Prove Your AppZen ROI with EyeCare Partners

Most T&E programs struggle to prove their value to leadership — not because the results aren't there, but because the data is never surfaced in a way executives actually use. EyeCare Partners built a reporting framework that changed that, and the numbers speak for themselves: their CFO no longer schedules monthly T&E meetings because the reports already answer every question he would have asked.

Mattie Yallaly is the Corporate Travel & Expense Manager at EyeCare Partners, a multi-billion dollar healthcare company operating across 19 states and three distinct business units. When she joined in early 2023, there was no T&E program at all — no policy, no corporate card, no audit infrastructure. She built it from scratch and launched a full program within months. By mid-2024, AppZen Expense Audit was live. This webinar is the story of what happened after.

The focus isn't just on catching violations — it's on using AppZen's AI analytics to build the kind of data-driven reporting that earns credibility with leadership, drives behavioral change over time, and makes the T&E function indispensable. The results show what consistent, well-structured reporting can do in under two years.

Why reporting to leadership matters more than the data itself

The core insight Mattie shares is simple but often overlooked: leaders don't know what they don't know. It's the T&E team's job to surface what's hidden. That means giving executives visibility into budgets, forecasting, trending, and the unexpected — presented in a way that earns their trust rather than overwhelming them with detail.

"Our leaders look to us to provide what is hidden from them," Mattie explains. By supplying them with clean, consistent data, the T&E function establishes credibility. That credibility compounds: once leadership trusts the data, they look to the team proactively. When the report is late, they notice. When the numbers shift, they ask questions. That level of engagement is the goal.

Reporting also creates purpose for the team itself. When asked "what do you do, anyway?" — a question Mattie has heard more than once — the answer is no longer abstract. The data tells the story.

The four-step framework for reports leadership actually reads

1. Know your audience

EyeCare Partners has three business units — patient care, corporate operations, and supply chain — each with different priorities and different questions. A single report doesn't serve all three. Start by understanding what each leader is accountable for, and what they're already asking about.

2. Pick a lens

AppZen's AI analytics surface a large volume of data. Presenting all of it isn't useful — it obscures the story. Drill down to a few high-impact areas that match what leadership already cares about. When the first report lands cleanly, they ask for more.

3. Stay simple

Executives want data clusters and bullet points, not paragraphs. Mattie pulls spend snapshots directly from AppZen's dashboards — the numbers are already calculated — and drops them into PowerPoint as screen captures. No manual calculations. No rebuilding tables. The data tells the story without additional construction.

4. Stay consistent

Put the same information in the same place on every report. When leaders can navigate the deck from memory, it becomes part of their routine. EyeCare Partners' leadership now saves previous months' reports and compares them month over month — because the format makes it easy to spot change.

One refinement: occasionally add a new slide and call it out in the email body. Consistent format builds routine; the occasional addition keeps leaders engaged. If the numbers are stable — which isn't necessarily bad — this gives them a reason to read past slide one.

How AppZen AI analytics power the reporting

Mattie pulls spend data from AppZen's T&E Spend and audit model dashboards, sets date parameters, and captures the visuals directly. When numbers shift between reports, leadership notices — and the conversation starts automatically. Sometimes it's a filter error. Sometimes it's a major conference. Sometimes it's an employee submitting expenses under the wrong category and the approving manager wasn't catching it either. Either way, the question gets asked and the issue gets found.

AppZen's Ask a Question feature extends this further, letting users query their expense data in plain language — "What is my highest expense type?" or "Show unauthorized spend by employee" — and returning instant visualizations with drill-down options. It gives compliance and finance teams actionable visibility into policy violations, employee trends, and high-risk patterns without navigating dashboard menus. Learn more about spend visibility with AppZen.

The year-over-year win: from 133 to 32

Missing receipt declarations were one of EyeCare Partners' most persistent compliance issues. Employees would submit expenses without documentation and file a declaration in place of the receipt — a pattern that's common, low-urgency in the moment, and difficult to change without data.

By surfacing this metric in every monthly report — not as an enforcement measure, but as a visible trend — and using the data to educate submitters over time, the numbers moved:

A 76% reduction — not through policy enforcement, but through consistent, data-driven communication. "Good, strong, steady impacts rarely happen overnight," Mattie notes. "By telling the story repeatedly every month, I am setting up our team for success." See how AppZen supports broader compliance programs.

Healthcare-specific configuration: ledger codes and compliance models

EyeCare Partners' three business units operate under different audit standards. The challenge was identifying which standard applies to each employee without running a separate HR lookup for every submission. The solution came from an unexpected direction: a ledger code embedded in Concur's employee administration fields, which AppZen reads automatically to apply the correct audit standard — no manual lookup required.

"Concur couldn't help us with this at all," Mattie says. "AppZen reverse-engineered it on their own and was able to grab that data. It's made our lives so much easier."

As a privately secured healthcare company operating under governmental guidelines, EyeCare Partners also uses AppZen's anti-bribery/corruption and government officials compliance models. These models may flag only one or two expenses per year. When they do, the documentation is already in place and routes directly to the legal team.

What you'll see in this webinar

Who should watch this webinar

Key takeaways

Continue learning