80% time saved Zero accounting errors 300+ travellers 27 different billing structures 125 different project codes
About Akuo
Akuo is an independent global renewable energy power producer and developer. The company is present across the entire value chain, including project development, financing, construction, and operation. As of end 2019, Akuo had invested more than €2.5 billion for a total capacity of more than 1.2 GW in operation or under construction. With more than 350 employees, the group, headquartered in Paris, France, has a presence in over 15 countries around the world.
Akuo has had tremendous growth in recent years. It was adding new joiners at an incredible rate, but since it was still using a traditional travel agency, its travel accounting and reporting capabilities were not keeping pace.
New travellers were being added to the travel platform one-by-one in a time-consuming manual process — matching them with their costs centres, and billing trips with the correct project codes and to the right legal entity was effectively mission impossible. Invoices were disappearing! Moreover, keeping track of travellers whereabouts had become a nightmare. Data mapping between the travel agency and a separate duty of care provider was plagued with errors. The company had to invest extra effort to assure employee safety, as it didn’t have accurate real-time traveller data.
Akuo desperately needed a tool that could seamlessly integrate with its HR, accounting, and duty of care systems so that everything could line-up and work smoothly.
The solution
“I love it when things seamlessly fall into place.” —Hélène Gardère, Travel Manager, Akuo
Fairjungle was brought on board in January 2020 to simplify reporting, accounting, and duty of care solutions' integration (among other objectives).
We eliminated all setup errors with our zero-manual-work, streamlined back-end processes. Users were correctly mapped upfront and roles and attributions clearly assigned. From then on, ongoing reconciliation became child’s play.
Moreover, thanks to Fairjungle’s universal API, Akuo was able to easily auto-mirror its setup in Fairjungle’s systems. Once the API integration was complete, Fairjungle could directly pull information from Akuo relating to who manages whom, to which cost centre travellers belong, to which entity to bill, and much more.
We also solved Akuo’s invoicing and reporting issues. With Fairjungle centralising travel billings and invoices in one place, no more chasing expenses or receipts. Furthermore, with a simple script, the platform allows users to automate the uploading of invoices directly into their ERP, making business travel accounting a piece of cake.
Fairjungle even streamlined the connection with GardaWorld Security Services, Akuo’s assistance service provider. GardaWorld can continuously connect to Fairjungle’s universal API (with Akuo’s approval, of course) and retrieve the necessary data to ensure the global safety and tracking of Akuo’s travellers, who are also tracked on our comprehensive monitoring dashboard.
The results
After just a couple hours of connection, integration, and setup, the job was done. Now, Akuo no longer has to update traveller profiles — they are pulled directly from Akuo’s HR database. End-of-month invoice-chasing has also disappeared, as they load automatically into their ERP. After moving to Fairjungle, travel stopped resurfacing as an admin hot-topic. With an estimated 80% time savings in booking and managing travel, Akuo employees can finally focus on what’s important: developing their core business.
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