IN FOCUS
Look after the pennies...
The big push in 2014 is for expense management to link seamlessly into an end-to-end process so buyers can collect all data. Gillian Upton gets the lowdown on the latest developments
2014. TMC consolidation should help produce solutions that will see the TMC becoming the single aggregator for all data, rather than just for fulfillment and ticketing. “Corporates want visibility of total trip cost
C
and the TMC will be the single aggregator for data so it’s all in one place,” says Julian Mills, UK director of Traveldoo. “The expense piece gives buyers visibility of leakage.” Egencia- owned Traveldoo has its own expense management module. The frontrunners are HRG, which owns 100
per cent of Spendvision; American Express, which owns 20 per cent of Concur and also re-sells KDS products; and CWT which owns a single digit percentage of KDS and re-sells its products, globally. Many other TMCs are scrambling to keep up,
not least BCD which is trying – like all others - to improve its income streams, and working with expense management companies to
orporates’ drive to achieve visibility of total trip cost by bringing travel and expenses closer together will be the big issue running through
improve its connectivity. “We’re keen to have the ability to work with as many expense management companies as possible – ditto online tools – so we can plug and play into any solution we want,” explains Tony McGetrick, sales and marketing at BCD. TMCs are travelling this route rather than
working on in-house solutions to avoid development costs and the risk of going out of business in a very short time. According to one buyer, Chris Reynolds at 3SixtyGlobal, there are three main expense providers: “Concur, which is notoriously difficult to negotiate with. They own many of the suppliers and they’re aggressive with no viable workaround at the moment; SAP, but you’ve got to have the whole ERP system; and KDS,” says Reynolds. Concur swallowed up competitors in the
sector, namely TRX, GDSX and Sittingbourne- based Global Expense Management. However, KDS and Concur are the ones to
watch this month as both are launching new products. KDS's CEO Dean Forbes has declared that the company’s January 29
e“ We’re keen to work with as many ”
xpense management companies as possible so we can plug and play into any solution we want
launch of KDS Neo Expense will be a game changer: “it is to the expense management world what Neo Travel has already been to the travel world.” That’s a big claim. Neo Expense aims to
advance the concept of end-to-end travel management, the corporate travel buyer’s Holy Grail, by revolutionising the end-user experience. The functionality will match any Concur product but the company claims it leapfrogs ahead of the game by eradicating linear spreadsheets and the mind-numbing pile of receipts and invoices that need to be processed. “It’s the 21st century and expenses have been
“ Corporates want visibility of total trip cost and the TMC will be the single aggregator for data ”
left to Excel spreadsheets for long enough,” says Oliver Quayle, KDS senior VP products and partners. “Neo Expense is interactive, user-friendly and shows your expenses in the context of your business life by using OCR technology but making it more fitting for a mobile user.” The process is entirely automated and will
not be touched by a third party. The Neo Expense launch will see the phasing out of KDS’ Corporate Travel & Expense product. But Neo Expense is not fully integrated with another provider’s travel tool. It works as a stand-alone expense management tool but for a fully unified end-to-end T&E it has to be KDS throughout. One step forward, two steps back, it seems. Nicky Bees, travel co-ordinator at law firm
Burges Salmon, warns that buyers must check that all elements of their programme will work seamlessly together before changing one of them. “On the face of it, providers sell the positives but we don’t want to compromise or have to start all over again with another TMC, payment card or online tool. It has to fit together really well and work with other providers.” Concur is also launching an OCR-powered expense tool in January.
26 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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