Expense Vendors Begin To Provide Wireless Offerings

<B>Expense Vendors Begin To Provide Wireless Offerings</B>

By Lynn Woods

While many corporate travel managers are lukewarm about expense reporting systems that are accessible through wireless mobile devices, vendors are beginning to offer Wireless Application Protocol expense reporting in the marketplace, with at least two products available to customers this fall. Captura Software, based in Bothell, Wash., and Emeryville, Calif.-based Extensity each have partnered with AT&T Wireless Services to launch WAP versions of their expense management products through AT&T's Digital PocketNet Service, which provides wireless Internet phone service to business customers.

Captura's early adopter program of Captura Expense Wireless already has gone live with four customers, including Ericsson, which is also a major partner. Three other companies are expected on board by the end of the year, said Ryan Buma, Captura vice president of product marketing. Captura also has tested its product with Sprint and Verizon in the United States and BT Cellnet and Vodafone in Europe.

"Expense management is the most obvious solution for wireless applications," said Buma. Early adopters don't pay a fee for the wireless product, although eventually Captura plans to charge for the service. Along with the phone-based application, Capture has developed a wireless PDA solution for the Palm platform (versions V, Vx, VII and VIIx).

The new product is a wireless update to Captura's current expense reporting product for Palm, which uses HotSynch technology instead of the Web as a link. The vendor also is planning to introduce a product supporting Blackberry devices, popular in the distribution and financial services sectors.

Captura's wireless phone product is not limited to AT&T Wireless devices. According to Buma, Captura Expense Wireless supports any wireless phone that has the UP.Browser 3.1 (or higher version) installed. It supports any wireless carrier that uses the UP.Link server of Phone.com, a provider of software allowing delivery of Internet-based services to wireless telephones, or Ericsson enterprise server solutions.

Users log on to Captura's Expense Wireless after clicking on the bookmarked URL. They can input out-of-pocket expenses, check the status of a submitted report, and view, approve or reject submitted reports. To input an expense, users first choose a category out of a drop-down box, then put in the necessary information, such as the date, amount of mileage or dollars spent, and business purpose.

The system automatically defaults to U.S. dollars, though users can select multiple currencies under one option. The system automatically prepopulates the report with the expense, so when travelers call up the report on their laptops or desktops, it is already listed, along with the credit card charges.

Managers seeking to approve a report have the option to view details, view exceptions and reject or approve the report on their wireless phones. Obviously, if they have questions, they can simply dial the employee's number using the phone and get answers right away.

The Palm version of Captura Expense Wireless, which will be beta tested in January, offers an added enhancement--the ability to view and submit a completed expense report on the PDA.

In addition to AT&T Wireless, Extensity has partnered with Bearcom, a distributor of Nextel phones and Motorola communications, for delivery of Extensity Connect Mobile Edition. The wireless expense reporting service also will be available through Bearcom's Cellhire, which provides international corporate travelers rentals of cell phones compatible with GSM, the wireless network standard used in Europe.

Extensity also is conducting discussions with Nokia as a possible provider of a WAP server, a requirement for data access in Europe. It will begin the U.S. beta test of Extensity Connect Mobile Edition, which also includes an e-procurement product, time sheets and travel planning, in mid-October.

Extensity Connect Mobile Edition will work on any wireless phone with a browser using the markup language WML, according to director of mobile technology Nathan Gold. In the first phase of the product rollout, scheduled for mid-November, managers will be able to approve submitted expense reports or time sheets using their wireless devices. Employees will be able to check the status of the submitted document(s). Users also will begin to have access to weather reports, flight information and a guide to restaurants and other destinations through content provided by Ontheroad.com, GetThere and the Weather channel. Extensity has signed up a fourth content provider, Sabre BTS; for an extra fee, corporate users of GetThere or BTS would be able to book their air, hotel and car rentals online using a wireless device.

Gold said a standard feature of the travel planning feature of Mobile Edition is the generation of a travel itinerary and pretrip authorization. After the travel plan has been approved, an e-mail automatically could be generated to the corporate travel agent, who then could make the booking.

The ability to submit expenses using Mobile Edition will be introduced in the first quarter of 2001, he added. The cost of Mobile Edition to corporations will be a 25 percent additional fee per seat.

Fifteen companies have expressed interest in participating in the beta program so far, according to Gold. "It's almost at the point that they're saying, 'we'll pay you,' " he said. Demand from such large consulting firms as A.T. Kearney, where quick approval of time sheets is essential, is particularly strong, he added.

Indeed, Timothy Tow, a consultant at the GartnerGroup, an Internet research firm based in Connecticut, noted that "mobile reporting on expenses is critical to organizations heavily involved in project type or services work whose employees travel frequently." He added, "There is a time-sensitive component to collecting expense data for rebilling back to a client. WAP's greatest benefit is its ability for employees to do ad-hoc collection and to maximize their billable time so they can collect this time immediately rather than waiting till the end of the week or when they can reach a tethered desktop."

The approval component of Extensity Connect Mobile Edition will enable managers to view and approve or reject a report or timesheet submitted by an employee. They also will be able to drill down to line-item detail and call the employee if there are questions. In addition, Extensity can generate an e-mail alert to people's pagers or digital phones when a report has been submitted.

Gold said the amount of data needed to be inputted would be kept to a minimum. For example, to record eight hours spent on a project, a user of the time sheet product would have to click six times.

