Gelco Expense Management is partnering to integrate data from technology company TRX's ResX online booking tool, which would be available to clients later this year. Both companies are pursuing alliance strategies, as TRX seeks further expense management integration and Gelco works to build alliances to enhance the touchless expense and payment capabilities.
This alliance will give expense managers who use the Gelco and ResX tools a method of bringing disparate data sources together for better efficiency, according to Ann Altepeter, vice president of solutions and alliances for the Minneapolis-based Gelco. Gelco has opted for an alliance strategy to pursue that goal, rather than follow chief competitor Concur Technologies, which acquired online booking tool Cliqbook to create a consolidated booking and expense tool
(BTN, Feb. 6, 2006)."We recognize there is undoubtedly value to travel data," Altepeter said. "To attack that concept ourselves would be quite a large undertaking, especially when there are best-of-breed companies already in the market doing so."
The partnership with TRX was a particularly good fit because quite a few Gelco customers already are working with the company, Altepeter added.
Shane Hammond, president of Atlanta-based TRX's ResX Technologies division, said the alliance is designed to ease the process for both the traveler and the expense manager. The traveler benefits from the prepopulation of the expense report after booking, and the expense manager can push better compliance and accuracy by having the ability to quickly compare booked and actual spend, he said.
"Between what happened when you booked to when you travel, there's a delta," Hammond said. "The end goal is to be able to reconcile that delta completely."
Because ResX can capture the data at the travel agent level as well as the online booking tool level, and because Gelco already has established links on the corporate card level, the integration allows travel managers to consolidate data from four sources into a single spot when analyzing data, said Altepeter. A company that wants to analyze spend data for negotiations with a specific airline, for example, would be able to see booking, agency, card and expense reporting data for that airline with little effort, she said.
The companies said the integrated capabilities will be fully available by the fourth quarter of this year. There will be a controlled rollout with some initial beta testing, but that has not yet begun, Altepeter said.
TRX also is in discussion with two other expense reporting providers for integration capabilities, Hammond said, and the announcement for those agreements should be coming in the next three to five weeks.
Gelco, meanwhile, is continuing to seek such alliance opportunities as part of a broader strategy announced earlier this month, Altepeter said. The company already has alliances for card integration capabilities with such payment companies as MasterCard and Visa and card issues, such as JPMorgan Chase and GE Money, and with Meridian International for value-added tax reclamation
(BTN, Feb. 5). Gelco also seeks alliances to assist large, multinational organizations that utilize business process outsourcing and are looking for ways to standardize processes around the globe.
"We're doing it to make sure we can bring forth insight and further drive the touchless experience," said Altepeter. "In the past, the touchless experience has been about the user, but the concept should expand to the whole expense management process and help better manage businesses."