Oracle Vows To Support PeopleSoft Expense App

Despite concerns among corporate users of PeopleSoft's expense reporting system and other applications, Oracle—following its $10.3 billion takeover of the software provider in December—last month promised support of PeopleSoft technologies for the next decade. Oracle officials said the firm would continue to release new PeopleSoft software and develop merged best-of-breed applications, including an expense reporting module.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison quelled concerns of abandonment last month, speaking via Webcast to customers, employees and investors from the company's headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. "We're going to continue to develop all three application product lines for some years to come," he said, referring to PeopleSoft, Oracle and JD Edwards offerings. "I know there was a lot of concern early on. It was reported in the press that, if we were successful in acquiring PeopleSoft, the first thing we would do is cancel all the PeopleSoft products and tell the customers they had 48 hours to move to the Oracle products. That's not a good idea and we'd have no idea how to implement that. Just the opposite is true."

Bryn Potter, manager of systems and business processes for travel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said PeopleSoft succeeded in calming fears about the future of supporting the company's PeopleSoft expense reporting module, among others. "We're such a big PeopleSoft shop that they did come to us and said, 'look, don't panic,' " he said. "We're a huge Oracle shop too, and maybe we're in a good seat because we use both."

In fact, Ellison said the company not only will continue to support products, but also will continue to release next-generation PeopleSoft systems. "We said at very beginning that we would support the PeopleSoft products for a decade. We intend to do more than just support those products; we intend to enhance and improve those products for years to come."

Oracle senior vice president of applications development John Wookey said PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.9, the next-generation application that houses an expense reporting tool, still is on target for a 2005 release.

Speaking prior to the Oracle acquisition, PeopleSoft told BTN that it was in the process of ramping up the latest version of its expense tool, which includes new workflow features and an upgraded interface.

Additionally, Oracle announced that it would develop a "successor suite," taking components from both PeopleSoft and Oracle technologies.

"My understanding is Oracle's IExpense is a little stronger than PeopleSoft," said Acquis Consulting Group consultant David Kaufman. "My guess is—although they say they're going to take the best of both breeds—it will lean more toward Oracle IExpense."

Ellison said the company will focus on selling new clients Oracle's ERP suite, which includes the company's expense reporting module.

While companies with a sole focus on T&E successfully promised reductions in both expense filing time and costs, ERP systems are making parallel assertions, and in many cases, backing them up.

Corporate card integration, strong workflow, the ability to write auditing rules and even receipt imaging have become standards for ERP players.

"Three or four years ago there was no comparison and the software companies that focused solely on the T&E reporting tool had a leg up," Kaufman said. "But over the past year or two, the enterprise systems, although they may not be completely on par, are very close. There may be certain advantages to them, since they integrate with other financial modules so nicely. That said, all the T&E systems today integrate fairly easily with all major financial system vendors."

As ERP powerhouses PeopleSoft, SAP and Oracle asserted their ability to integrate with financial systems is a strong differentiator, Concur Technologies senior director of product management Chris Juneau said that linking its reporting tool to ERP applications has become so common during companywide rollouts that integration is second nature for pure expense players.

The vendors focusing solely on T&E systems have countered ERP allegations with claims of lengthy implementation periods for ERPs.

"The biggest deterrent that we found with our clients is with a lot of these enterprise systems you first need the core modules to be implemented," Kaufman said. "T&E reporting is a much quicker implementation than an enterprise system. We've dealt with companies that have spent three years getting SAP implemented but they're putting in a Gelco, for example, in three months. They don't want to wait those three years to have the whole SAP implementation complete before putting in the T&E system. There are actually some companies that are putting in the T&E system now so they can realize immediate benefits and then will reevaluate three years down the road if they want to keep the system or move to the SAP or Oracle."

By some industry estimates, more corporate clients use the ERPs for expense management than pure expense players. According to figures provided by vendors for the BTN Automation Directory (BTN, Sept. 20, 2004), SAP boasted more expense reporting clients than Concur, Gelco and Necho Systems Corp. combined.

One edge ERP players have in the market is price. Since many companies will deploy an ERP for HR or financial functions, the system providers will throw in freebies like expense reporting.

"If we already got it, we might as well use it," is the mentality of many travel buyers going this route to replace excel spreadsheets and paper processes with automation.

"If I have an employee self-service license, then I own Travel Management," said Debbie Peake, SAP product manager for travel management solutions. "It's not a situation where there's an additional cost to use that functionality."

Kaufman said how companies use those tools is more important than the brand.

"They're all tools and the way you use the tool matters: how you build processes, the policies the tool supports, how much auditing you perform, the level of centralization," Kaufman said. "Those are decisions you make as a company that are fairly independent of the specific tool functionality."