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Three Amigos: NAV2013, Gorilla Expense and The Cloud

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We have been receiving several inquiries over the last few months about our integration with NAV2013 in relation to what would happen if NAV is hosted on the cloud. Here is the quick scoop –

Microsoft has made significant investments towards the “hostability” of NAV2013. This helps deploying and using NAV in the cloud, thus benefiting both customers and partners. Microsoft is currently fine-tuning deployment scenarios and developing guidance for deploying NAV on Azure. Microsoft expects to make deployment of NAV on Azure broadly available in Q1, 2013. They had initially planned it closer to Nov 2012.

Our application is deployed on the cloud too (as one of the options), specifically Azure (Yes, we are heavily Microsoft oriented and we love it :). With this option, the customer has nothing to worry about in regards to hosting the data, managing the application or tackling the overhead associated with maintaining a server, support etc. Our integration with NAV is agnostic to the hosting format employed. NAV can be on a dedicated server on the cloud or we could be co-hosted with NAV too. Neither approaches affect out integration from the user’s perspective. On the back-end, there will be a few more gerbils turning wheels. But the customer will always experience a seamless and fully automated integration between our solution and NAV.

This flexible integration and hosting capabilities between our solution and NAV makes life much easier for the customer, the partner and of course for us too. Read about our integration with NAV here. If you would like to learn more or have any further questions, send us a message at – info@gorillaexpense.com.

Meanwhile, here are some more tidbits about NAV013 you may find useful

– Microsoft announced the availability of NAV 2013 in 15 markets. With significant improvements in functionality and several new capabilities, this launch was hailed as the most significant release of NAV yet
– Functionality such as Cash Flow Forecast, Cost Accounting, and Excel Integration to Query enable greater accounting efficiency for customers while offering partners the ability to develop customized solutions
– The new NAV web client allows users to access NAV from virtually any device. Improved query and charting offer compelling ways to analyze and display data for more users
– Improvements to the migration tool, partner development tools, and increased interoperability with Microsoft technologies mean less time is needed for partners to customize and deploy solutions, and they are easier for customers to learn and have impact
– Specifically useful for partners, NAV2013 enables easier deployment, configuration and installation through the RoleTailored developer experience. The new .NET Framework enhancements makes it easier to build, deploy and integrate high-performing add-ons with existing NAV solutions, and share data more easily

Adios!

Benefits of T&E Automation

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Over the last few months we have encountered numerous questions and discussions related to automation of the T&E process; specifically the advantages of automation. Here is a quick background of the challenges and synopsis of the advantages.

Some background

Surveys based on millions of expense reports submitted by 3,000 companies reveal that U.S. T&E costs are constantly rising. The largest increases were in airfare (up 5.7%), hotels (up 4.5%), and meetings (up 7.7%).

With T&E spend accounting for 7% percent of the total budget for the average mid-market company ($50 million to $800 million in revenue), according to recent Aberdeen Group research, the challenge facing CFOs and Controllers in this area is dramatic.

Scope of challenge

Fundamentally, most companies struggle to tackle these challenges because of not knowing where to start. Aberdeen’s 2011 report (Expense Management for a New Decade and The Mid-Market Expense Management Program) shows that:

* 56% of mid-market companies have limited visibility into T&E spending

* Less than 45% track their expenses via analytics and business intelligence in real time

* Only 33% leverage cloud-based expense management solutions and 28% integrate corporate card and expense management

* Just 15% provide T&E data to C-level executives for financial forecasting purposes

* Finally only a mere 6% utilize mobile expense management apps

Solutions for a new decade

The good news is that cloud-based solutions have significantly brought down the cost of automating T&E expense management. Solutions such as ours have been shown to deliver huge reductions in expense processing costs.

What steps to take?

1. Benchmark T&E costs against industry averages

2. Audit expenses against corporate travel policies with an automated expense auditing system

3. Leverage expense data to improve budgeting and forecasting. This data should allow companies to adjust travel policies to match realities and trends

4. Sign up for a cloud-based and mobile expense-management application. For example the up-front costs to get going with our solution is very minimal while being very economical to own

5. Integrate corporate card solutions (if a company has a corporate card program)

More than just cost control

Automating T&E does even more than just reduce costs.

* It makes it harder for employees to inflate expenses — and far easier for companies to detect fraud. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, up to 13% of company fraud arises in this area, so that’s a huge advantage.

* Expense reporting time is reduced and employees are reimbursed faster which is a major boost to morale. Automation results in an average 28% reduction in expense approval times and 27% reduction in employee expense report creation times according to the latest Aberdeen reports.

nefits of T&E Automation

Over the last few months we have encountered numerous questions and discussions related to automation of the T&E process; specifically the advantages of automation. Here is a quick background of the challenges and synopsis of the advantages.

Some background –

Surveys based on millions of expense reports submitted by 3,000 companies reveal that U.S. T&E costs are constantly rising. The largest increases were in airfare (up 5.7%), hotels (up 4.5%), and meetings (up 7.7%).

With T&E spend accounting for 7% percent of the total budget for the average mid-market company ($50 million to $800 million in revenue), according to recent Aberdeen Group research, the challenge facing CFOs and Controllers in this area is dramatic.

Scope of challenge

Fundamentally, most companies struggle to tackle these challenges. Aberdeen’s 2011 report (Expense Management for a New Decade and The Mid-Market Expense Management Program) shows that:

* 56% of mid-market companies have limited visibility into T&E spending

* Less than 45% track their expenses via analytics and business intelligence in real time

* Only 33% leverage cloud-based expense management solutions and 28% integrate corporate card and expense management

* Just 15% provide T&E data to C-level executives for financial forecasting purposes

* Finally only a mere 6% utilize mobile expense management apps

Solutions for a new decade

The good news is that cloud-based solutions have significantly brought down the cost of automating T&E expense management. These new solutions have been shown to deliver a whopping 46% average reduction in expense-processing costs.

What steps to take?

1. Benchmark T&E costs against industry averages

2. Audit expenses against corporate travel policies with an automated expense auditing systems

3. Leverage expense data to improve budgeting and forecasting. This data should allow companies to adjust travel policies to match realities and trends

4. Sign up for cloud-based and mobile expense-management applications. Typically, they don’t have huge up-front costs and are economical to own

5. Integrate corporate card solutions (if a company has a corporate card program)

6. Implement an end-to-end expense management solution

More than just cost control

Automating T&E does even more than reduce costs.

* It makes it harder for employees to inflate expenses — and far easier for companies to detect fraud. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, up to 13% of company fraud arises in this area, so that’s a huge advantage.

* Expense reporting time is reduced and employees are reimbursed faster which is a major boost to morale. Automation results in an average 28% reduction in expense approval times and 27% reduction in employee expense report creation times according to the latest Aberdeen reports

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 –

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