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Smart Selling Tools Survey – Drawing Winner!

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Thank you for taking time and participating in our survey with Smart Selling Tools. We received tons of responses and great feedback from everyone! It was amazing to note how many companies still struggle with managing this cumbersome process based on the responses we received.

The winner for the iPad mini drawing is David Escobar (company name withheld per request). An email has been sent to notify the winner. Congratulations David!

We will be putting together a white paper that discusses the results from the survey and emailing to all participants. This will help guide their companies towards better managing the T&E expense reporting process and help with improving productivity and reducing costs.

Thanks again for participating! Stay tuned for more surveys and promotions…..

Finance Speak – Cloud based or On-Premise?

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(Finance Speak is a new series where we will discuss typical questions & concerns expressed by our customers. We will delve into the logic and analysis behind each discussion. If you’d like to contribute or ask a question, send a message to info@gorillaexpense.com with ‘Finance Speak’ in the subject line.)

Gorilla – Would you like for us to host the application & data or do you want to manage it yourselves?

Executive (Anonymous) –  I think we will be going with an On-Premise package because it will be cheaper

G – Do you have a server? Do you have internal experts who can tackle this? Do you plan to host other applications?

E – We don’t really have an IT team or other applications but it shouldn’t be too tricky I imagine

G – Well, firstly you will need IT experts to deploy and manage the application. Secondly, you are handling important data, which will be accessed periodically, so you need to be sure about security, encryption, retrieval etc. Plus you don’t want the system to go down when people are traveling around the clock and using the application

E – In that case, we will let you manage it. But won’t that be more expensive for us?

G – Not really, considering all factors. Let me break it down in more detail………

We get this question every time, 99.9% of the time actually. Most of our customers evaluate On-Premise (OP) vs Cloud (CL) based solely on price which can be misleading. When you go with a CL based solution you get several things – flexibility, scalability, transparency, maintenance, On-Demand expertise etc.

And when it comes to price comparisons, CL can be cheaper than OP in some cases. Most companies don’t consider the TCO of an OP solution and therefore assume CL will be more expensive. Of course in some cases CL may be more expensive. But there are more facets to that discussion than a simple OP costs-divide-by-12-months and compare to a CL monthly rate. In some companies, there may be corporate mandates to use OP for all applications and that makes sense because price is not the sole reason.

For a more in depth analysis, see this article from CIO.com that captures the salient points very well –

Article

Year End Introspection on Benefits and Value

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As we approach the end of 2011, we have been discussing with our customers about the benefits they have seen from using our system. The feedback we received was plenty and came in several flavors.

Some of our customers loved getting away from the manual systems they used before. Some others loved the mobile app and how it simplified their lives. Others found huge benefits in integrating with their back-end system, which minimized manual work at two places – one at the user level and other at the accounting level.

We found a common theme running through several pages of feedback we received. It is no surprise that this resonated with research published by The Aberdeen Group in 2007.

It all boils down to this – At the end of the day, an expense management system must help a company achieve the following:

Cost reduction: Companies must cut costs associated with the managing of expense reports. With the help of a vendor who knows the game, companies can trim the fat at every step in the lifecycle – creating, submitting, processing, tracking and auditing of expense reports.

Enhance Productivity – By incorporating a system that is user-friendly and intuitive, employee productivity takes a shot in the arm. Using the latest technology, employees spend less time on unbillable work such as expense reports, thereby leaving more time for the important tasks.

Reduce Compliance Risk – Compliance comes in two flavors – internal compliance and government/tax compliance. Internal compliance includes the set up of policies that are lenient in nature, well understood and constantly communicated. Government/Tax compliance includes compliance to Sarbanes-Oxley, receipt capture and expense data as required by the IRS and other regulatory requirements.

Economical to Own – The application must not break the bank. It must be economical for the company to use while providing a modest if not quick ROI.

Seamless Interoperability – The application must be able to seamlessly integrate with the back-end system. Typically, this is less complicated with certain systems such as QuickBooks but can be complex for ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle etc.

Quality Intel – The application must provide access to data that can be used to fine-tune various aspects of the process. Stakeholders should be able to slice and dice the data which should help them take steps that directly improve the bottom-line.

If all of these points can be achieved, the application’s implementation may be considered a success. It is also important to note that the process of selecting and implementing a solution is not linear. There are various dynamic parameters that vary drastically from organization to organization.

We specialize in implementing our application with least disruption to existing processes. We help customers recognize the pertinent level of implementation while evaluating potential risk at every stage. Our expertise in integration with almost every ERP system under the Sun helps customers understand the benefits of going 100% automated.

If you haven’t contacted us yet, lets talk. We can be reached at info AT gorillaexpense.com. We’d love to hear from you and look forward to meeting your requirements.

2011 was great strides and 2012 is going to be greater strides. We are excited!

What is most important to you in a T&E Solution

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So far, we have discussed the common problems companies face due to the lack of an expense management system. We also briefly looked at the benefits of obtaining a T&E system. This included industry estimated savings from using a comprehensive expense management system.

We are now interested in hearing the most important reason you would invest in a T&E solution. Send us your responses to info AT gorillaexpense.com