Case Study: The University of Alabama achieves streamlined digital expense and invoice management and faster payments with SAP Concur

The University of Alabama Moved from Paper-Based Processes to Digital Expense and Invoice Management

The University of Alabama, a 38,000-student flagship institution, faced a heavily paper-based travel, expense and invoice process that relied on campus mail and manual data entry, leaving the university without real-time visibility, slow reimbursements and limited compliance controls. Leadership identified the need to modernize spend management to improve efficiency, transparency and fiscal governance.

UA implemented the SAP Concur suite (Expense, Travel, Invoice, Invoice Capture/OCR, Detect and related tools) with a blitz rollout and mandatory training. Digitizing workflows and automating invoice capture and audits cut PO invoice processing time in half, eliminated much manual hand‑keying (≈50% efficiency gain), accelerated reimbursements to about 2.5 days, increased P‑card usage (from $25M to $68M annual spend), freed up 3–4 FTEs for higher‑value work, and delivered full spend visibility, stronger compliance and uninterrupted operations during the pandemic.

The University of Alabama

Kevin Stevens

Executive Director of Procurement Services