<B> Bell Unit Taps VIN.net</B>
By Deborah Mora
<I>Hurst, Texas</I> - Bell Helicopter Textron at the end of this year will begin deploying an electronic expense reporting system designed to automate compliance with federal government per diem rates.
The company, which produces aircraft for commercial and government customers, selected VIN.net of Barrington, Ill., because of its user-friendly software, as well as its service bureau offering and government per diem compliance capabilities, said accounting manager Ken Spicer. "With our international travelers, the last thing we wanted to do was give them something that wasn't easy to use," he said.
Officials began the early stages of testing the software's per diem capabilities in late July, and plan to roll the system out to about 2,000 travelers during the last quarter of this year. About 80 of these travelers are based overseas in places like Singapore, Turkey and Uruguay.
Full international deployment is slated to begin in early 1999, though less advanced telephone communications systems in third-world countries could hinder that plan, Spicer acknowledged.
With an annual U.S.-booked air volume of about $11 million and roughly 17,000 expense reports per year, Bell Helicopter Textron needed a modern, efficient system that would meet Year 2000 requirements, which its old tracking system didn't do. "We took a copy of TravelMaster and customized the living daylights out of it, but it wasn't upgradable," Spicer said. "It was a product that really didn't have a future."
The company shopped for expense management systems for nearly six months, looking at American Express, Gelco, PeopleSoft and Portable Software before settling on VIN.net. "There was no one product that provided the government per diem capability," Spicer said. "That's why VIN.net went to the top of the list."
Although Gelco did offer the ability to handle federal per diem requirements, Spicer preferred VIN.net's user interface. And some of the other prospective vendors wanted to charge extra for the capability.
Like many other companies that have ventured into the world of automated expense management systems, Bell Helicopter was motivated by the need to control travel and administrative costs. Making the move to VIN.net will save "a few hundred thousand dollars" a year and eliminate the extensive auditing Bell staffers have had to do. In fact, Spicer said the system is expected to absorb one auditor's position. However, other auditors are not in danger of losing their jobs; at the most, two auditing jobs will be cut, he said.
VIN.net's software is capable of electronically complying with several of the federal government's per diem methodologies, ranging from geographic location to company location, said VIN.net chief operation officer Pam Furey.
While there is a large market for technology that can handle government per diem requirements, applications that operate as end-to-end expense reporting management systems, as Vin.net does, are scarce, she added.
Since licensing the VIN.net software, Bell Helicopter Textron is reevaluating its travel needs.
"It has forced us to look at travel components that we've never looked at," Spicer said. As a result, the company will halt its centralized billing process at the end of this year, and instead will begin posting airline ticket charges on travelers' individual corporate cards. It also is looking into maximizing the cash flow to the corporate card.