Best practices used by leading companies to evaluate and launch a corporate card program include:
- Create a multi-function team integrated by representatives from main business units and managers of the current card program (if the company has an existing program), to provide their input during the contracting process.
- Creating a multi-function team helps promote adoption across the company and ensures appropriate requirements are developed for a fully integrated card program.
- Define goals and objectives for your corporate card program prior to initiating the evaluation process, and include input from all stakeholders when developing the Request for Proposal
- Estimate the return on investment (ROI) of your corporate cards for a specific time frame and integrate this metric to your evaluation process. In addition, analyze costs and benefits of each corporate card program, taking into account product variations from issuer to issuer.'
- Meet with potential issuers to better understand their offers and see demonstrations of the technology they use to support the card program.
- Some companies even interview other organizations that are already using corporate card programs in order to get the cardholders’ perspective on the service provided by the issuer in terms of implementation support, data and reporting, and customer service.