During the week of February 20th I took a break from work.  I decided to spend almost a week helping out the earthquake ravaged country of Haiti.  It was an eye-opening experience that is sure to change my perspective in various areas of my life.  I went to Haiti as part of a partnership through my church and an existing ministry/relief organization on the ground in Haiti.

It was amazing to see the lack of infrastructure that caused a disaster to be so much worse than it had to be.  Evidence of this can be seen in a recent earthquake in Chile, where less than 1000 died, compared to the hundreds-of-thousands in Haiti.  Decades of government abuse of the country’s funds & expenses left Haiti more susceptible than most western countries.  The conditions were terrible!  Dirty, filthy and unsanitary conditions…very surprised disease hasn’t taken hold yet.  People living in tents or under tarps as far as the eye could see.

We spend most of our time outside of the city, in a local village of Despinos.  There we found ourselves rebuilding a school, helping a local medical clinic, preparing and distributing food to over 600 families and interacting with a local orphanage.  I have performed community service (not the kind where I had to wear an orange jumpsuit!) in Atlanta on several occasions.  I have to admit, on more than one occasion in Atlanta I became a little disillusioned when our teams would be helping to clean up an area only to find the local residents kicking back in their rocking chairs, sipping their lemonade, and watching us from their front porches!   However, I was pleased and impressed with the attitude and work ethic of many of the Haitians we encountered.  They could not pick up a shovel, hammer or saw fast enough to help us build their school.  They practically pushed us out of the way to help us unload food distributions from our truck.  Amazing how joy transcends our language barriers.

I have to share one unbelievable story.  We went to a local Christian orphanage where a missionary from KY has been running it for over 30 years.  There are about 60 kids in his care.  On the afternoon of the earthquake, he chastised the group for being late and told them they had better not be late to their 4:45pm class.  Well guess what, EVERY ONE of the 60+ kids were late…every single one of them.  Then at 4:53pm the earthquake hit and completely collapsing their school!  Had any of them been on time, they would have certainly been killed. Kids in the adjacent towns & villages were were injured and killed, but not a scratch to any of the kids in the Good Rest Orphanage.  Wow!

Anyway, I have tons of stories I could share but will reserve those for a later time.  I thought this post would be a nice break from the traditional expense-oriented discussions!

If any of you feel compelled to give to one of these ministries, feel free to go to one of the following sites to do so:

Hebron Church – Click on the Online Giving link on lower right-side.  In notes, make sure you put Missions – Cary Strange

Haiti Gospel Mission – Click on the Paypal Donate button.  Make sure you put “Sent by Cary Strange”

Cary Strange

Concerns in small and large businesses alike encompass more than just managing T&E expenses.  Depending on the size of your company and sphere of influence, it could include items such as your back-end financial application, payroll provider, travel & expense policies, corporate cards and supplier leverage & consolidation.  We could also lump supply chain management, ERP and asset management solutions into the mix.

If you followed our most recent series on expense management solutions, you will have noticed that we did a ’surface’ level review on many of the vendors and based some preliminary conclusions based on our interviews, industry knowledge and publicly available information.  Certainly, some of those vendors could be found more or less favorable in various areas with more research and insight…so that is what we plan to do. ExpenseMatters will dive in to conduct an in-depth analysis of each of the leading expense management solutions.

In addition to providing more information on EMS, we will be featuring executive interviews, guest contributors or both from some of the leading companies in the following industries:

Payroll
Accounting / Financial Applications
Travel Technology
Corporate Card / Purchase Card Issuers

If your company is utilizing a vendor in one of the above categories, we’d love to hear from you so that we can make sure to include all of the top solutions in our research.  If you are a vendor in one of these industries, have one of your senior execs or your PR guys contact me ASAP.

Cary Strange

Good morning:

My name is Christopher Dwyer and I’m a research analyst in the Aberdeen Group’s Global Supply Management practice. I’d like to thank Cary for giving me a chance to author a guest post here at ExpenseMatters.com.

Over the last five years, Aberdeen has chronicled the advancements in the travel and entertainment (T&E) expense management space, utilizing our fact-based research to highlight the various strategies, actions and technology solutions utilized by top-performing enterprises to drive down expense-processing costs and increase internal policy compliance.

