Rio Tinto is to deploy the Spendvision transaction management system worldwide to manage staff expenses and reduce costs.

The hosted platform will enable more than 20,000 employees of the mining group to record, track and manage corporate expenses. The platform will be rolled out across more than ten business units in the APAC, US, Canada and EMEA regions over a 12 month period.

The Spendvision software-as-a-service ( SaaS) system gives Rio Tinto a pay-as-you-use solution that provides both greater flexibility in use of the application and reduces the costs and issues associated with software development and maintenance.

“When we started researching a new expense management system we knew we needed a centralised solution with the flexibility to deliver benefits to our staff, our business units and our corporate head office,” said Scott Singer, global head of procurement at Rio Tinto. 

He said, “Disparate systems, labour-intensive processes and limited visibility of consolidated spend were having an impact at the local and global levels. The Spendvision solution will not only deliver enhanced reporting to suit the requirements of central management and our business units; we will now be able to analyse global data to identify ways to optimise spend and reduce costs.”