H-P Automating Expenses Throughout The Americas
<B> H-P Automating Expenses Throughout The Americas</B>
By Mary Ann McNulty
<I>Colorado Springs</I> - Deploying an automated expense reporting program in one country is no easy feat, so imagine the complexity facing Hewlett-Packard as it attempts to launch Concur Technologies' XMS software in the United States, Canada and Latin America over the next year.
What began in 1996 as a U.S. project to streamline its expense reporting process has grown to include H-P factory and sales operations in Canada and Latin America, as well.
"Every time we stopped and made a major change, it enriched the project," said Nikki Ogden, travel process engineer for the financial services center in Colorado Springs, who has been part of the expense team since the start.
Later this year, H-P plans to begin deploying a pre-production version of the XMS software to pilot groups of about 50 employees each in Atlanta, Colorado Springs and Canada, before the mass deployment, to about 50,000 employees in the Americas, in early 1999.
Since selecting Portable Software's XMS (now Concur) in March, H-P financial types in Colorado Springs, Atlanta and Toronto have been meeting to devise a common policy file that can be used throughout all deployments, whether the software is in English, French or Spanish. Team members decided that they'll have to deploy two policy files, one for Canada and one for the United States, due to tax laws, but they're striving for as much commonality as possible, Odgen said.
After the system is deployed in the United States and Canada, the team will begin tweaking the software to work in Latin America. They're talking about deploying a Spanish language version, as well as English.
Hewlett-Packard's latest quest for an automated expense product began in 1996, when the Atlanta and Colorado Springs financial service offices hired Langsfeld Fazio & Associates as consultants to survey employees about the expense reporting process.
"It wasn't just travelers, but anybody who touched the process," Ogden said. "It was clear from the results that electronic expense reporting was a driver; they wanted prepopulation of charge data and direct payment to the credit card company."
Of the multiple stakeholders in the expense automation project, Ogden said, "We all want to make it easier to use on the administrative side for travelers and save money, but outside of that, we're all fairly dispersed on the needs. In the factory, the turnaround time on expense reports is excellent, but we need to improve customer satisfaction. The field people want to increase their turnaround time," which is slow primarily due to delays in securing management approval of expense reports.
Armed with the data, Ogden sent a request for proposals to six companies in July 1997. At the time, she thought the software would be used by both the sales organization, whose expenses are processed through Atlanta, and the factory operations, whose expenses are processed through Colorado Springs. In all, H-P spends about $900 million a year on T&E.
Because of the project's size, a few vendors chose not to bid on the business. By March, Hewlett-Packard selected XMS, in part due to its experience outside the United States. In the final stages of vendor selection, the project grew to include Canada and Latin America. Those countries had been conducting their own expense reporting studies, so company executives decided it made sense to leverage that business and include it in the contract. "In developing the RFP, we knew that at some point there would be international needs," she said.
Of course, one of the driving factors for this project is cost savings. H-P expects to save 20 percent off its existing costs to process expense reports in the Americas. "Not only are we bringing up a new system, but reengineering a new process," she said.
Some savings will come from discontinuing the manual reconciliation of about 1,000 company-paid corporate cards. More will occur as H-P deploys a very high level of passive approvals. Managers will continue to receive an electronic copy of all expense reports, but will not need to do anything unless the report requests a reimbursement of over $10,000. Supervisors also will receive monthly summaries and trend data, and policy exceptions will be flagged. For employees, Ogden sees a streamlined process to compile and submit reports and get reimbursed.
After full-deployment in the United States, Hewlett-Packard expects to realize a return on its investment within one year, Ogden said.