New Player Speaks To T&E Automation in Java

<B> New Player Speaks To T&E Automation in Java</B>

By Lynn Woods

<I>Emeryville, Calif.</I> - Newcomer Extensity Inc. last week launched Extensity Expense Reports, the first of a suite of Web-based cost-management and reporting products.

And while established software vendors and credit-card issuers continue to scramble to introduce Web-based versions of their expense reporting and management products, Extensity's system is written entirely in Java.

"Companies spend a lot of money on operational cost management," said Extensity president and CEO Sharam Sasson. "Their largest costs are travel and entertainment, labor and purchasing. Our vision is to leverage a single architecture for all processes, so that they can use the same model for other applications."

Extensity Time Cards, which will facilitate the tracking of labor expenses from consultants and other non-salaried workers, and Extensity Purchase Reqs, which will streamline the purchasing process, will debut later this year. These applications will share the same work flow as Expense Reports and feed to the same billing system.

The two advantages to using the Java application--which enables corporate users to access the system right at their company's Website--are instantaneous, disk-free deployment and cross-platform compatibility, allowing the application to be used from any desktop.

In addition, Sasson said, the multiple-application server gives Extensity the ability to handle thousands of users and hence meet the needs of even the very largest global corporations.

To access the Java site, companies will need a compatible browser, either Netscape or Internet Explorer version 4. Extensity also offers "Java activator," a free option that is inserted into the Web server and enables the Java site to work with any browser, should a company prefer not to update all its existing browsers.

Sasson declined to specify the cost of Extensity Expense Reports, beyond saying that pricing will take the form of a one-time, licensed software fee and be "in the low six figures."

Several corporations, including @Home Network, NationsBanc Montgomery Securities LLC, and RELTEC, already have signed contracts to act as beta testers of the new system.

NationsBanc Montgomery Securities, a San Francisco-based investment bank and institutional brokerage firm, plans this week to implement a pilot of Expense Reports with 25 employees, and to follow up two weeks later with a full deployment of the system to its 1,200 employees.

The company, which generates some 11,000 expense reports annually, had looked at a number of automated expense report solutions but chose Extensity because it had "the best functional fit, and it was the easiest to use and the most straightforward," said principal chief administrative officer Tony Avila. "If you're working off a stack of receipts, the applications are very intuitive."

With offices in Dallas, Boston, New York and other U.S. cities, and plans to open soon in London, Montgomery Securities first signed on with Extensity in September and began working on the project in November. Avila said the cost of Extensity, considering its technological innovation, was "minimal."

"If you built this in-house it would cost 10 times more," he said. "We expect to recover the cost in savings within the first year."

Avila added that his company also is considering obtaining Extensity Purchase Reqs once it becomes available.

For the corporate customer, Extensity Expense Reports requires virtually no training. Employees submit reports by clicking on the appropriate section of their company's Website. After they click on the link, Extensity's application pops out with a graphical interface that resembles Windows. To prepopulate the report with credit-card data from partnering corporate-card programs, employees simply click on the credit card icon.

Sasson said the product can be configured in a number of different ways, depending on the needs of the individual company. For example, expense reports can be routed automatically to travelers' managers for approval.

When managers access the site to approve submitted expense reports, they "get a much different view" than is offered by paper forms, Sasson said. A simplified summary--including the employee's name, the date, the total budget of the trip and the amount paid on the company credit card-- appears on the screen. Managers have the option of looking at daily expenses, switching to the exceptions, looking at items by general ledger code or otherwise breaking down the data.

The accounting department can verify receipts and take other steps to check costs, or return the report to either the manager or the individual traveler.

Employees, managers and accountants can access the Website at any time to review previously submitted reports. A company can configure the system to archive reports after a certain date and set them aside.

Extensity already has forged ditribution partnerships with three mega agencies: Carlson Wagonlit Travel, BTI Americas and Rosenbluth International. Its relationship with First Bank and Paymentech enables Expense Reports to be automatically populated with corporate credit-card data. On the back end, the company currently is working to get certified by Oracle and plans to also integrate with other financial services systems.

"Some of these integrations will be offered as products," Sasson said. "Interfacing with some of the smaller financial services at the back end will be offered on a consulting basis."

But, he noted, there are currently no efforts underway to integrate with a CRS or self-booking service, a step that he considers premature. "When it emerges which booking product is dominant, then we'll form a relationship. If we see our customers demanding this, we'll jump in," he said.

On the technology side, the company has inked partnerships with Sun Microsystems, Netscape Communications and Marimba Inc.

Founded in 1996 by Sasson, the former co-founder of enterprise customer information management systems provider Scopus Technology, Extensity has received funding from venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers' Java Fund, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and Weiss, Peck & Greer Venture Partners.