TECHNOLOGY FEATURE: Spendvision (July 20)

Robert Kirby, ceo of Spendvision, talks to ABTN about his company's link to HRG and the rise of the expense management company

Robert Kirby

Spendvision is a relative newcomer to the world of expense management having begun life as part of consulting company Deloitte in 2004. Since then it has grown significantly with its workforce burgeoning from five to 75.

It has also been able to break away from Deloitte thanks in large part to a substantial 58% investment from HRG, a UK travel management company (TMC).

Spendvision's founder and ceo Robert Kirby explained why close links with TMCs are so important to it. "We initially came out of providing expense management technology, and we've worked closely with HRG over the five years and the time they initially invested in formulating a joint bid for the Queensland Travel business in Australia," Mr Kirby said.

"The consequence of that was we won that business with HRG, and we started to develop a tighter relationship about how we can integrate all the travel management processes that corporates need, right the way to expense management, so there was a seamless process flow."

Mr Kirby described the unique and often tricky position that expense management holds in the mind of the corporate. He argued that with travel booking in the hands of procurement and expenses more of a finance matter, it was often hard to get across the concept of a "seamless" T&E process.

He said: "It's a challenge for companies to get their mind around a unified end-to-end process. But once they realise, particularly in these tough times, finance directors have the more active process with the whole travel spend, corporate spend, expense management process.

"Seamless, total control, total visibility, right the way through the board, right through to the managers signing off on individual expenses and indeed managers signing off on overseas travel for example. We have had that vision from the outset."

To realise its aim, Spendvision delivers a single online platform which supports different modules allowing clients to customise the solution according to their needs. The platform can be customised to cater for a range of requirements including corporate card administration, spend analytics and programme management, plus access over mobile devices such as BlackBerrys and iPhones.

Mr Kirby singled out a telecoms module which links the Spendvision platform to mobile phone carriers, allowing reports to distinguish between business and private calls. Another ‘payables' module allows cardholders to vary their credit limit as they travel while staying within a corporate's operating requirement.

"That's really all integrated within the travel space because that's where the initial burst of expenditure takes place. Someone's got to go to a conference, someone's got to go on a sales call, someone's got to go on an overseas trip, but their credit limit might only be a £1,000 and they've got to buy flights, accommodation etc.," Mr Kirby added.

Spendvision's list of clients and bank, telecoms and travel partners is varied and impressive. The company recently won an important contract with Barclaycard, providing the card supplier with a fully customised and branded expense platform. SunTrust, NAB, Air New Zealand and HRG Travel also manage their expenses using Spendvision.

Mr Kirby said: "We certainly look to compete on certain niche levels with certain players such as KDS and Concur, but we go deep and broad, and that's one of the messages that we're carrying forward. Our platform provides partners, not only a continuous increase in functionality.

"They're able to grow their business as a consequence, whether it is through better corporate cards, travel management or utilisation of services."

Expense management has risen up the corporate agenda in recent times which is not hard to understand given the current economic troubles. Mr Kirby argued that the role of the expense management provider was becoming increasingly important.

He said: "Without a doubt, companies are taking the sensible approach. Most of the investments in the good times were on the huge systems, about how they were going to change the back office system.

"But they didn't look at what's actually causing the grief within the company such as how are expenses done. Is it accurate? Are people booking up to the bucket of money so they can hide it?

"Are they collectively going down to the pub with half a dozen colleagues and splitting the bill, and finding that that sits below the radar? We can track that. We can run reports that show when the same cards list the same merchant on the same day and at what time. That's powerful stuff."

The simplicity of Spendvision's online platform is one of its strengths. According to Mr Kirby, small companies can put in place expense management within two to three days, as there is no installation of licensed software or hardware to implement.

This strengthens Spendvision's identity as a provider of "niche" expense management as it is able to cater for unique requirements of smaller organisations as well as the broad ranging needs of large corporates.

Spendvision Holdings Ltd, based in London with offices across the globe, is a subsidiary of HRG. The relationship has enabled Spendvision to provide certain product enhancements to clients who book travel with HRG.

Mr Kirby said: "We are going through a process of ensuring that we publishing our web services so other TMCS can see that. With HRG it's a very tight relationship. With them we can actually pull data back into our solution which attaches all sorts of travel information to that travel process such as flight information, which you might not automatically get with another TMC.

"HRG has brought in more investment. Their initial investment is very important to us, because it allowed us to deal with large corporates around the world, and it's been one of the most significant relationships that we've built. Without that backing, it's hard to get the sort of client relationships that you want."

www.spendvision.com