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Automated expense tool use on the rise.

Article Excerpt
U.S.-based companies, although still largely reliant on in-house systems for expense management, increasingly are turning away from their homegrown systems in favor of automated, vendor-purchased solutions. While expense solutions in many companies remain tied to other internal software systems, such as SAP and other enterprise resource providers, technological advances in online expense tools have driven down costs and facilitated compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley reporting requirements.

Buyers from companies that have adopted automated systems, including BDO Seidman, Logitech, International Sematech and Sybase, recently cited increased efficiencies. Even so, companies employing online tools remain in the minority. According to practices reported by 221 expense managers for Business Travel News' third annual Expense/Payment Manager Survey, little more than one-quarter of respondents said they were using a vendor-purchased solution to handle their expenses. The dominance of homegrown systems has eroded significantly since BTN began the survey in 2004, when 82.5 percent of respondents were using in-house solutions, compared with the 17.5 percent using vendor-purchased tools.

These survey results mirror the trend reported by leading expense management solution providers. Redmond, Wash.-based Concur Technologies has seen a surge in customer growth, from 500 new customers in 2004 to 900 new customers in 2005 and 1,600 new customers in 2006, said CEO Steve Singh. Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Gelco Expense Management, meanwhile, claimed 30 percent year-over-year growth in customers in recent years, and Toronto-based Necho, a division of Parsippany, N.J.-based software company CyberShift, cited similar results. All suppliers said this growth has occurred across the spectrum of...

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