Basilea Pharmaceutica develops innovative medicines to treat difficult-to-treat infections—a business that thrives on international collaboration, including scientific congresses, clinical trial centres, and partner meetings worldwide. While this global focus drives research forward, it quickly became a burden for travel expense management. Basilea needed a solution that does more than just offer sleek booking: it had to unite the entire journey, from reservation to posted payment, into a single, controlled workflow—all without locking the company into a closed ecosystem.

Initial Situation: High Complexity, Multiple Media Disconnects

Business travel at Basilea is complex: multiple countries, multiple airlines, and diverse receipt types—flights, hotels, taxis, and out-of-pocket expenses on the road. Previously, bookings, corporate card billing, and expense logging operated largely in silos. Employees on business trips had to collect physical receipts, manually reconcile them with credit card statements, and often wait for card clearing before filing an expense report. For the finance department, this resulted in numerous loose receipts, minimal context, and considerable manual effort to allocate lodge card transactions to specific trips and cost centres.

Around 150 employees regularly book business trips at Basilea. With roughly 60 trips per month across diverse international destinations, receipts, card transactions, and follow-up queries quickly mounted. Before implementing Edi, the finance team estimated that manually allocating lodge card transactions to trips and cost centres took 3 days per month.

Basilea wanted to bridge this disconnect without locking itself into a rigid ecosystem that requires booking, cards, and expense accounting from a single source. The company sought a solution that allows best-of-breed partners for booking and payment to be freely combined, while automatically consolidating all data and granting the finance team total control over downstream processes.

The Solution: Edi as a Central Platform across the Entire Travel Process

Basilea selected Edi as the central hub across the entire travel process:

• Seamless data foundation: Employee master data syncs automatically from Personio via REST API.
• Free choice of partners: Travel requests begin directly in Edi, bookings are made via bta first travel as TMC and Atriis as the online booking engine, and payments are settled using Cornèrcard corporate and lodge cards.
• Future-proof setup: Instead of several disconnected systems, a single, harmonised workflow is established. Basilea retains the freedom to connect further TMCs or booking platforms for other countries or future requirements without surrendering process ownership.

At the heart of the system is Edi Trip: each trip is created automatically, with all associated receipts, card transactions, and invoices mapped directly to it—eliminating manual uploads. A flight can be accounted for immediately after booking, while expenses incurred on the move—such as taxis or meals—can follow later in a separate submission linked to the same journey. Employees no longer need to wait for card clearing. Invoices and card transactions match automatically, booking fees are captured via internal receipts, and travel documents like tickets, itineraries, or visas sit directly within the trip record—including documents with longer validity periods, such as an ESTA, which remain visible across multiple journeys. Guest bookings are handled with equal ease.

Once checked against the corporate policy rules configured in Edi and approved through the workflow, all data automatically posts to SAP FI/CO and is settled via accounts payable—including account assignment, cost splitting, and VAT posting.

"Reconciling our lodge card transactions with travel bookings used to be purely manual work. Today, Edi matches them automatically and delivers fully assigned, verified data ready for posting in SAP. That noticeably cuts down processing time in accounts payable every month."

Luca Berton, Finance & Accounting, Basilea Pharmaceutica

Remaining Flexible, Even Internationally

One factor was decisive for Basilea when selecting a solution: Edi does not force companies into a walled garden, unlike many pure booking tools. Booking platforms, card partners, and TMCs can be selected freely—yet Edi consolidates the data seamlessly into a single process.

This flexibility pays off beyond Switzerland. For additional regions, such as Asia, Basilea can connect local booking engines or regional travel agencies that cater more effectively to local customs and requirements—without redesigning the workflow or creating fresh data silos. Every trip, regardless of the booking partner, ultimately lands in the exact same structured workflow, from pre-trip approval to final ledger posting.

"Edi offers precisely the flexibility you want and the benefits you look for in a digital solution. We book—and Edi handles the rest."

Lukas Bossard, Finance & Travel Management, Basilea Pharmaceutica

Results: Full Transparency and Dedicated Service Quality

For Basilea, this marks the crucial difference compared to single-purpose booking platforms. Many tools handle reservations smoothly, but reach their limits in downstream workflows—receipt capture, card reconciliation, and general ledger posting. With Edi, both sides are fully aligned.

Automating the match between lodge card transactions and travel bookings has reduced manual reconciliation to a minimum. This returns an estimated 3 days per month to the finance department—time previously spent tracking down and assigning receipts.

Waiting for card clearing is also eliminated: expense submissions can be split and submitted before and after a trip, rather than waiting weeks or months for statements to clear.

Furthermore, Basilea does not have to compromise on its trusted partners: HR Campus as the provider of Edi, bta first travel as the TMC, and Cornèrcard as the card issuer jointly deliver the high-touch Swiss service quality Basilea values—paired with an end-to-end automated, transparent workflow free from vendor lock-in.

Details

Company: Basilea Pharmaceutica AG

Industry: Pharma / Life Sciences

Platform: Edi (HR Campus)

Partners & Integrations: bta first travel (TMC), Atriis (OBE), Cornèrcard (corporate and lodge cards), Personio (HR master data API), SAP FI/CO

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