I am authoring a new study in the expense management space, set to publish at the end of February. The State of Travel and Entertainment Expense Management report will identify expense management as a strategic internal force and pinpoint the exact perception of this process across the modern business market. The new study will also detail the benefits of expense management automation and track the growing importance of collaboration between the travel and procurement groups.

The survey was launched earlier this week and be accessed here. All participants will receive a complimentary copy of the final report upon publication in late February. Click here to participate.

I will be unearthing some preliminary findings over the next few weeks at my Aberdeen Research blog. And, too, please feel free to contact me at chris.dwyer@aberdeen.com with any questions you might have.

Thanks.

Christoper Dwyer

We have successfully concluded our Executive Interview Series on expense management solutions. I would like to again thank all of those who participated and to the amazing responses from our subscribers and readers. If you have not already done so, please feel free to contact me via email to discuss your organization’s current T&E needs and I will provide an appropriate recommendation(s) and contact information.

As a recap, the firms that participated in our series were:
Concur, CyberShift, Exspend, IBM, Databasics, Expensify, ExpenseAnywhere, Ariba, Infor, Certify, InterplX, Xpenser, and ExpenseBay

Originally, I had planned to research and interview only 6-7 companies that I perceived as being market leaders. However, I was overwhelmed with the number of additional companies that contacted ExpenseMatters to participate in the interview series. Unfortunately, we were unable to accommodate all of the requests and after researching each of these request, we only allowed a small percentage to participate.

There are a couple of other companies that were invited but either declined the interview or failed to respond. We do however want to recognize that even though we did not conduct an interview with ExpenseWire, ExpenseAble and ExpenseWatch; they are considered by many to be in the top 15 vendors within the expense management space. As a former executive at ExpenseWire, I can attest first hand to their robust feature-set coupled with one of the best user interfaces in the industry.

Here are some “honorable mentions” based on our initial review:

Best Fortune 500 or BTN 100 solution:
Concur
IBM
Infor
Ariba
CyberShift

Most Cost Efficient Solution (based on limited information researched):
Exspend
Certify
Databasics
Expensify

Best Suite of Integrated Products (if you require additional products from same vendor):
Ariba (Spend Management, Sourcing, Procurement, etc)
Infor (ERP, CRM, Financials, Supply Chain, etc)
IBM (ERP, Financials, Travel, etc)
Concur (Travel, Business Services)
CyberShift (Workflow, Travel)

Most Robust Features & Functionality (based on limited information researched):
Concur
Exspend
CyberShift
Databasics
Infor

Most Innovative Solution (based on limited information researched):
InterplX
ExpenseBay
Expensify
Xpenser
Certify

Best Overall Expense Management Solutions:
Concur
Infor
Exspend
Databasics
Certify

Keep in mind, the above opinions take only a vendor’s expense management solution into consideration, as many vendors have begun to blur the lines between expense and travel, workflow, procurement, invoicing & other functions.  Obviously, the above assessment is based on limited access and research to each of the above vendors.

We plan to do a detailed vendor review later in the year which will include a feature comparison, pricing & deployment strategies, corporate information, etc.  Thanks for all of your referrals, comments and suggestions.  Make sure to bookmark ExpenseMatters.com and come back weekly for new updates!

Cary Strange

ExpenseMatters.com Interview Series by Cary Strange: Interview #13 – IBM

As we conclude our comprehensive executive interview series on expense management, we have invited one of the largest and most respected companies in the world to talk about their involvement in the industry. Ted Capeless of IBM is joining us. Ted, thank you for taking the time to discuss some very important industry questions with ExpenseMatters. Most of us are very familiar with IBM, but to get started, could you provide some basic information about IBM and your involvement in the expense management space?
With an enormous employee population worldwide and a vast array of clients located in every corner of the globe, it’s no surprise that IBM is one of the world’s largest traveling organizations. In 1991 we released our internal automated expense management solution. Since then we’ve continued to build upon its proven platform to become a leading provider of flexible travel and expense (T&E) reporting solutions for more than 500 worldwide organizations. In fact, we manage more than US$3billion in travel spend and process more than 15 million expense reports annually. By partnering with us, we help companies proactively reduce their travel spend and lower related costs by optimizing their business processes, including T&E, through a combination of innovative technology, unmatched expense management expertise, world-class global support and superior delivery capabilities in services and software. Our scalable expense management solutions are designed so that organizations of virtually every size can take advantage of global opportunities and optimize processes end to end, helping to lower T&E administrative and procurement costs from 50 to 75 percent, proactively reduce compliance-related spend between two and four percent, and significantly improve expense reporting audit capabilities.

