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Jon Feiwell from ABS - Oversight Video Testimonials

September 13, 2023

Video Transcript


Speaker: Jon Feiwell, American Bureau of Shipping

How has Oversight benefited you?

Jon Feiwell: Hello, this is Jon Feiwell I am the Director of Corporate Expense Programs here at the American Bureau of Shipping in Houston, Texas. We are a large international firm with approximately 4500 employees in about 65 countries. We started using oversight in 2015 and I believe we were actually one of their first customers. back then and I will tell you, we have been very happy with Oversight and our relationship with the Oversight people who are top notch in terms of customer service. They are always very engaging and very proactive and we appreciate the product and the service we receive from them very much. I will tell you that in a way without Oversight, you are kind of flying blind. because there's a lot we can see as humans, but there's also a lot we cannot see when we review expense reports and only through the use of data analytics does Oversight highlight various things called Insights to corporate management or whoever is administering the system that need to be researched and followed up upon with the employees involved. It serves as a huge reminder to employees that even after their expense reports have been submitted and paid that we are still looking at these expense reports and it provides a huge deterrent, I believe to employees submitting fraudulent expense report claims. And even those who aren't engaged in fraud, it makes them more diligent in their expense report submissions. Like a lot of companies that use Oversight, we find a number of duplicate expenses. You would be surprised how many employees submit expenses more than one time. It happens, people make mistakes and you will be surprised at how many times you find policy violations and you will maybe be even somewhat disturbed by the number of incidents of fraud that you may find things that are not proper business expenses that have been misclassified by the employee to get it by an approver. I will tell you that in the years that we have been using Oversight, we rarely find a situation when we question the employee where Oversight was wrong. Now, we do ferret out the information that we think may be a false positive. But for the most part, the data that Oversight gives us the level of data, even giving us report keys from Concur and things like that enables us to communicate with the employee or their supervisor. And the employee quickly realizes that they have made an error and we have recovered tens of thousands of dollars. Since we implemented the product, the product is fully implemented, I believe will pay for itself, not only through what you recover from employees for expense report claims that were not proper but the deterrent aspect. And also I would like to point out to you that I believe it is important to demonstrate to Senior Management, to the Audit Committee and to the Board of Directors that we are doing our utmost when it comes to expense, preventing expense report fraud and misuse and abuse of expense reports. And I sure would not want to be in the position of explaining to our audit committee or our board that there was technology out there that we did not avail ourselves of when we in, in the performance of our duties, it's very important to keep them, keep up to date with the latest. And if you are not using data analytics to do your job, you're probably not doing your job properly these days. And you can look at the use of data analytics in all sorts of fields. Nowadays, perhaps the most famous is the Moneyball example from baseball. And I will tell you that analytics, data analytics has applications and everything we do. Oversight is a wonderful use for it. Engage Oversight before you have a problem before you have a catastrophe and learn about what is going through your corporate expense programs. Don't wait until you have a problem. Don't wait until you have to say, well, we should have been doing this. Why weren't we doing this? Do it now, you will be very happy you did so. Thank you.

Any recommendations on how to leverage Oversight?

Jon Feiwell: I think any corporate Accounts Payable Department or any department that handles T and E (travel and expense) can leverage Oversight as part of an overall fraud reduction program. It increases employee awareness that there is continuous monitoring of expense reports. It also makes employees aware of policies they may not have been aware of. I mean, I will tell you in my experience a lot of times, employees just are not aware of all the policies that a company might have. And this serves as a tool for employee awareness, employee fraud prevention. And it allows you really to zero in on those items that have the greatest likelihood of being problematic. You don't have to waste so much time looking at things that are not as important Oversight of incorporates a severity and likelihood factor in their data analytics and it allows you to zero in right away on those items that need the most attention and review and scrutiny by management. I encourage you to use this tool in addition to whatever you might do internally, but remembering that human eyes only will catch so much data analytics, uh catches so much more. And that is really embracing modern technology at its finest when you engage Oversight, that's exactly what you do.

How has Oversight helped you do everything to prevent fraud?

Jon Feiwell: Oversight helps us prevent fraud by finding things that normally we would not find without data analytics. It finds the anomalies, it finds the proverbial needle in the haystack. And I think that if you are not using data analytics in today's world, you are missing the boat, you really are because this is, this is where business is these days. This is where the commercial environment is. We have the capability of doing better and being better through technology. And that is exactly what I believe Oversight allows us to do. And you know, we have Internal Audit here, we have Concur Audit even, but they, they can only look at so much. Oversight, looks at your whole population, they're not looking at samples, they're looking at everything and that is essential in a fraud prevention program. Everything is under scrutiny. And I think that you should not discount the need for that because again, Concur Audit, Internal Audit, they look at samples and they look at things very quickly. Oversight has a regimented program that will, but when I say regimented, it goes through specific steps for every transaction. But the great thing about it is it is allows you to tailor the program to your needs and figure out what is important to you. So I would encourage you as part of overall efforts to prevent fraud that you look at Oversight and you try it out. Give it a try and I really don't think you'll be sorry. I think you'll really like it. We consider it here a, an essential tool to preventing fraud. Thank you.



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