Merz Pharma UK Ltd
Merz is an independent German pharmaceutical company with its own research and development, focused on drugs for the treatment of illnesses in the fields of neurology and psychiatry.
Merz Pharma UK Ltd. is a part of Merz Pharmaceuticals specialising in neuroscience and aesthetic medicine.
Challenges faced with expense management
With an expanding product range supported by active research and development, Merz Pharma UK Ltd. has a passion for pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge and is fast becoming a leading name in movement disorders, schizophrenia and aesthetic medicine.
Based in Elstree, North London, Merz Pharma UK Ltd has 44 employees and a turnover of £10 million per year.
“We didn’t need to justify Webexpenses, it was an obvious choice”
The finance department at Merz was processing around 40 claims per month using paper-based expense processes that require staff to complete expenses forms and get physical sign off. The finance team then manually inputted the data from all forms into their financial records.
Simon Mannings, Head of Finance at Merz comments:
“The time and resource needed to complete this were excessive. The system worked but was an exhaustive process. It took up a lot of time for what is, in reality, a small part of the finance department’s role. We knew as the company grew and took on more staff that the burden would continue to grow.
We knew we wanted to automate our expense process and looked at a selection of suppliers. Webexpenses appealed straight away. We saw the efficiency benefits and immediately began to make plans to implement – it wasn’t a difficult analysis.”
How Webexpenses helped
The benefits of Webexpenses have been considerable for the finance team and the overall management of the expense process. Simon comments:
“The main benefit has been the streamlining of the expense process. Thanks to Webexpenses there are fewer headaches, less staff time put into filling out expense forms and less repetition of data from finance staff re-entering data into the system.
In processing time alone we have saved an entire day per month, the equivalent of around £1000-£2000 per year. In less tangible terms, I would estimate the time saved across our 44 staff in filling in, following up and querying expense claims would be on average around 30 minutes per month, meaning overall savings of up to £10,000 per year.
Webexpenses has also surpassed our expectations in other areas, it adds robustness from a system point of view, enforcing better compliance, approval and authorisations processes than our paper-based systems. It has enabled us to track and manage expenses in real time, at any time, really improving our analysis capabilities.”