PerkinElmer, Inc., a US$1.5 billion global provider of scientific instruments, consumables and services to the pharmaceutical, biomedical, environmental testing and general industrial markets, has gone live in the UK with Geac’s Extensity® Expense Reports, an internet-based travel and expense management system from Geac, a global enterprise software company for business performance management. The UK is now the fourth country to go live following a two-month implementation at PerkinElmer in Italy, Spain and France.
PerkinElmer’s Analytical Instruments division now has 200 home-based mobile service engineers and salesmen live on the system; a further 350 users will also be using the system by mid-2004 across Europe. By reducing time spent on generating and auditing expense reports, administration cost savings are already being realised. Further savings are expected through greater compliance to corporate travel policies, tighter vendor compliance, and more effective VAT reclaim through better management of the complex VAT rules related to T&E across Europe.

Natale Perego, European field process leader at PerkinElmer’s Italian operations, said: “Although we are a third of the way through our roll-out, we already can see significant benefits. The Geac T&E system is ideally suited to supporting our centralised European administration operations, following our move to a shared service based in Italy to support 14 European countries. Previously, we used to have 10 administrators processing expense forms across Europe - we now only need two.  In the past, we used to physically check every expense form generated by an Excel spreadsheet. We now have corporate travel policies for users to follow and advanced exception management facilities within the new system, so we don’t need to audit every form. As users and managers become increasingly familiar with the system we will only need to check a very small proportion in the future.”

Although administration cost savings have already begun to be realised, PerkinElmer will also benefit from increasing vendor compliance. As more staff begin consistently using designated suppliers for travel arrangements, PerkinElmer is set to obtain greater volume discounts through using these pre-selected companies.

Guy Tweedale, Geac’s EMEA marketing director for the T&E range of products, said: “PerkinElmer is a perfect example of a global organisation that is set to reap enormous dividends from tackling the mass intricacy of European tax regimes. Our T&E products have 200 man-years of development built into them. This includes three years of on-the-ground research into different rules and regulations for VAT reclaiming, tax deductions, rebates and ‘per diems’  in 44 countries - not to mention some bizarre cultural differences. Some of our customers have seen an enormous difference to the amount of tax they are now able to reclaim. One has managed to increase its European VAT reclaims by 70 percent and likewise another has generated an extra €175,000 in tax reclaims across Europe. Some of these ‘second-wave’ efficiencies, after the initial administrative savings, can be really quite staggering.”

Once the European roll-out to all 550 users at PerkinElmer Analytical Instruments is complete across 14 countries, PerkinElmer will then look at introducing the system to 250 users within its Life Sciences division. (Both the Analytical Instruments and Life Sciences divisions are currently being integrated to form a single division in mid-2004 - Life and Analytical Sciences.) Then PerkinElmer will evaluate rolling out Geac T&E solutions to its other divisions - Optoelectronics and Fluid Sciences.

PerkinElmer has deployed Geac’s Extensity Expense Reports system on SQL Server database running on NT server and it has also been integrated to PerkinElmer’s SAP R/3 financial system.
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