At IDG, a story used to circulate about a guy who went to Texas on a sales call and bought a pair of cowboy boots to blend in. He put the boots on his expense report, and it was kicked back: footwear is not expensible. So he submitted a different, bootless report, with the same bottom line. "Find the boots!" he said as he handed in the new paperwork.
Travel and entertainment (T&E) is a huge budget item at most companies, and after payroll, it's the most controllable. But managing T&E also requires personnel to evaluate reports against company policies.
Several companies address this. I talked with Dan Vetras, CEO of Captura, which has a system that lets employees enter expenses through a Web interface, and also has software to validate expenses. It has hooks into various accounting systems and pays credit card companies directly. There are a lot of different systems involved in T&E; Dan says Captura can talk to all of them.
As business applications become both more granular and more open (thanks to XML and Web services), systems like this, that sit in the middle of a complex business process, will become increasingly valuable to corporations.
- Rafe Needleman
COMPANIESCaptura Extensity Concur OneMind Connect OracleSAP PeopleSoftTalaris Backplane AribaCommerce One
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