<B> Captura Markets 'Hope'</B>
By Mary Ann McNulty
<I>Bothell, Wash.</I> - Ramping up efforts to garner the business of the global 2000, Captura Software has opened a European headquarters in London, begun global deployment of its software for lead customer Merrill Lynch, signed a marketing alliance with Citicorp Diners Club, brought on a new COO and decided its e-commerce strategy after months of evaluation.
It's been a busy year at Captura, as the company completed its new Web-based version, which is slated for release next month. "We have become fully compliant with the euro and all VAT requirements," said Dana Bruttig, the company's president and CEO.
The new release of Employee Payables, dubbed "Hope," allows corporations to use the product on either an Internet/intranet or Windows 3.11 basis, or a combination of the two. Built into the solution are more than 200 best practice business rules.
"One of the things we spent the last nine months doing was deciding that long-term, we need to have as many front ends as possible," Bruttig said.
Today, the majority of corporate America isn't equipped to run browser-based expense software, though many are quickly adapting this. Consequently, deployments today require software to run on multiple platforms.
"The ActiveX version offers a cool user interface that today 10 percent of corporate America can put on its desktop," said Bruttig.
Later this month, Captura plans to debut a version of its software that runs on a Palm Pilot, followed by one accessible through Windows CE personal digital assistants.
Also part of the new Hope version is the ability to localize the software to adopt to tax laws and reporting requirements of virtually any country. The software is designed to adapt to multiple currencies, languages, multinational locations and multi-national government regulations. An optional federal per diem module identifies and calculates allowable travel and entertainment expenses according to federal rules and regulations.
Merrill Lynch, which is rolling out the software in its London offices now, is the first customer to deploy the current version of Employee Payables internationally. The company has 56,700 employees worldwide.
The firm has been using Captura's Employee Payables system since 1996, and credits the system with saving it $4 million last year, $2 million of which came from billing back expenses to clients within the 90-day period in which all expenses relating to a deal must be submitted.
Captura's European office, which opened July 1, is headed by Katarina Bonde, executive vice president of Captura and managing director of Captura International Ltd. Craig Gordon, sales manager, and Raj Sandhu, consulting manager, join the London office from Hogg-Robinson/BTI in the United Kingdom, where they built a consulting unit by packaging service offerings for T&E process analysis and reengineering for corporate customers.
Dan Vetras joined the company as chief operating officer this summer. He formerly served as vice president of sales at IntraNetics, and brings with him 17 years of experience in technology sales and channel development posts at IBM and Lotus Development Corp.
Captura also has signed a new marketing alliance with Citicorp Diners Club under which the two companies will refer customers to one another and bid on business together. Diners previously signed an alliance with Portable, now Concur Technologies, and also just signed a new marketing pact with Vin.net, a T&E service bureau provider.
"The automated expense reporting marketplace is active and ever changing -- just like the needs of our customers," said Brenda Gaines, executive vice president of Diners Club. "We are pleased to confidently recommend these fine travel management process partners whose products and services provide valid alternatives," she said of Captura and Vin.net.
"Our customer base has trebled and we're sitting on an $8 million pipeline," Bruttig said. "T&E really is an application that works."
After months of analyzing procurement strategy--including the possibility of purchasing an electronic commerce software company--Captura decided to develop what it's calling a "purchasing card buying interface" to capture data from any vendor customers choose.
In the end, company executives determined that it's the data that corporate customers really want. By partnering with others developing the software, Captura can ensure that it captures the data customers need not only in the travel arena, but also in corporate procurement, fleet and other purchasing areas.
Captura also defined a strategy to pursue the middle market by offering a service bureau environment for NetExpense by the fourth quarter and developing the interface to Great Plains, an accounting software used by this market. The other prong in its plan to go after the mid-market is through licensing NetExpense, the software Workflow Solutions developed.
Since its purchase of Workflow Solutions in March, Captura has evaluated whether it makes sense to merge the two expense applications or continue to enhance both. Executives decided that they really serve different markets and they will enhance both products, Bruttig said.
"Workflow created a very nicely contained product that allows you to configure policy and that's fine for 1,500 to 2,000 users. It's a configurable solution versus a customizable one," Bruttig said, referring to Employee Payables.