IBM Global Expense Reporting Solutions (GERS) is an easily implemented, easy-to-use Web-based application that simplifies and manages employee T&E processes. Innovative automation and imaging tools enable users to submit expenses and e-receipts using mobile or other device types for easier report reconciliation, receipt tracking, and authorizations and approvals. And our business intelligence and data analysis tools help detect fraudulent expenses and track abnormal behavior patterns.

What do you recognize as your primary and secondary target markets, and why?
Four out of the top 10 companies on the Business Travel News 2008 Corporate Travel 100 list* use IBM GERS for their expense management solution. With our global, multinational presence that spans many industries and market segments, a large number of our clients are large, Fortune 500 enterprises that look to us to help them achieve even deeper business transformation with a common platform and broader capabilities including in the arenas of finance and administration, human resources, customer relationship management and supply chain management. Because GERS is a highly scalable solution with attractive, pay-as-you-use pricing that can work in virtually every business environment, we are also strongly focused on – and well-positioned within – the mid-market segment. In fact, 80% of our clients are mid-market size, with as few as 50 employees.

It appears that there are quite a few players offering expense technology solutions. What separates your company from other companies providing similar products & services?
In the late 1990s, IBM began moving from an ineffective, highly customized services delivery model toward a more strategic approach to providing information technology and consulting services. To stand out from other service providers, IBM focused on ways to differentiate itself and create greater client value by reinventing its services model and expanding it to cover everything from congestion management, healthcare analytics and supply chain transformation. IBM deliberately embraced an innovative, technology-based approach that included a strong emphasis on automating labor-based services processes and began acquiring companies (such as PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting in 2002 and Cognos in 2007) that could help fully achieve this goal and help us build repeatable software assets. IBM leadership also began steering our internal research organization to focus on developing solutions for our clients’ complex optimization problems as well as restructuring IBM’s software division by industry, to help those clients meet their specific challenges. These efforts have paid off for IBM’s services business, allowing us to move from one-time, customized solutions to a longer-term solution approach based on a foundation of industry best practices, expertise, technology and intellectual property along with the capability to deliver with standardized consistency on a global scale. In fact, IBM services revenue now accounts for nearly 60% of IBM’s total revenue and services growth continues to increase 18 out of the last 19 quarters.

Because of this solid history of proven, successful service delivery across many industries, we are widely recognized as one of the world’s leading providers of both services and technology-and our clients are confident knowing their expense management solution is innovative, tested and delivers on its promised results.

What are some specific key product differentiators that provide you with a distinct advantage over your competitors?
Unlike some of our competitors, IBM’s vendor-agnostic expense management solution has been tested for decades. Built on a highly standardized business model and open architecture backed by our industry-leading services and software, GERS stands out from the majority of expense management solutions because it can integrate with virtually every existing system. IBM continues to help set the standards for best practices in expense management enablement with GERS capabilities, including paperless T&E processing as well as ongoing innovation in travel reservation and mobile platform integration. GERS is also specifically designed to meet the needs of our clients with a flexible, vendor-neutral approach to corporate card partners. Plus, unlike some of the smaller, newer companies offering expense management solutions, each GERS implementation is backed by IBM, a highly respected company that has been in business for more than a hundred years.

A key advantage of GERS is its unique business intelligence capabilities that helps organizations to reduce travel spend before it occurs. These data analytics tools – combined with the strength of our well-established vendor relationships – help clients to select and better manage agencies and negotiate and maintain cost-effective supplier contracts. The GERS business intelligence toolset also contains proprietary predictive analytics that can also track out-of-policy patterns, helping companies to more easily identify fraudulent behavior and adhere to compliance requirements. Currently available in more than 85 countries, GERS is a true global solution, with local currency conversion and supporting more than 40 languages and applicable tax and other legal/fiscal considerations. IBM is also distinctly different from the majority of other expense management providers because our technology provides access to metrics that allow us to predict with confidence the outcome of our solutions. This means we can fully stand behind every expense management solution with a contractual commitment to the expected business outcome.

