen, but also as a combination that relates to both the employee and the company together. When moving towards a more digital workplace, individuals might experience stress, fear and uncertainty, while the company must work on documentation, show a positive attitude and transparency towards their employees with respect to the digitalization. For everyone involved in the digitalization, it is important to establish clear communication to facilitate a comfortable journey of digitalization. What are the current challenges that exist within a company in terms of expense management, and what are the key quality factors related to the expense management process? This work emphasized that the expense management process at the company was tied to the quality factors Time, Mobility, and Correctness. This, because the process in focus was mainly seen to be time-consuming with overall long lead times, location dependent since the process could not be conducted without printing the expense reports, and error prone with many incorrect expense reports being submitted. It is important to notice that other quality factors, such as Security, Privacy, and Usability were also identiﬁed in the process and they might be more appropriate for another work. How can the process of expense management be improved using digital services, with respect to key quality factors? In the work, a process mapping was presented, a process evaluation was performed, and a process digitalization and improvement of an internal business process within a real company took place. The performed process mapping and evaluation were used as the founda-

56 6.1. Future work tion for identifying quality factors, which were to represent the most important aspects of the process to improve. The chosen quality factors then permeated the remainder of the work, pointing the creation of the new digitalized process in the directions which improved the process with respect to what was considered focus areas. By using collected knowledge of the process and its existing pain points together with the found root causes for the process impairments, a prototype of the now digitalized process was developed and tested. The testing results were later used to evaluate the improvement of the process, with respect to the chosen quality factors. The method followed within this work shows that a process evaluation can be performed within a small time frame, which makes it an interesting option for companies that are considering moving towards a more digitalized workplace. In addition, the creation and guidance of quality factors has in this work been shown to be an interesting approach to take in order to be able to keep focus on what is considered most important. With this work, an example and template of how the digitalization of an internal process within a company can be performed is presented. In addition, the use of a low-code platform for implementing a digital process is evaluated.

6.1 Future work

As for all systems that are developed, many additional features and improvements can be introduced in order to improve it further - as goes for the system created within this work. Here, some examples of future work that could potentially both enhance the user experience and maximize the use of the resources collected by the system are presented. In addition, the suggestions regarding how to improve the digitalized process could in turn also result in an even more improved process. As for improving the digitalized process with respect to features and functionalities, AI could be an interesting addition in order to improve the digital solution created in this work. An example on how AI could be introduced would be implementing an automated reading of the lines in receipts, which could result in the possibility to completely automate the submission of the expense reports. The receipt information could be used to speed up the process by automatically mapping exp