Inhouse Development or an ASP Service
Whilst UK organisations agree that automating the expenses process would be of real business benefit, there is one main question posed when deciding how to introduce an automated system:
Should we buy an existing system or build our own?
Building an in-house system is an appealing option to organisations with a strong internal IT expertise, a bespoke system will tick all of your criteria boxes and you will have complete control over the build. But, however confident your IT team are in building a specific expense management system, there are 10 main business critical questions to answer before opting to go in-house:
- How long will it take to build and be ready for use?
- expenses is built, fully functional and ready to use within 24 hours
- How robust will the internal QA testing be?
- expenses has been penetration tested and each new version is subjected to a heavy QA project before release
- How will the system be supported on a day to day basis?
- expenses comes with 24/7 technical support, full back up and an office hours helpdesk. There is no requirenment for additional hardware purchases as expenses is a web-based application
- How long will the taxation calculations remain current?
- expenses holds all current calculations and these are updated immediately with legislative changes. The expenses team has a vast knowledge of all government imposed taxes and ensures all customers are kept current of this information
- Will the system be able to grow with your business?
- expenses has an unlimited database capacity to cope with growth and has a vast library of functions which can be turned on and off as required. New functionality relating to changes in business requirements are added on a quarterly basis, and this is reviewed by the expenses team each month as part of our customer support promise
- Who will answer your claimants’ usage questions?
- expenses helpdesk is manned by senior support staff ensuring all claimants can access, use and update the system
- How will your data be reported?
- expenses has an excellent graphical analysis suite which produces Management Information and taxation reports at the touch of a button
- Who will have overall responsibility for the project?
- expenses is fully configurable to the needs of your organisation, this includes any and all functionality your Finance Team requires plus User training is available onsite, at frequent free training sessions and at annual User Groups
- What happens if the system falls over?
- expenses schedules, logs and monitors backups and replication to the point of failure. Uptime is currently at 100% outside scheduled maintenance for which clients are notified in advance
- How secure will your data be?
- expenses is fully secure and appropriate safeguards are implemented to ensure continuity of practice, integrity, security and privacy of the computer data and Personally Identifiable Information
Furthermore, what will happen when your in-house developer leaves or when the project falls behind schedule costing more and more in man hours?
With 1 full day consultancy spent configuring expenses to your organisations specific needs, your system can be up and running within 24 hours, a massive time saving on building in-house and a real boost to the productivity of your IT and Finance Teams.
With expenses you can be assured that your system will keep running and remain supported as long as you need it to be.
For further information on expenses :
Contact a member of our expenses Team
Visit our website
