EPAM Systems drives 22% faster expense reporting and reclaims 5,000 hours with WalkMe

EPAM Systems, a global leader in AI transformation engineering and integrated consulting, set out to modernize how it supported its workforce in travel and expense management. With over 20,000 employees across more than 55 countries utilizing WalkMe inside SAP Concur, the organization successfully delivers contextual guidance to keep pace with the scale and diversity of its global team.

The goal was to guide employees through onboarding, policy compliance, and country-specific requirements like cash advances and hotel invoices, all without adding to the workload of its Travel & Expense specialists.

To bring this vision to life, EPAM’s Travel & Expense team used WalkMe to improve the Concur experience through automation, error reduction, and a custom onboarding mascot named Spendy. Contextual guidance surfaces country-specific requirements at the moment of need, helping employees avoid errors that could cause downstream rework. This approach not only speeds up everyday tasks but also supports broader change management by making new processes easier to adopt and more consistent across countries – without relying on lengthy documentation or a centralized support team.

Since implementing these enhancements, the Сompany has reduced expense report completion time by 22% and reclaimed an estimated 5,000 hours of specialist time in just six months. With strong results and a clearer view into where employees need more support, the team plans to expand this data-driven approach even further in the future.

EPAM’s Travel & Expense function operated as a centralized, global team, supporting employees across offices in more than 55 countries. Each country carried its own policies, regulations, and time zone considerations, and the team wanted to move beyond a single, one-size-fits-all approach to guidance. Travel plans and expense deadlines are inherently time-sensitive, so in a fast-moving, always-on global business, the organization wanted employees everywhere to get real-time answers at the moment of need, rather than waiting on a response from a centralized team.

There was also an opportunity to take the organization’s global and country-specific policies, housed outside Concur, and deliver them directly within employees’ flow of work. Onboarding gave new hires their first introduction to travel and expense policies. But the team recognized that this knowledge could naturally fade by the time an employee’s first business trip arrived, sometimes a year or more later. Also as the Сompany’s global footprint continued to grow, EPAM wanted to help even experienced employees stay confident with processes they only used occasionally, since a missed step or an unfamiliar requirement could easily turn into a rejected report and extra rework for both the employee and the expense team.

That same diversity across countries and processes meant customization couldn’t be an afterthought; it needed to be central to their approach to digital adoption. Any guidance would need to adapt its wording, design, and logic to different scenarios and different countries, rather than asking the business to adapt to it. With this focus on flexibility in mind, the team built a structured, scalable approach to guidance that could meet employees in any country right when they needed it.

EPAM implemented WalkMe to enhance employee experiences within Concur, guiding them from the moment they log in. A persistent mascot widget is always available to guide everyone, whether they are brand new to Concur or returning after time away, walking them through setting up their profile and reviewing the company’s travel and expense policy before they get started. To build recognition, familiarity, and trust with that digital adoption, the team introduced “Spendy,” a custom mascot who shows up across every WalkMe experience, with a full range of expressions, from a warm welcome to a firmer reminder when a policy needs a second look.

Beyond onboarding, they use WalkMe to support employees through some of their most detailed processes. For example, automation helps employees submit travel requests step by step, capturing trip details and generating a cost estimate while automatically handling details like date formatting and destination lookups behind the scenes, speeding up the process and reducing the chance of errors along the way. For countries where cash advances apply, employees used to depend on the expense team to walk them through a special reporting process step by step. By using WalkMe, EPAM built guardrails directly into that process: employees are automatically notified when a cash advance is outstanding on their profile and pointed to the exact next step, so they can complete it confidently on their own instead of relying on the expense team’s help.

Contextual guidance also appears at the moments where employees are most likely to need extra support. When an employee reports car mileage, a step that many infrequent users overlook, the team uses WalkMe to remind them to log it through an external mapping tool before it becomes a rejected report. In European countries, where hotel invoices carry specific local requirements, employees see those requirements the moment they report accommodation, rather than discovering them after submission. Both examples reflect a broader shift the team made, moving from correcting issues after the fact to preventing them in the flow of work.

The team’s dedication to improving employee experience was evident throughout every step of their digital adoption approach. As Ksenia Tcimbal, Director, Travel & Expense Compliance, EPAM Systems, describes it, the underlying goal was never just to implement a new tool. “We’re not just rolling out technology,” Tcimbal reflects, “we’re building a supportive, engaging experience that people actually enjoy.”

That commitment to the employee experience is reflected in the results EPAM has seen since rolling out their digital adoption strategy. As a result of in-app guidance and automation across workflows from onboarding through cash advances and mileage submissions, employees now complete their own expense reports 22% faster, without needing to wait on a Travel & Expense specialist for help. That same shift has freed up the specialists themselves, who have reclaimed an estimated 5,000 hours over six months, now spent on higher-value work instead of routine requests. Together, the two gains add up to a meaningful improvement in operational efficiency across the entire travel and expense team.

By using WalkMe analytics, the team has also given leaders real-time visibility into adoption, informing decisions on training, policy updates, and future automation with real data behind them. That same visibility has scaled easily as EPAM has continued to grow, extending to new users and new countries without adding extra work for the team.

Compliance has benefited from that same attention to detail. Contextual guidance catches issues like missing mileage details or incomplete hotel invoices before a report is ever submitted, so fewer reimbursements get held up in review. The guidance goes beyond first-time onboarding too, helping experienced employees move faster through more advanced tasks like expense allocations.

Looking ahead, the team wants to make the experience even more personal, so outreach and support can be tailored by person and by country. It’s a natural next step for a digital adoption strategy that has always been built around treating each employee as an individual, and continuing to refine the experience as the business keeps evolving.