Local company ExpenseAnywhere helps clients manage corporate travel costs
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Ashok Dahr, CEO of Monroeville-based ExpenseAnywhere: "Every business has expenses and every business needs to automate to stay competitive."
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When Monroeville-based automated travel company ExpenseAnywhere debuted in 2004, it was tough to predict where it would fall among a list of tech startups promising to lead the surge toward a paperless society.
Its model for automatically tracking travel and entertainment expenses promised to eliminate costs associated with storing paper travel logs and receipts. But would those savings be enough to convince businesses in a thriving economy to shake tradition and implement a new system?
Eight years later, in an economy where profits for some companies are as dependent on cutbacks as they are on actual sales, ExpenseAnywhere has risen to become one of the top three companies in its field, according to CEO Ashok Dhar, who expects the company's eight-year trend of consistent growth to continue for at least another decade.
"Every business has expenses and every business needs to automate to stay competitive," said Mr. Dhar, who was a nuclear physicist with the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen before he formed the company. "Our solution fits right in and helps businesses improve processes and gain operational efficiency."
Mr. Dhar said he and two other company officials have put more than $12 million in private funds toward research and development since the company's inception. The 35-employee company's two largest competitors are Redmond, Wash.-based Concur Technologies and ExpenseWire, a subsidiary of Foster City, Calif.-based online commerce company Rearden Commerce.
ExpenseAnywhere uses both cloud-based software and individual licenses with companies to record and register travel, lodging, entertainment and other expenses as soon as they're debited from an approved corporate or personal credit card.
Records of the transaction are transferred from the cardholders' bank to the ExpenseAnywhere system, which then transfers the information to the appropriate files within the company's travel expense logging system.
The automation gives managers and accountants immediate answers regarding travel expenses and offers employees the opportunity to get reimbursements sooner. In some cases, ExpenseAnywhere can link to a company's payroll service agency to set up automatic reimbursement once details of an expense report are approved.
The company has released three separate versions of its software -- ExpenseAnywhere Lite for small to medium-sized companies, ExpenseAnywhere Enterprise for large and global companies and ExpenseAnywhere Gov for government agencies and contractors -- to accommodate a range of clients. It also introduced its P-Card System to track spending on purchasing cards used by corporations for day-to-day expenses.
While it's hard to top the efficiency of a credit card transaction being registered in a company's log moments after being swiped, ExpenseAnywhere executives have implemented a number of services and partnerships to maximize their menu of options.
In the past year alone, the company teamed with travel service Orbitz for Business and with online mapping company MapQuest to give travelers the option of computing mileage and reimbursement before setting out on a journey. It also added an option for budgeting and auditing expenses to its ExpenseAnywhere Enterprise software.
Enhanced recognition technology, introduced in August, identifies and validates digital documents such as receipts so they can be filed with the corresponding portion of the expense report. A mobile app launched this month allows travelers to send digital pictures of receipts to the system from their smartphones.
Frank Petito, president of Orbitz for Business, said in a press release that the partnership will give customers tools it has been seeking for years to simplify the often complex process that comes with business travel.
"A common theme we hear from our travel and expense managers, CFOs and procurement officers is the importance of building expense management tools that integrate across the booking environment, from pre-travel approvals to end of trip reporting and reimbursement," he said. "ExpenseAnywhere delivers all of those capabilities and more, including mobile support for travelers looking to manage more of their expenses from the road."
The year of whirlwind of activity has paid off. Since April 2010, the company has gone from serving 80 organizations to 120, with more than 90,000 people using the service.
And with plans to announce three major partnerships in January -- two with financial companies and one with a travel company -- and to expand globally, Mr. Dhar is optimistic some organizations who are late to the game of automating expense tracking will find their way to his company.
Mr. Dhar said that's already happening. "We have very few sales calls going out these days. Most of our customers call us," he said with a grin.
Correction/Clarification: (Published December 16, 2011) ExpenseWire, an automated travel expense company, is a subsidiary of Foster City, Calif.-based online commerce company Rearden Commerce. A Thursday story misidentified the company's original owner.
First Published December 15, 2011 12:00 am
