Infor Broadens Expense Tools

Expense reporting tool supplier Infor is expanding the availability of its tool, Infor Expense Management, as a software-as-a-service offering.

"The new offering is meant to appeal to midsize companies as well as larger companies that might have strained IT resources," said Kathy Schindler, the Alpharetta, Ga.-based Infor's product marketing manager. The tool already was available through the traditional licensed software deployed on-premises for perpetual use, through a dedicated hosting environment in which Infor hosts the software in a single-tenant environment or through subscriptions for on-demand use.

"This will give them the comfort of having a solution but letting the IT staff have some relief," Schindler said. "We're looking at customers who have 50 to 10,000 users and just need expense management. You can change policies, have security and update as much as you want, but it's not taking any type of IT resources. You sign the contract, pay a monthly fee and don't worry about anything." Using a software-as-a-service option also minimizes the initial investment, she said.

The new offering has the same four modules as the other delivery options for Infor: travel plans, expense reports, payment requests and timesheets. The modules use real-time policy notification to alert employees of any violations as they enter data, according to Infor. Modules also can provide a configurable workflow to alert reviewers and secure necessary approvals as well as such triggered events as air ticket issuance and expense report reimbursement.

Infor also is cutting costs through its hosting center structure, in which multiple customers are served through a single instance of the software rather than requiring separate hardware for each customer.