AmEx, Visa partner with e-commerce providers
By Staff -- Purchasing, 5/20/1999
First MasterCard partnered with Clarus and Microsoft to provide MRO buyers with an online purchasing system (PUR: Apr. 22, '99; p. 74). Now, American Express is joining forces with Ariba Technologies, Commerce One, and Concur Technologies; and Visa is aligning with SAP.American Express
Integrating the American Express Corporate Purchasing Card (CPC) with Ariba's Operating Resource Management System (orms), Commerce One's Marketsite.net, and Concur's Companystore helps to automate the requisition to payment process.
While Ariba's orms, for example, automates the purchasing part of the process, the American Express Corporate Purchasing Card automates payment, reconciliation, and integration of data into the general ledger or other financial systems. Companies can also use the card to control and track spending whether employees purchase online, via the phone, or in person.
These partnerships "will help companies purchase over the Internet or through an intranet, while maintaining the strict controls that a purchasing card program offers and that finance executives demand," says Brigitte Baumann, general manager and senior vice president, American Express Corporate Services Interactive.
One advantage of using the American Express Corporate Purchasing Card in conjunction with an e-commerce system is that clients can rely on the American Express single network, since it offers control of the transaction from the point of sale through processing and data reporting. The single network structure allows American Express CPC to provide enhanced levels of data capture as well as data accuracy, critical for reconciliation and reporting. The company also provides spending and preferred supplier limits, expense management experience, and consulting services.
"Our work with American Express will enable us to expand upon the marketplace services offered through Commerce One's MarketSite.net by delivering industry leading payment services through American Express," says Mark Hoffman, president and CEO, Commerce One. "This will allow companies to automatically pay and reconcile back-end systems to streamline processes and reduce costs."
The CompanyStore integration is an extension of Concur's alliance with American Express over the past 15 months to deliver travel expense reporting tools by integrating American Express' card data and travel services into Concur's Xpense Management Solution (XMS) product.
The two companies have already demonstrated the benefits of integrating the Corporate Card into systems designed to streamline travel and entertainment processes through their work on xms/ax, the customized version of the software offered to American Express customers.
The enhanced integration of American Express Corporate Card and travel services into xms/ax reduces time an employee spends on both travel booking and expense reporting. xms/ax automatically creates an expense report based on a travel itinerary created through American Express' AXI Travel online booking product or its travel agency offices, and links each expense report to the corresponding itinerary. With integrated data feeds from American Express, xms/ax can prepopulate those expense reports with both travel reservations and corporate charge card data.
Visa aligns with SAP
Visa and SAP's alignment combines the Purchasing Card with SAP Business to Business Procurement, a Web-enabled electronic commerce system. The two companies plan to deliver several new features to customers beginning later this year. Among them:
* The Integrated Transaction/Statement File, received electronically by SAP R/3 in a Business Application Programming Interface (bapi) format, contains complete purchasing card data from a corporation's bank. This data is then automatically combined with other corporate expense data in SAP R/3, providing purchasing managers with comprehensive reports and more effective data analysis.
* Purchasing Card Transaction Reconciliation, a new SAP workflow-based process, enables managers and cardholders to approve purchasing card transactions and determine the proper cost allocations, eliminating manual and paper-based procedures.
* Purchasing Card Program Data Management, with SAP BBP, permits a purchasing card program administrator to manage the purchasing cards issued to a company's employees.
"Corporate customers are interested in managing a single process for purchasing, payment, and reporting, says Bruno Perreault, senior vice president, Commercial Card Products. "Visa is committed to working with leading business application suppliers such as SAP to develop innovative, integrated purchasing systems that our member banks can offer their corporate customers."
To further extend the benefits of its card, Visa has developed an Implementation Guide for its member financial institutions that contains info on how they can integrate the card with their customers' ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems. The Guide includes ERP supplier profiles, data file requirements, operations guidelines, and user training info.
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