IT - Big Five focus on new market

Big Five consultants are preparing to muscle in on the potentially lucrative market of expense-management software.

The area of business expenses has remained largely untouched by financial software so far, though enterprise-wide giants, such as Oracle, have begun to develop their own expense management modules.

But, in recent weeks, both Deloitte & Touche and KPMG have been talking to Captura, a US-based expense management vendor, about software implementation and project-management partnerships in the UK.

David Hillman, consultant for Deloittes in the US, said future demand for expense-management software would be greatest in multinational companies which could save millions of dollars by scrapping paper-based systems.

‘They have a significant number of expense reports to process and consolidate which, as they are from many different places, is difficult to accomplish,’ he added.

Dan Vetras, president and chief executive officer of Captura said: ‘Our software saved Merrill Lynch $5m last year when renegotiating its expense system.’

The Windows-based software can be accessed remotely by a browser. After an employee submits an expense claim the Captura software checks that the claim is in line with company policy. If it is not, an automatic email alert is sent to the employee’s line manager.