What are the most important questions that a company (looking for a solution) should ask before selecting an expense management provider?

• Before entering negotiations, you should have a clear understanding your expense management objectives, timelines and what you consider to be an acceptable outcome. You must then clearly communicate your needs and expectations so that your service provider can work with you to develop the right solution.
• Be prepared to ask your service provider to demonstrate the estimated travel spend and operational cost savings the solution is projected to deliver, and get it in writing.
• Ask whether your service provider offers other services that could help position your company for growth, now or in the future.
• Know whether the leadership in your organization is ready to move from a tactical to a more strategic relationship with your service provider.
• Understand-and get it in writing-what the service provider’s commitment is to ongoing support.
• If your company is subject to regulatory requirements, understand how the service provider’s solution can help you easily meet compliance mandates as they evolve.
• Request that your service provider demonstrate its implementation track record with client references. Once you get those references, make contact.
• Consider whether your service provider’s solution is based on an open platform. Can it easily integrate with your existing systems? Are there restrictions regarding the partners, tools and travel vendors you can use? And is it a scalable solution that will meet your ongoing needs as your business contracts or expands?
• Know how many third-party providers will be involved in your organization’s solution. Many providers rely on one or more third-party providers to deliver their solution, which can dilute the overall quality of the implementation.

One of the most frequent questions we receive involve how the products are licensed and installed. What are your thoughts regarding the traditional licensing model versus the software as a service model (SaaS)? Which does your company provide and recommend?
We try and work with organizations to help them understand which model will be the most cost-effective and beneficial for their business over the long term. That said, in the past few years IBM has become a recognized industry leader and strong proponent of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing-based models. The flexibility of a SaaS approach allows for easy Web access to the expense management interface, faster solution implementation and less maintenance costs by eliminating multiple, disparate operating systems. With this on demand, services-based approach clients also typically experience easier adoption of new technology. And with an efficient, predictable pay-as-you-use cost structure, it’s more cost effective.

Do you have any new customer or partner wins that you want to share with our audience? If so, why did they select your company or product?
Our newest partners include travel vendors GetThere and Travelport. We believe these companies chose to collaborate with IBM, a trusted, established provider and industry leader who could offer a proven best-of-breed solution.

We are continually working with new clients in virtually every industry who believe in our commitment to delivering an automated, easy-to-implement and easy-to-use T&E reporting solution with GERS. (If you need more information about a solution for your particular industry, please contact us.)

This industry has been in a high growth mode for a couple of year now. What do you see happening with the industry, and the need for these types of solutions, over the next 12-18 months?
We fully expect the high growth to continue as there is still a large percentage of companies that have not yet adopted automated solutions, and the corporate directive to “do more with less” combined with an uncertain global economy has suddenly made expense management much more relevant. The industry and the solutions will continue to mature and evolve-just as we have seen mobile solutions and travel reservation integration become fairly standard for competitive expense management solutions.

Many companies still operate in silos with the travel, expense and sourcing departments all operating independently, but the trend of corporations moving to end-to-end solutions has already started. As more companies see travel more holistically, these three areas of the business will become more and more closely aligned. End-to-end travel and expense management is not just about tools but also about seeing the entire travel process while being able to bridge the gap between policy, booking, travel, expense reporting, reimbursement and travel sourcing.

Companies are quickly looking to strengthen their relationship with service providers rather than be kept at a distance with a software solution they are left to run themselves. Solution service providers should be experts in travel and expense management with respect to policy, sourcing and global expertise. As the largest traveling corporation in the world, IBM naturally has all of these attributes to offer and we leverage this expertise to the maximum benefit of all of our clients.

(* See www.btnonline.com and the study titled “The 2008 Corporate Traveler” for more information.)

Ted, thanks again for your joining our interview series. If any of our readers have any questions or comments, feel free to contact myself or IBM directly:
IBM
Ted Capeless
Client Solutions Executive
630-689-4967
Email
www.ibm.com/services/expensemanagement

Cary Strange