Competition in the automated expense reporting space is intensifying as more than three dozen companies are now marketing solutions. The latest to join the fray include TRX (which recently added internally developed Truexpense to its travel technology portfolio), procure-to-pay suite provider Coupa (which added travel expense), human resource services provider Administaff (which acquired ExpensAble) and a bevy of new mobile-phone based apps.
A dozen or so enterprise expense reporting providers during the past decade have battled competitors--but more often spreadsheet- or paper-based expense processes--to convince corporate execs of the time- and money-saving potential of such automation. Despite periodic market consolidations, a steady stream of new entrants have helped to expand the market.
Such products as Aestiva, Certify, Expense Anywhere, Expenseflo, ExpenseManager, ExpensePoint, ExpenseWatch, ExpenseWire, Expensify, Exspend and Global Expense have been introduced, some as extensions of other business or finance suites or as standalone products, often aimed at the millions of midsize businesses. While some products are still delivered as software, most are software-as-a-service, cloud-based or, increasingly, mobile apps. Among the latest to tout mobile functionality are Concur Breeze, iXpenseIt, ProOnGoExpense and TwistSoft's ExpenseManager.
For complex departmental hierarchies, extensive multi-user approval controls and rules configurations, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of expense reports a year, large enterprises have relied upon Concur, CyberShift, Databasics, IBM Global Expense Reporting Solutions, Infor, Interplx Technologies, KDS, SpendVision or the expense add-ons offered by the likes of Ariba, Oracle/PeopleSoft and SAP. More than 10,000 companies use Concur's expense products, according to the company. Its standalone competitors each report fewer than 500 customers, and the enterprise resource providers decline to break down usage of their T&E tools. But the customer deployments clearly reveal a market with significant corporate growth potential.
The rush of vendors into this space comes as finance and other corporate executives bemoan risks, costs and lack of visibility into expenditures as they cite actions or plans to automate, according to various surveys. In a Cost of Control 2010 survey of 550 financial directors and CFOs, 72 percent said they increased automation of processes or plan more automation in the next 12 months. The IESE Business School and Indiana University Kelley School of Business conducted the telephone interviews of execs in Australia, Benelux, France, Germany, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and United States in April and May for financial soft- ware provider Basware.
When asked to what extent their companies had automated travel and entertainment payment and invoicing processing, 19 percent said they had "completely" done so, 21 percent said "mostly and 33 percent cited "partly." Within the United States, more than one-third of respondents said they had "mostly" or "completely" automated T&E payments, but 21 percent said they had done nothing and 7 percent didn't know the status of such automation.
In its most recent survey on travel and expense management published in February and based on responses from 175 companies, the Aberdeen Group found that 54 percent of respondents viewed expense management as a "mid-level strategic function that could drive moderate value to the overall organization," ac- cording to research analyst Christopher Dwyer. That study also found that 52 percent of enterprises were focused on increasing visibility of their T&E spending, 40 percent on improved compliance, 38 percent on reduced expense processing costs/time and 36 percent on managing travel budget restrictions.
[PULL_1]Similar to the Cost of Control study, Aberdeen found that 45 percent of companies had fully automated expense management, 30 percent had partially automated, 5 percent had outsourced and 20 percent processed expenses manually.
Administaff CEO Paul Sarvadi in prepared remarks said his company bought ExpensAble, which serves more than 5,000 customers in both SaaS and desktop-software models, to help its customers "looking to improve productivity and profitability."
Databasics sales director Chris Harley said the company set record sales in the first quarter of 2010. "On the macro level, the recession is ending for many businesses, and expense reporting, in particular, is an investment with a compelling ROI. The fact that cloud computing has entered the mainstream is generating a lot of interest in solutions such as ours. Many organizations are now second-generation users of automated expense reporting systems and are taking a hard look at what vendors are actually offering in terms of functionality, integration and support."