Extensity, Inc. today announced Extensity? Business Travel Application, a next generation business travel management system that improves processes and delivers dramatic savings by cutting costs. The company is also announcing Extensity Travel Plans, a Web-based enterprise application that automates the travel planning and approval process, and Extensity Expense Reports 3.0, a major upgrade adding full Euro support, a new system administration tool and an enhanced GUI. Close integration between Extensity Travel Plans and Extensity Expense Reports, combined with partnerships with leading travel booking providers, make up Extensity Business Travel Application. The Extensity Express? Guaranteed Implementation Plan guarantees complete implementation for either product within 90 days; customers implementing both Extensity Travel Plans and Extensity Expense Reports are guaranteed complete implementation within 120 days.

Business travel costs consist of two components: direct and indirect costs. Extensity Business Travel Application enables companies for the first time to create an end-to-end travel management process that reduces direct costs such as airfare, and indirect costs related to processing, auditing and managing expense reports. Extensity Travel Plans addresses direct costs by helping travelers plan trips within business rules and routing them directly to preferred travel booking companies for processing. Upon return, Extensity Expense Reports 3.0 helps the traveler request reimbursement through a reporting interface automatically pre-populated with expenses paid for with a corporate card. By spanning all three stages of travel - planning, booking, and expense reporting and reimbursement - this tightly integrated process generates valuable data that companies can use to optimize travel policies and processes. From beginning to end, Extensity Business Travel Application simplifies business travel and yields dramatic cost savings for a rapid return on investment.

Extensity Business Travel Application will also integrate industry benchmark data from Runzheimer International, a Rochester, Wisc.-based management consulting firm that specializes in travel and living costs. “By adding Runzheimer data to the company’s travel management solution, Extensity is delivering another tool to their customers that will help them monitor and control business travel costs,” said Kraig Rodenbeck, director of project management at Runzheimer.

“The introduction of Extensity Travel Plans, paired with the release of Extensity Expense Reports 3.0, completes Extensity’s vision for an integrated, end-to-end travel management solution,” said Extensity Founder, President, and CEO Sharam Sasson. “Extensity Travel Plans and Extensity Expense Reports will help our customers get the highest possible return from their business travel budgets, while making the whole process as simple and convenient as possible for travelers and their managers.”

Extensity Travel Plans: Efficient Planning and Cost-Effective Business Travel
Extensity Travel Plans gives travelers a quick, easy way to specify and request approval for their business travel needs through a simple Web browser interface, then routes the information directly to travel booking companies for processing. By automating the travel planning process, Extensity Travel Plans enables corporations for the first time to realize both direct and indirect savings in one of the largest operating costs they face. While most travel automation applications have focused on reducing the cost and time associated with planning, booking, and expensing business travel—so-called indirect costs—none before has yielded savings in direct costs such as airfare, hotels fees, and car rental, costs which account for the bulk of business travel costs.

With Extensity Travel Plans, corporations can now dramatically cut these direct costs by enforcing corporate travel policies and supporting better decision-making before a trip takes place, not after the fact. For example, companies often incur excessive direct costs on trips that are planned on short notice or without regard to preferred travel vendors. At a typical $500 million company with annual travel and entertainment expenses of $15 million, a 2% reduction in these costs results in a savings of $300,000—and, as with indirect costs, a reduction in direct costs goes directly to the bottom line for an immediate financial impact. By providing an easy-to-use application for advance planning and approval of business trips, Extensity Travel Plans makes travel policy adherence an integral part of the business travel process, helping companies ensure that every trip makes financial as well as business sense.

“Extensity Travel Plans will make travel and expense reporting much easier and efficient for the University of California,” said Gary A. Mack, Contract Specialist in Material Management at the University of California’s Office of the President. “It is important that we implement and maintain both travel policy and comprehensive record-keeping to track University expenditures,” says Mack. In addition, Mack cites the value of centralized policy enforcement and data capture in gaining leverage in vendor negotiations. “Our objective is to reduce every percentage point we can through consolidated purchasing, which results in reducing our systemwide costs while making our travel budget go further,” he says. “Extensity’s Travel Plans plays a major role in assisting the University achieve this goal.” Extensity’s end-to-end travel solution will streamline this process for both travelers and the administrative staff.”

Partnerships with Leading Online Booking Vendors
Extensity’s partnership with leading online travel booking providers Internet Travel Network (ITN), Rosenbluth International, and XOL creates a closed-loop system that provides business travelers with optimal convenience and quality of service while greatly reducing administrative overhead for their managers and in-house support personnel. Said Dan Whaley, co-founder and vice president, product development at ITN: “Extensity Travel Plans integrates fully with ITN’s booking engine, enabling organizations to route their travelers through preferred vendors, cutting both administrative and travel costs and increasing employee convenience and control over their business travel.”

Extensity Expense Reports 3.0
While Extensity Travel Plans is the pre-travel complement to Extensity Expense Reports, Extensity’s leading travel expense reporting application, which helps companies achieve optimal financial performance and process efficiency in the reporting, auditing, and management of travel and entertainment-related costs. Extensity Expense Reports presents travelers with a simple, browser-based interface for expense reporting, pre-populated with credit card charges of such corporate card issuers as American Express, US Bank, Paymentech, Diners’ Club, and GE Capital. After automatic verification for business rule compliance, reports are routed to managers for approval, then fed seamlessly into the customer’s financial systems for reimbursement.

In addition, a highly efficient new system administration tool enables customers to avoid the hidden costs often associated with enterprise applications by eliminating the need to bring in outside professional service organizations. The resulting savings means Extensity customers realize the lowest total cost of ownership over the entire lifetime of the deployment.

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