Our readers come from thousands of companies, small and large, across the globe.  I’ve received comments from many of you regarding the most controllable expense areas within your company.  One of the more common suggestions I receive is to zero-in on exactly how maximizing the use of corporate credit cards can provide immediate and significant savings and controls within an organization.  This includes corporate credit, p-cards, fleet/fuel management, prepaid and even payroll cards.  This also includes some of the tools that many credit card companies and processors provide to enhance their suite of products.

I’d like to know:

1) What company and type of card does your company use?

2) What tools/add-ons did you buy or receive from your card provider and how do you utilize these tools within your organization?

If you are a card provider, issuer, processor or active in this space, feel free to post a comment or contact me to be included in our interview series.

Send me a private comment Here, or post your brief answers to the questions below!   I will compile results, do a little research, conduct some interviews and reveal in a later post.

Cary Strange

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the latest expense management study by the Aberdeen Group, you can find it here:  The State of Travel and Entertainment Expense Management

Here is their press release from March 16th:

The State of Travel and Entertainment Expense Management

New Study Finds That Enterprises Are Beginning to Look at Expense Management Strategically

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – March 16, 2010) – Business travel, for years, has often been considered a “sunk cost” by enterprises around the globe. However, in the midst of economic recovery, organizations are beginning to view their expense management programs and processes in a more strategic light, according to a new research study published by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS).

“The State of Travel and Entertainment” research report, which gauged the programs, processes, and performance of nearly 175 enterprises, found that organizations perceive expense management to be a mid-level strategic function that can drive moderate value to the overall enterprise. This is a sharp, fresh view of thinking from the decades spent managing expenses as an unavoidable cost of conducting business.

“T&E expenses account for nearly $24 million a year for the average enterprise,” said Christopher Dwyer, research analyst, Aberdeen. “With enterprises reinstating travel budgets and conducting business on a global scale, there is heightened organizational awareness to the benefits of controlling spending on this category and managing the complexities of T&E expenses in a strategic manner.”

The new study found that over half (53%) of organizations currently place a high priority on expense management in current economic conditions. “The State of T&E Expense Management” also highlighted the performance and strategies of performance-leading enterprises, that have achieved a 31% higher rate of policy compliance than all other enterprises and have generated an 80% reduction in expense-processing costs. These top-performers are:

– Nearly 50% more likely than all other enterprises to hold instantaneous visibility into Travel and Entertainment (T&E) spending against budget

– 43% more likely to regularly audit expense reports

– 20% more likely to influence a formal sourcing program

Once again, you can download the Aberdeen Group’s latest report here: The State of Travel and Entertainment Expense Management

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

ExpenseMatters.com Interview Series by Cary Strange: Interview #12 – ExpenseBay

With only two more vendors that will be reviewed in our current series, we will be speaking with Eric Sikola, CEO of ExpenseBay. Eric, thank you for joining ExpenseMatters to provide your insights to our readers. To get started, could you provide some basic information about your company?
ExpenseBay is a software startup based in Santa Monica disrupting the on-demand expense reporting business. The solution is designed to automate employee expense reports, streamline company approval processes, and cut operation costs when reimbursing an employee. The product has been live since this July 09′ and has been adopted by hundreds of companies. We have partnered and built direct integrations with NetSuite, Intacct, OpenAir, SalesForce and Tripit. In a matter of minutes, an employee or entire company can be set up and submitting expenses, including directly into their accounting or ERP packages.

What do you recognize as your primary and secondary target markets, and why?
Our primary target is small to mid-size companies using excel as their expense reporting systems. 90% of small businesses fall into this camp and you would be surprised how many mid-size companies have the same issue. Our secondary market is end-users who want to utilize ExpenseBay in conjunction with the existing expense management systems their company uses. NetSuite, Oracle and Openair are great examples here.

It appears that there are quite a few players offering expense technology solutions. What separates your company from other companies providing similar products & services?
A few players are an understatement. I suspect there are 25-50 players, if not more claiming to be in the expense management space. I have used a few of these tools throughout my software career. Here was my conclusion; Very feature focused for accounting departments (Approvals, Policy and a report at the end of the month showing if more Hertz cars were driven then Avis). From the end user perspective, I still spent hours manually typing in expenses and scanning, taping, faxing receipts to the accounting department. On the accounting side, they spent a bunch of money integrating their accounting systems to these expense management applications, the review process was still manual, and when they wanted to change something, an army of experts had to arrive on their doorstep. So we set out to solve these problems.

From the end user perspective, the first thing we did was making it so they didn’t have to manually type data in. Each night we download their credit card activity, properly categorizing the transactions and make sure the display name is cleaned up. Then a unique feature we have built is automatically creating an expense reports for the users each week based on rules they set up. Another unique feature is viewing existing transactions from a mobile device and being able to take pictures of receipt images from the camera phone.

