Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) is dedicated to discovering,developing, and delivering innovative medications to improve thehealth of patients around the world. A couple of years ago, thecompany's internal travel and entertainment expense (T&E)processes desperately needed an injection of efficiency. Employeeswho traveled on company business were given a corporate card.Unfortunately, the card was not widely accepted in some of theregions where the global biopharmaceutical firm had operations.

Employees who traveled where the corporate card wasn't acceptedused their personal credit card to cover T&E, then expensedtheir purchases through BMS's expense management tool. Some becameso accustomed to this process that they started using personalcards for all expenses, even with vendors that would have acceptedthe corporate card. This was problematic because it reduced theability of sourcing managers to monitor corporate travelspending.