Expense Explosion

<B> Expense Explosion</B>
<I>Vendors Add Features, Partners, Customers</I>

By Mary Ann McNulty

Intense competition in the high-stakes field of automated expense reporting is prompting a deluge of new features, customers, partnerships and related product offerings from Ariba, Concur Technologies, Extensity, Gelco Information Network and InterPro.

InterPro and Extensity both added new time entry options to their product lines. Extensity also announced the release of a new trip-planning product that can be used stand-alone for pre-trip authorizations or integrated with third-party online booking systems to offer a comprehensive travel management suite. Concur announced several new customers, including AT&T, as well as new partner relationships to support its multinational deployment. Meanwhile, Ariba unveiled its new business-to-business e-commerce Web site that maximizes efficiency for those using its Web-based purchasing workflow system.

All expense vendors are positioning themselves for global deployments and aligning partners to help with implementation. They also are investigating their options should increasing numbers of companies ask them to host their expense reporting applications, as General Motors pioneered earlier this year in its deal with Captura Software.

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InterPro Expense Systems Inc. this month released a new version of its Expense Express that includes Time Express, a fully integrated time entry product line. Designed for service- and project-oriented companies, Time Express offers the ability to record, track and manage labor hours. Users can associate expenses with certain projects or billing hours.

Another feature is an automated charge dispute capability that gives corporate and purchasing card users the ability to automatically generate credit card dispute forms that can be electronically delivered to card vendors. Other enhancements were made to the audit and approval functionality to give administrators more control in modeling complex, enterprise-wide expense and time management policies. Finally, the upgrade allows administrators to develop and automatically execute system backups, distribute policy or download currency exchange rate tables and charge card transactions.

Since acquiring InterPro last April from founder Mike Hanna, new owners Tom Sinton and venture capitalist General Atlantic Partners have greatly expanded the staff--which now numbers 44. They have focused on building the international features that InterPro's multinational clients are demanding for global rollouts, said Patrick Williams, vice president of sales and marketing for the Pleasanton, Calif.-based developer.

InterPro also has been building tighter integration with selected enterprise resource planning applications. For example, the company recently developed an interface that allows Expense Express to talk in real time to an SAP R/3 database, instead of the more usual download.

"If someone eliminated an accounting code in an expense report, it could be added in real time. That was something our customers said was important," Williams said. In building the interface, the company said it has reduced the implementation time for integrating its software with SAP R/3 by 90 percent. InterPro is evaluating other ERP systems to determine how it will integrate with them, he added.

Since acquiring the company, Williams said, its customer base has grown more than three-fold, to more than 20 enterprise-wide deployments with over 120,000 users. Among the newest customers are Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis, which is deploying the system to more than 9,000 U.S. and European-based employees; Johnson Controls in Milwaukee; and Harbinger Corp. of Atlanta, expected to deploy in less than 60 days.

Emphasizing its consultative approach to implementation, Williams said InterPro's team has "figured out ways to do complex implementations, including one with four different e-mail systems, 27 different policies and 18 different accounting systems. We're pretty excited about the capabilities of our client services."

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Gelco Information Network next month will launch Web-based reporting, allowing corporations to distribute management reports much more efficiently and cost effectively. The new model also allows clients to merge any data they desire, so they can in effect use the payment outsourcer as their data warehouse.

In its most basic form, ExpenseLink Analysis Service will allow corporate customers to access all data from the Web, instead of relying on a central manager to secure reports and distribute them throughout an organization. Now, "anyone can access" the information they need, thus saving the corporation time and money, said Chuck Buckner, senior vice president and general manager of Gelco's Expense Network, Eden Prairie, Minn.

But, Gelco executives designed the database to offer much more than self-service Web reporting. Spending more than nine months designing the database and selecting the Viador software on which it is built, Gelco executives were determined to build a relational OLAP to allow customers to bring in any data they want to compare and contrast with expense data, said Jeff Cronin, product manager.

Customers can easily bring in phone calling card, agency, CRS or preferred vendor data, Buckner said. They also will be able to bring in budget data from their own general ledger system for comparison, or fleet management.

But even in its basic form, Buckner noted that the value of the product goes beyond clients. Corporations could allow their account managers at preferred travel vendors access to certain aspects of the reporting, so they could analyze the data and suggest ways to improve their relationship or performance.

ExpenseLink Analysis Service will cost most clients a couple hundred dollars more a month than the standard client-server reporting, Buckner said. Those using the service for data warehousing will pay to bring in extra feeds. Long term, Gelco is hoping to phase out its client service reporting, replacing it with EAS.

