Extensity Partners For Apps

<B> Extensity Partners For Apps</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty


<I>Emeryville, Calif.</I> - In a series of new partnership and product announcements, Extensity Inc. last week detailed plans to integrate its expense offering with new booking, e-commerce and content partners, while also making it easier than ever for road warriors to access its new time and billing module through their Palm Pilots.

The company announced partnerships with Sabre Business Travel Solutions for booking, Commerce One for e-commerce, Runzheimer International for its per diems for travel planning cost estimates and ontheroad.com for travel content. Extensity also announced that Gelco Information Network customers could begin using its Web-based expense product in August and that Cendant Business Services will offer its expense software in a new Web-based subscription service called ExpenseWise.

To support the e-commerce initiatives, Extensity announced a new application called Extensity Purchase Reqs, the fourth application in its new e-Business Application Suite 4.0. Besides expense and purchasing, the other applications are Travel Plan and Timesheets, a time-and-billing offering released in May.

Across the suite, new features include group-based business rules, consolidated reporting, and virtual paper clipping of documents across all applications to support comprehensive, real-time policy enforcement and integrated cost analysis, said Extensity's new president and CEO, Bob Spinner. Electronic signatures are a new feature that enhance security, while proxy creation and manual routing offer flexibility in completing these processes. All the applications share the same user interfaces to minimize training and speed deployment.

Unlike some of its competitors striving to transform their desktop applications into travel portals, Extensity is simply trying to extend the reach and usefulness of its offering to travelers and corporations with the latest developments, said Elizabeth Ireland, vice president of marketing. In some instances, content will be integrated into Extensity's existing applications; in others, travelers will access the content separately.

As part of its new relationship with Runzheimer, Extensity has integrated the company's Daily Guide To Travel Prices for 200 domestic and 100 international cities with its own Travel Plans module, to offer trip approvers a comprehensive view of a trip that includes not only the purpose, destination and duration, but also forecasts hotel, car and meal costs for the stay. For example, a manager could easily see on one screen that a four-day trip to New York likely would total more than $2,927, including $820 for airfare, $1,361 for hotel, $427 for car rental and $320 for meals. The manager also could be sure that proper purpose, cost center and project numbers were entered before approval.

In contrast, the relationship with ontheroad is one in which Extensity is more of a distributor, offering the subscription-based database of hotels, restaurants and happenings in key business areas, using ontheroad's pricing of $99 per user.

The non-exclusive relationship with Sabre BTS calls for the integration of that booking option into Extensity's suite. A traveler then could use Extensity's Travel Plan to secure pre-trip authorization with the data migrating to BTS to actually book it, then on to the expense module for the expense report. The new partners expect to release their combined offering by early 2000.

In the booking space, Extensity also has relationships with Internet Travel Network, Rosenbluth International, WorldTravel Partners and Xtra On-Line. However, booking interfaces to Extensity still are being developed.

Much like the pre-trip authorization functionality that Travel Plan offers managers, Purchase Reqs offers corporations a more efficient means to secure pre-purchase approval of office supplies, temporary personnel services and other indirect purchases. Once purchase authorization has been obtained, an employee can actually purchase the items electronically via Commerce One, or other vendors with which Extensity expects to partner. On approval, that data can be posted to order entry systems.

Extensity Purchase Reqs focuses entirely on internal processes for purchasing requisition and approval, while maintaining the option of extensions into e-commerce as standards emerge and true buy/sell side technology integration becomes possible, said Ireland.

According to the National Association of Purchasing Managers, U.S. companies spend about $250 billion on indirect purchases, with processing costs of up to $100 per requisition, whether for a $10 stapler or a $10,000 computer. By automating and eliminating time-consuming, paper-based routines, Extensity expects to help customers reduce costs up to 70 percent.

"With Purchase Reqs, Extensity separates the procurement process from the e-commerce transaction processing, effectively enabling customers to flexibly adopt new standards with minimal impact on process participants," said Brian McDonough, research analyst, enterprise applications, IDC.

"Extensity's applications are engineered for the Internet to bring functionality and both internal and external content together into a single environment to provide a productive user experience," Spinner said.

Extensity can be accessed via a browser, desktop or handheld device (only time and billing currently); runs online or off; and integrates with content and service providers outside the enterprise.

Each product within the suite is priced per seat, with special bundled pricing available. Extensity Purchase Reqs is $120 per seat.