People throughout their lives have always tried to establish good contact with anyone they can easily communicate with. And mass media has made this desire of every individual possible.

The newspaper is one of the oldest forms of mass media and it has several advantages over the other forms of media. For one, it can be read in almost every condition. It can give you detailed information of a story much more than the others and you can keep it for now and read it later on. Some news do not easily lose their importance for a week or month, thus, it is possible to re-read the paper anytime.

After the newspaper companies gathers the news they present it to readers as soon as possible. Doing this, the educating and giving information role of newspapers are very important. With this in mind, the function of newspapers includes educating the readers, providing information, amusement and promotion and advertisement. Because of this, newspapers help develop the way of thinking of humans and motivate them to deal with what is going on around them. Likewise, newspapers give people a chance to forget their problems and rest their minds from worrying even for a few hours everyday.

Since the day the very first newspaper made its appearance there have been many changes to it – from the way it looks to the manner it presents the news. One of the most essential tasks of newspapers is its contribution to the economic and industrial development of a country through its integration of the people’s voice. There are so many ways newspapers can help people today. People who know more about current events often find it easier to talk to other people because they have more subjects to talk about.

The world of technology that is blossoming in our very eyes has made global interaction possible. Perhaps newspapers that are on actual papers are becoming objects of our past. Newspapers in the Internet are common nowadays. This makes accessing newspapers faster and easier. Nevertheless, responses to this advancement in the newspaper industry have been met differently by publishers. For instance, some have required their reporters to write stories for both print and online. They have tried to integrate the Internet in every aspect of their operation.

Although the future of the newspaper industry is cloudy because readership is slowly decreasing as a result of competition from the Internet and the television, publishers, writers and reporters for newspapers continue to gather and develop stories that people love to read. With their continued dedication to responsible journalism, newspapers will continue to be delivered to our doorstep every morning.

Despite widespread agreement that effective expense management is critical to business success, there’s still one aspect of expense management that tends to be handled badly. And it’s costing many businesses millions each year! Ironically, it’s a cost that can be drastically reduced (all but eliminated) overnight.

I’m talking about the processing costs associated with purchases. They’re called “transactional processing costs”; they’re not the cost of the purchase itself, but the cost of the transaction.

The Dollar-Value of Transactional Processing Costs

The end-to-end cost of processing high volume, low value purchases (such as travel, entertainment, contract labor hire, training, employee claims, stationery, publications, books, kitchen supplies, etc.) can be exorbitant. In fact, in many cases, it’s higher than the purchase cost itself (even with the efficiencies delivered by an ERP application). The reason for this is that the total cost-to-transact includes many associated activities such as processing, administration, and bank fees, to name just three. In a typical business, 90% of purchases are low value; they represent less than 10% of total company purchase spend. But because the cost of each transaction is normally much the same regardless of the purchase price, in reality, these low value purchases cost far more than the big purchases. Consequently, the majority of available company resources (e.g. employee time, effort, and money) may be dedicated to managing the low-value, high-volume transactions that constitute a relatively small percentage of overall company expenditure.

How to Reduce Transactional Processing Costs

An increasing number of businesses have taken steps to address this issue, and have enjoyed substantial operational savings and direct bottom-line improvements. They’ve significantly improved their operational efficiency and, in many cases, reduced their transactional processing costs by more than 90% per transaction. This represents substantial cost savings when considering the volume of transactions most companies process each year.

So how did they do it? What is the opportunity for those companies that still employ traditional methods?

Today, many businesses have found a straightforward, effective and efficient answer to this question. They employ a simple solution that combines the use of a traditional credit card with expense management software.

How does this work in practice?

The Process: Your employees use a corporate credit card to procure goods and services. The electronic transaction is sent to their individual PDA or PC (via any network or internet connection). The employee confirms the transaction and charge with the click of a button, and a fully coded transaction is then posted to your chart of accounts. You then make a single payment to the credit card provider for all purchases made using the card during the month. Everything is managed automatically in real time, including all of the controls, business rules, and management notifications that ensure purchases are approved and comply with corporate policy.

The Result: You’re able to consolidate thousands of payments into a single transaction. With the supporting systems, you can analyze expenses and implement controls on a real-time basis.

Case Study

A company processes around 50,000 payment transactions per year, of which 80% (40,000) are low-value/high-volume non strategic expenses. By implementing a ProMaster expense management system, they are able to save $56 per transaction, delivering a total cost saving of $2.24m per year (40,000 x $56.00 = $2.24m). Admittedly, this includes both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ savings, but the business case is real, and is proven to deliver results in all industry sectors including R0I within six months.

Conclusion

For years now, companies have been using credit cards as a corporate payment tool for travel and entertainment costs. The extension of the concept into general business procurement has been made possible more recently by the release of new products from card issuers and the development of sophisticated expense management software systems that provide immediacy of control. Today the concept is a key addition to corporate improvement project portfolios, covering all non-strategic low value spends and potentially far more.