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Extensity Inc., based in Emeryville, Calif., added a new trip-planning module that offers pre-trip approval as a stand-alone product, or an end-to-end travel management offering when integrated with an online booking system. Extensity has partnerships with Internet Travel Network and Xtra On-Line, the latter having aligned with Rosenbluth International to distribute its system. But it also plans to "get coverage with all the major online booking systems," said Elizabeth Ireland, vice president of sales and marketing.

Companies can integrate Extensity Travel Plan with their e-mail systems for routing to internal approvers and the travel agency, or with an online booking solution, Ireland said. Extensity and ITN have been working on linking their applications since last year, but Ireland said the release isn't expected until the second half of 1999. The list price for the module is $50 per seat, while the Extensity Expense Reports module lists for $175 per seat.

A venture-capital-financed software startup, Extensity has been researching the market and building its Web-based product for several years before launching last year. Now in its third version, Extensity has signed 30 corporate customers, including Best Foods, Baltimore Gas & Electric and Franklin Templeton.

Next month, Bob Spinner will take over as CEO of Extensity, with founder Sharam Sasson remaining on as chairman of the board of the 100-employee company. The move is fairly typical for venture capital-backed software developers preparing for an initial public stock offering or an acquisition. Spinner comes to Extensity from Clarify.

Positioning itself as a vendor of operational cost management applications, Extensity is preaching to chief financial officers that every dollar they can save in sales and administrative costs represents at least a $10 boost in the market value of their companies, a concept detailed in a 1996 case study in CFO magazine.

One of Extensity's distinguishing marketing tactics is a 90-day implementation guarantee--though Ireland said its "smaller customers are coming well under that." But the larger ones, opting to integrate expense reporting with multiple applications and accounting systems, often are opting to implement at a slower pace.

"We see more companies deploying on the browser than anything else," she said.

Travelers are using the software either via the browser or in a disconnected mode. Unlike some of its competitors, Extensity has used the same client code to build the product travelers will use when disconnected, so the versions are identical.

Like all its competitors, Extensity is hot to trot the product across the pond and has signed a partnership with a company called QSP, based in Leatherhead, outside London, to sell, implement and service its products in Europe and Australia.

Extensity expects to sign other such partnerships to deploy the system elsewhere around the globe.

One client actually has opted to deploy the system in Europe first before replacing its existing home-built expense reporting product in the United States.

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Concur Technologies continues to ring up business among Global 500 companies, signing AT&T earlier this month, and has begun to garner some new middle-market clients as a result of its acquisition of ADP last year.

AT&T plans to deploy the intranet-based Xpense Management Solution to more than 60,000 employees, replacing an existing, in-house system.

"As we were exploring our options in automated expense reporting, our top priority was finding an easy-to-use, Web-based solution with proven success in large corporations," said Lisa Bowling, AT&T group procurement manager for travel and event services. "We were also looking for a system that could handle both T&E and procurement card expenses."

Bowling also credited Concur's "impressive customer list, which included several large, blue-chip corporations," with helping to sway AT&T's decision. AT&T sister company Lucent Technologies also is among its clientele, as are American Airlines, DuPont, Harvard University, J.C. Penney, Northrop Grumman, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Seagram, Texaco and Texas Instruments.

Helping with the implementation of new customers--including AT&T, Lucent Technologies, New Dimension Software, Siemens Microelectronics Inc. and Quantum Corp.--is a new implementation partner, Cambridge Technology Partners. Earlier this month, Concur announced that Cambridge, an international management consulting and systems integration firm that is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange, joined its Global Alliance Network to help customers implement its products. Cambridge distinguishes itself among system integrators by offering a "fixed time/fixed price, guaranteed deployment methodology," executives said.

While Concur sales reps continue to focus on the large market, ADP is bringing in middle-market customers, like Brite Voice Systems, a telecommunication systems provider based outside Orlando.

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Ariba Technologies Inc. unveiled its new business-to-business commerce Web site that can connect users of its non-production goods and services purchasing application with supplier networks worldwide.

The extranet was developed over the past 10 months after customers and suppliers told Ariba that it needed to expand its Operating Resource Management System, which is designed to streamline the acquisition and management of the goods and services needed to run a business. An automated expense reporting module is offered as part of the core ORMS. The company unveiled the new Ariba.com Network earlier this month.

In addition, Ariba announced that Hewlett-Packard and Philips have become its newest customers, joining Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chevron, Cisco Systems, Federal Express, Merck, Visa and several other companies that spend more than $67 billion on operating resource purchases annually. Needless to say, the enormous buying power is attracting the attention of suppliers that are interested in distributing their products via the standards-based Internet service.

Hewlett-Packard has had a strategic partner relationship with Ariba and now is working with the company on the new Ariba.com Network.

Almost 40 content aggregators--including office supply, furniture, computer and other high-tech equipment--are offering their products through the catalog. However, Ariba customers can easily link their intranets to other approved supplier Web sites, sourcing goods and services through Ariba.com Network.