Next, we’ve giving the end user the ability to turn their expenses in the format or system their CFO requires, so if NetSuite is the company standard for expense management, the ExpenseBay user can send them directly in there with a username/password. If they need the expenses exported in a spreadsheet mandated by their CFO, we can support that also. When the finance department wants to send the employee expense reports into their general ledger or accounting package, they can do so by just adding their log in credentials. If a company wants to use an existing approval process (say in NetSuite) we plug into it. If they don’t, they can use ours within the application. The key thing that separates us; we give companies lots of choices that plug into existing processes and applications with no set up cost.

What are some specific key product differentiators that provide you with a distinct advantage over your competitors?
Here are a few I think show our competitive advantage:

- Set up and submit an expense report in minutes. We don’t require any set up fees to integrate with their company ERP/Accounting/PSA systems, just a user license.
- Support for 4000+ different credit cards (Personal or Corporate Cards). Activity is downloaded each night, properly categorized, and the merchant name is displayed properly.
- Expense reports are automatically created every week. These recurring reports can be set this up to run by time period, category, client, project, or by a TripIt itinerary.
- Users or companies can select an expense template from our library. If they have a specific one that is not in there, we can add it.
- Support for TripIt. Expense reports can be automatically created based on your Tripit travel itinerary. We also mash up transactions with trip markers, showing when you took off and came home.
- ExpenseBay Mobile is the only mobile application that allows users to view their credit card transactions and edit/attach receipt images from the camera phone. Cash transactions can be entered in with three clicks.
- Out of the box support for NetSuite, Intacct and OpenAir. No set up, just a username and password makes the integration work. We will be releasing Quickbooks and other accounting packages over the coming months.
- Native Salesforce.com application (Q4 09′ release date) that will bring all the benefits users get with ExpenseBay today into the Force.com platform. This includes approvals, reporting, budgeting, and integrating to other applications.
What are the most important questions that a company (looking for a solution) should ask before selecting an expense management provider?
There are simple rules companies should look for. Number one is the cost to set up needs to be near zero. That should eliminate most of the expense management solutions (if not all). The second rule is that it needs to seamlessly plug in with their accounting /payroll system. The reality is more complex ERP systems have more customizations and will require some work to integrate. But we have proven this can be done with the leading ERP vendors like NetSuite or Intacct, by simply adding the login credentials. Third is to make sure the people who will be using the software on a daily basis are bought in, not just the decision maker. Is it is easy to use? Can it help make their life easier, is there a credible cost benefit to company, is the company being locking into a long-term contract and the provider has proven their support to be responsive.

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?
The perpetual license model is on a massive decline. Buying a perpetual license and paying years of maintenance is no longer attractive to a company (especially the SMB space). The main reasons why SaaS is so great; no hardware, no software to install, no maintenance costs, updates are handled by the vendor and the ability to access the application anywhere from a broswser . ExpenseBay is 100% SaaS. Best of all, our set up is seamless, quick and free. If you want to utilize premium features like connecting to NetSuite, all you need is a user license.
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?
There are many customer wins recently, many that have come from our partners Tripit, NetSuite and Intacct. HealthCare IP Partners is one new customer who has selected Expensebay as an add-on to their NetSuite ERP. Credit card automation, receipt management, mobile applications and ease of use tend to be the main reasons why all our partners are bring us into their customer base.

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?
I think the biggest trend in expense management is the mobile device. Everything from taking pictures of receipts, to submitting and approving reports can be done from a mobile device. Native expense management applications on these devices make employee’s jobs easier. Fortunately, these devices have delivered much higher quality cameras this past year. So capturing receipts with a camera is no longer a myth but reality. The cost savings and time saving is amazing. Customers tell us they are capturing an entire page from the hotel bill with the camera phone and it is crystal clear. The second trend we see happening is more automation around creating expense reports. An example is having the solution go get my Verizon bill when it comes available and matching it with the credit card transaction.

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. Is there anything that we have not talked about that you would like to discuss with our readers?
We encourage your readers to take us for a test drive. Users can sign up for free and try us out. When they are ready for more premium features, they can simply upgrade. We got a great support forum that many of our users post questions, comments or issues too. This is a great place for potential users to see what people are saying about us and how we as a company support the users. You can find the forum on our home page at www.expensebay.com. Please also follow us twitter @expensebay.

If you have questions, shoot us an email at support@expensebay.com or call us at (866) 367-3105. We promise you will not be disappointed.

Eric, thanks again for your time. One of the most intriguing players in the space for sure. If any of our readers have any questions or comments, feel free to contact myself or Eric directly:
ExpenseBay
Eric Sikola
Founder/CEO
1-866-367-3105
Email
www.expensebay.com

Cary Strange

ExpenseMatters.com Interview Series by Cary Strange: Interview #11 – Xspenser

Next up in our interview series, we have a couple of innovative companies with a unique take on the expense dilemma. I want to welcome and thank Parand Tony Darugar, CEO or Xpenser, who is joining us today. To get started, could you provide some basic information about your company?
Xpenser is a mobile time, expense, and receipt management company based in San Diego, California. We focus on being with the user everywhere, on any device, and allowing expenses to be captured easily, immediately, and in-context, using simple natural language – for example, as soon as you get out of the taxi call and say “taxi $27 airport to Client X”, or take a picture of your lunch receipt using your mobile phone and email it to Xpenser with the subject “Lunch $49.14 with George”.

