Buyer Boosts Efficiency By Automating Payment System

<B> Buyer Boosts Efficiency By Automating Payment System</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

<I>San Diego</I> - Automating its payment system application process, Science Applications International Corp. not only has eased the paper deluge, but reduced the staff required to process it and significantly increased the accuracy and efficiency of this cumbersome process for employees, managers and its vendor, U.S. Bank Corporate Payment Systems.

A high-technology research and engineering company based in San Diego, Calif., SAIC has been using its homegrown online application solution for about a year, but is just one of four U.S. Bank corporate accounts that have automated the card sign-up process.

As it went out to bid for a new corporate card in late 1997, SAIC sought online applications. It found no vendors offering such programs, nor any companies that developed programs of their own, said Joe Preimesberger, vice president/director of corporate travel.

<B>Custom Solution</B>

After SAIC awarded the 12,000-card business to U.S. Bank in late 1997, internal programmers and the bank began working on a custom solution. The partners developed a cardholder application form that is posted on the SAIC travel intranet and linked to the company's human resources database to prepopulate the applicant's home address, group, division number, sector and approving managers. An employee will log on to the system using his or her employee name and password, complete the form and route it to the corporate card administrator.

Using the HR organizational charts, the form is automatically routed to appropriate managers for approval. With all the pre-filled information, the applicant really just needs to click two buttons to complete an application now, Preimesberger said.

The process isn't entirely paperless, due to SAIC's contract with U.S. Bank. Although the cards are individual liability, the company has an incentive program to help the bank reduce bad debt by withholding past-due charges from paychecks. Employees must therefore print the application, which clearly spells out all obligations, sign it and forward the paper.

Emergency applications also continue to be faxed, Preimesberger said. However, if the timing is right, the electronic transmissions can go through the system in just a day, he added. The company has reduced the number of paper applications from 240 per month to just 20.

Once approved, the card administrator transmits all applications to the bank weekly. The bank, in turn, updates all cardholder files and sends SAIC the revised files. In addition to new cardholders, SAIC also weekly transmits termination notices, departmental and cost center changes to the bank to keep the records as up-to-date as possible.

With just four corporate customers employing some type of online application solution, U.S. Bank hasn't been able to calculate savings. "We've observed that it takes considerably less time, and offers a dramatically reduced cycle time, because we're dealing with an electronic file, instead of piles of paper. Accuracy is a lot higher too, since human beings don't have to interpret handwriting and key it into a system," said Dick Schirber, vice president of marketing and communications.

Like many organizations, SAIC uses a variety of financial, accounting and e-mail systems and had to devise solutions to work across all applications and platforms. The common denominator that works for SAIC is the intranet and a Lotus Notes database that allows the card administrator to track the status of all applications. Within the company, the homegrown solution has won favor with employees and some other managers who are using the templates to communicate their information.