Meanwhile, Toronto-based Necho Systems plans to launch a WAP expense reporting product in January. Unisys Corp., based in Norcross, Ga., is developing an expense tracking and reporting product for the Palm device, also due to be released next year.

While Concur Technologies, based in Redmond, Wash., has no development plans at the moment for a WAP product, vice president of business development Fred Ingham, said, "It's actively on our radar screen." Creating a wireless interface to existing Web applications does not require a huge dollar investment, hence "Concur is confident that when the time comes, we can deliver WAP in short order," Ingham said. A Palm version also is planned.

While noone doubts the benefits of inputting out-of-pocket expenses as they are incurred, checking the status of a submitted report through a Palm or Web-enabled phone during down times on a trip, and on-the-road approval of reports by managers, the newness of the technology is giving many corporate travel managers pause. The technology "isn't there yet," said Jeff Lamm, travel manager at Georgia-Pacific. "Our adage is, we don't want to be first. Once it's proven to be a stable reliable product, we'd consider it."

Indeed, Melissa Abernathy, spokeswoman at American Express, noted that many companies are still in the early stages of implementing automated systems for expense reporting. "Wireless applications aren't a priority for companies," she said. "The number-one customer demand is help in implementing expense report systems."

It's not a question of if, but when widespread usage of WAP for expense reporting will become a reality. The GartnerGroup forecasted that by 2005 more than 1 billion mobile phones will be in use worldwide. Currently, there are more than 40 million WAP-enabled handsets in circulation worldwide, according to the WAP Forum, an industry association dedicated to the development and growth of WAP.

Current uses of WAP devices include stock trading, online bill payments, Internet-based games, traffic alerts, personalized news and sports reports. In the travel arena, travel management companies, GDSs and suppliers are offering such features as access to itineraries, the ability to change reservations, notification of flight delays and cancellations and driving directions through WAP devices.


<B>U.S. Lags WAP Curve</B>

Use of WAP devices is far more common in Europe and Asia than in the United States. One reason is the dearth of debit and credit card usage overseas: WAP is performing much of the functionality of cards. Also, in Europe the establishment of a common network standard, GSM, has helped boost usage of the technology, while widespread U.S. usage of wireless has been hampered by a myriad of wireless networks. Though, as the United States moves toward formation and adoption of a common standard, aided by such industry initiatives as the WAP Forum, usage of wireless mobile devices stateside is expected to explode.

Meanwhile, at press time Gelco Information Network, based in Eden, Minn., was on the verge of signing an agreement for a Palm application of an expense reporting product developed by Irvine, Calif-based WalletWare. ExpensePlus, which will be applicable to PDAs that don't have Web access, will be released this fall. It will enable travelers to input expenses using a set of 12 on-screen icons, each representing a different category of expense. The data automatically would be uploaded to Gelco's Web site from the user's desktop using the HotSynch button, allowing for reimbursement within three days.

For users who aren't Gelco customers, expense data input into ExpensePlus automatically would be linked to an expense report in any custom format created in Microsoft Excel. WalletWare president and CEO Gary Amstutz said once Gelco develops a WAP application, expected next year, users simply would hit "submit" on the device rather than use the HotSynch button.

"Our intent is to work with all the enterprise systems," Amstutz told attendees at BTN's Travel Technology World. "We need to do that to become the standard on the Palm operating system."


<B>Blue Tooth Blue Sky</B>

With the coming of blue tooth technology, which would enable devices to communicate with each other through radio signals, users could pay a bill at a hotel at the checkout counter and automatically receive an itemized receipt simply by aiming their PDAs. Amstutz is trying to sign up restaurant, hotel and other travel-related business partners needed for such an application. "We are focusing both on the front end and back end," he said. Amstutz added that 25,000 Palm users currently use ExpensePlus to sync with their company's customized expense reporting forms. "Very few corporations are getting site licensing for it because their IT departments are not yet supporting Palm," he added. "But that should change in the next six months. In fact, Palm Computing and 3Com--both internally using Lotus Notes--are beginning trials of ExpensePlus and expect to go companywide."

Cost of the ExpensePlus software, which must be installed on the user's Palm and desktop, is $69. The product enables a user to total up expenses by credit card, client, or categories as well as drill down to itemized expenses.

For its part, Gelco is talking to a number of WAP providers about developing wireless capability for its ExpenseLink product, according to Ralph Bernstein, vice president of product strategy. It also plans to unveil a speech recognition application next year.

Bernstein said Gelco was betting the future on the Palm or a Palm-phone hybrid rather than the wireless phone. "Entering expenses on a handheld device with a large screen and taking advantage of the Palm's synching capabilities is more feasible than browsing through a small screen and entering expenses on a Web-enabled phone," he said.

Other industry executives, however, are betting that the Web-enabled phone will become the mobile device of choice. "Corporate travelers want to carry one device--a phone," said Extensity's Gold, noting that a phone not only costs a lot less than a Palm, but also represents less of a headache for a company's IT department, since it's "just another way to access the Internet." In comparison, the majority of Palms, which are not Web enabled, require synchronization servers, he said.

The success of WAP expense reporting systems, however, is predicated on keeping transactions as simple as possible. "It must be easy and fast," said Concur's Ingham. "The successful application will have pull-down menus with minimal text entry."

Other experts said hybrid wireless devices that combine the larger screen and greater data capabilities of the Palm with the voice-calling feature of the phone are the wave of the future. Quaalcom already has introduced such a device, and models are expected to be available soon from other vendors, including Motorola, Microsoft and Nokia.