Featured A/OPC

In Focus: At Work with APC Pam Enlow

Pam Enlow manages a travel card program that has expanded and become more complex every year. There are always new laws, rules and regulations to keep up with, new technology and tools to master, and new customers to serve. Responsible for over 14,000 cardholders, her group of six manages the Bureau of the Public Debt’s travel charge card program, as well as being a shared service provider for over 30 agencies.

We asked Pam a few questions about best practices, her favorite tools for daily tasks, and what she likes most about being an APC—to that, she answered, "Every day is different, things are always changing. And I really enjoy helping people; at the end of the day, it’s rewarding to know that good customer service has been provided."

Being a shared service provider, you have super-user status. What are the advantages of that?

I have single sign-on access to our customers’ information in the CitiDirect system. It saves a lot of time and helps us provide more timely service to our customers. We didn’t have this functionality until SmartPay 2; before that, we had to maintain multiple log-in IDs and passwords.

As a super user, I can make maintenance changes on individual accounts without logging in and out of each customer database. I simply return to a drop down list and select the next customer. In CCRS, the reporting system, I can run reports at multiple organizational levels. For example, I can pull cardholder information, expiration dates and credit limits in one report, as opposed to going into individual customer databases to get that information.

Which tools do you use most for daily tasks?

We use CCRS every day for all of our reports, including ad-hoc reports, or specific reports requested by a particular agency. We also use the electronic reporting system to securely transmit sensitive data back and forth. It’s a really important feature for us.

We also run reports in the CitiDirect system and compare it to the charge card data in our e-travel and accounting systems. Sometimes cardholders will lose a card and forget to tell us when they get a new card number, so it won’t match the number in the system. We have to be careful that payments are not sent to the wrong card account. So we do a monthly comparison of all the systems to make sure the data is correct, with the reports from the CitiDirect system providing a check against the data in our systems. Technology has come a long, long way, just in the time I’ve been with the program, which is over five years.

How helpful is it having a dedicated CAS manager?

One of our most important resources is the relationship we have with our CAS managers Ken Fudge and Kellee Glover. They know what we need and they understand our business—it’s really a partnership.

Did you have a smooth transition to SmartPay 2?

Yes, partly because we were already so familiar with so many of the tools, and also because we’d done a pilot program with one of our smaller customers. We wanted to make sure the processes we had identified with Citi and our e-travel and accounting system folks were going to work. Ken and Kellee had input into that too. They shared insights and helped guide us through many of the needs we would have that we didn’t anticipate at the time we were putting the plan together.

Did you use the new Card Deployment Dashboard during the transition?

Yes, we did. No matter how much communication you send to your cardholders, some people will miss the message. Even though we told people exactly what to look for and what the envelope would look like, some still thought it was junk mail when they got it, and threw their cards away.

With the Dashboard, we were able to see every card that was issued, and who had activated their card. If they hadn’t activated their card because they hadn’t received it, we immediately worked with Citi to get a new card in place. A new card meant a new number and expiration date, so we had to make sure our systems had that updated, correct account information.

Citi is currently making some additional enhancements to the Dashboard, and I think we will be able to utilize it even more fully than we did initially, because of its ability to display data in graphs and charts. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

How can best practices contribute to a program’s success?

I think good communication is one of the best practices you can have, from a cardholder on up to the top position within an agency. My boss will come by and ask, ‘How’s it going today? Are we having any issues?’ and she’ll convey our feedback at staff meetings. Our agency cares about the functionality we perform and they communicate that to us. Because of that, we know they’re committed to the success of our programs, whether purchase, travel or fleet.