The company is using Concur a centrally managed Expense processing system. Associate submits travel/expense request to management. Management approves or rejects the request. Upon management approval, the planned expense is assigned a PTA (Pre-Trip Authorization number). Once the associate generates the expense, they post those expenses against the PTA number using a web based interface that would list all available expenses from the charge card and allow the associate to assign them to the expense report. The Associate then submits the expenses for reimbursement. A back office Audit process evaluates the expenses against The Company defined Policy to see that the expense meets the requirements. Once the expense report passes audit approval and management approval, it is approved for reimbursement. The reimbursement process will submit payment to the Credit card provider for all approved corporate card expenses; and all approved out-of-pocket expenses will be paid via the associate's payroll check.

The data for the expense system is in stored in a myriad of Oracle tables. These tables can be accessed via the Cognos Series 7 Business Intelligence software to generate back-office audit and management reports. Certain reports will be generated by directly accessing the databases using Cognos Impromptu Web Queries. The reports will then be published monthly onto a web site as a way for customers to access their own reporting data. Ad hoc reporting requirements will be done by using Impromptu web reports, analysis by creating expense data "cubes" using Cognos Power Play and publishing the cubes onto the same web site for users use data for analysis.

The Nrit team's expertise with Cognos and Concur (T&E Solution) products was a major plus. The ability to coordinate with Cognos (as a Premium Certified Partner) was another critical factor in the company's decision process. Also, Nrit's reputation of doing implementations on time and on budget was also factored in. Nrit was asked to implement the following products for the project:

    " Impromptu Web Reports (For Enterprise wide Reporting using the intranet)
    " Cognos Powerplay Enterprise Server (For multidimensional Analysis on the Web)
    " Cognos Notice cast (For Alerts)
Cognos Impromptu Web reporting product, an enterprise-reporting product to enable the client and its key personnel to do both standard reports and adhoc reports against the Concur Travel and Expense system. Cognos Powerplay was used to analyze Travel and Expense information to detect spending by various SBU's and also to detect any anomalies. Cognos Noticecast was used to send alerts to Managers and Employees.

Nrit enabled the company to implement Cognos tools to build reports, analytical cubes and create alerts to provide management and employees with a total reporting solution. This enables the management to track, trend and analyze its travel and expense information across the various business units. The availability of this information enables the company to keep track of its expenses, allows for greater efficiency in processing expense reports, allows it to monitor compliance to company expense policies and also enables detection of fraudulent usage of company provided credit card.