We support voice entry (call and say your expense, both in the US and internationally), Email, SMS, IM (Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Google Talk), Twitter, FireFox hotkey, the browser search box, and of course the Web.

We pride ourselves on being customer focused – our users have been wonderfully vocal in interacting with us, and we always devote a significant portion of each release cycle to implementing user requests.

What do you recognize as your primary and secondary target markets, and why?
Xpenser primarily targets small business – 3 to 300 employee companies, although we are also working with some larger folks. Our sweet spot is saving people time and effort in getting expenses recorded, approved, and managed, so it appeals to people who want to spend time on their core business instead of dealing with ugly, cumbersome forms or expense tracking systems.

Our secondary market is accountants and bookkeepers. Our users introduced Xpenser to their accountants, and soon we had a ground swell of accounting and bookkeeping firms requesting features to make their lives easier – to deal with the “remote transaction capture” problem (i.e. the client with the shoe box full of receipts). We’ve introduced a number of features that appeal to accounting firms and departments, opening a new market for us.

It appears that there are quite a few players offering expense technology solutions. What separates your company from other companies providing similar products & services?
Most of the other solutions look very similar – mimicking the paper based process in an electronic form. We attack the problem with the goal of making it as quick and painless as possible. Xpenser was born of personal need, so we experimented with many different models and found recording expenses and receipts immediately from any device to be the key – what we like to call “fire and forget” expense management. There’s no sense in trying to put together an expense report based on a wallet full of receipts and spreadsheets full of credit card statements weeks after the trip – record expenses immediately and never think about them again.

We also found that people don’t like to learn complex systems just to manage their expenses – they’ll submit expenses in whatever form makes sense to them. We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure we’re flexible enough to understand what the user means – for example, “dinner $58.11 with Jack of Client X yesterday” will automatically get categorized as a meal with the amount of $58.11, be filed in the “Client X” folder, and be dated for yesterday.

What are some specific key product differentiators that provide you with a distinct advantage over your competitors?
Our availability on any device, anywhere, and our ability to understand user input without forcing awkward commands. For example, NetBanker called the ability to record expenses via the browser search box “so clever, it’s almost creepy”, and the LA Times called Xpenser “so useful and so incredible, truly something astonishing.”

Xpenser also integrates time tracking, allowing both time and expense to be recorded with the same ease – for example, an attorney can call and say “conference call 27 mins matter X” immediately after taking a conference call in the car, or a service professional can clock in by IM’ing “time start design review” to the Xpenser IM bot, and later clock out by SMS’ing “time stop 15 mins ago” from the parking lot while getting into the car.

Companies particularly like Xpenser because it provides a much more current view into expenses, reducing expense submission time, allowing more accurate bookkeeping and more immediate cost control.

What are the most important questions that a company (looking for a solution) should ask before selecting an expense management provider?
Will this system save me and my employees time or will it waste their time with antiquated models and processes?

Think of the amount of time and frustration your employees experience in managing their expense reports, the amount of effort involved in reviewing and approving the reports, and in getting the information to your financial systems. Pick the system that minimizes your time loss and allows you to concentrate on your core business.

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?
Xpenser is SaaS based – expenses are collected on the Xpenser site and categorized, submitted, and approved via the Web. This makes it extremely simple and fast to adopt – no internal installation, no administration hassle, and so forth. Combined with the ability to export the expenses and synchronize them with the internal financial systems this provides the best of both worlds.

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?
We’re very pleased to have a wonderful group of partners – FreshBooks, Outright, Jott, and Dial2Do to name a few – but we’re most excited by the adoption of our APIs. Even though they’ve only be released for a few weeks we’re already seeing people building new device specific interfaces and connections to backend systems with them. We’re strong believers that your data belongs to you and aim to support as many ways to interact with Xpenser as possible, and fully support API based integrations.

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?
The current economic conditions have brought focus to managing costs more directly and in real time, allowing a better handle on the bottom line while making it easier and faster to invoice customers. Xpenser helps with all of this, so we see the market opportunity only growing over the next 12-18 months.

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. Is there anything that we have not talked about that you would like to discuss with our readers?
Think about the amount of time currently wasted struggling with expense reports, then sign up for a free Xpenser account ( http://xpenser.com/ ) and see how easy and efficient it could be. Try Xpenser and have your employees and accounting department signing your praises instead of dreading and delaying expense reports.

To all of our readers out there, if you have any additional questions or would like to speak with Xpenser about your T&E needs, please send me an email or contact the company directly:

Xpenser
Roohi Khan
Director of Sales
(858) 227-4583
Email
www.xpenser.com

Cary Strange