La Quinta and Tickets.com Select EMS 11 Software and Outsourcing Services to Decrease Telecom Costs and Create More Efficient Expense Management Processes

Symphony Spend Management Solutions, a business unit of Symphony Services, today announced it has launched an enhanced version of its Expense Management System (EMS) 11(R), a Web-based application developed to support its outsourced total telecommunications expense management (TEM) offering. Available through a hosted or fully outsourced delivery model, global companies including La Quinta and Tickets.com have selected EMS 11 to streamline costs and gain greater insight and control over enterprise voice, data and wireless services in an outsourced capacity.

Symphony Spend Management Solutions' total Telecom Expense Management capabilities provide a systematic outsourced approach for companies to automate order processing, monitor expenses, manage vendor invoices, track inventory of assets, provide ongoing invoice reconciliation and accurately allocate costs to internal cost centers. EMS 11 is easily integrated with existing infrastructure, including ERP, accounts payable and human resource systems, and enables companies to benefit from better workflow management and automation of their telecom expense processes.

"To be successful, La Quinta must ensure a positive guest experience at its hotels in order to attract and retain guests. Equally important is our ability to effectively manage our costs to run the business. We prefer dedicating resources to driving customer satisfaction and improving efficiencies versus vendor management and IT help desk activities for telecommunications support," said Jim Mitchell, executive vice president, information technology for LQ Management L.L.C. "Symphony Spend Management Solutions and its enhanced EMS 11 offering provide us with value-added services in inventory control, invoice and billing review and contract negotiations support. Symphony enables La Quinta to maintain tight control over telecom expense management processes, improve accounts payable performance for our vendors and maximize related cost savings opportunities."

Gain Greater Visibility and Control of Telecommunications Costs

As part of Symphony Spend Management Solutions' outsourced total telecom expense management offering, EMS 11 is a modular, fully integrated software application for managing voice, data and wireless telecommunications expenses, assets and processes. EMS 11 allows organizations to more quickly and efficiently process invoices; to better manage moves, adds, changes and deletes (MACDs) for vendors; to reconcile charges against inventory and to gain greater visibility into telecommunications costs. Modules include:

-- Order management for streamlining the service request process, trouble ticket and workflow

-- Inventory management to centralize data on assets and services

-- Invoice management to process billing data from all internal and external sources - both electronic and paper - and reconcile that data against inventory

-- Billing management to efficiently and accurately allocate expenses through a single consolidated statement and through integration with ERP or other systems

-- Secure Web-based reporting of financial information for easy graphical data summaries

"Tighter control over telecom and IT spend remains a significant opportunity for companies to recognize cost savings and improve their bottom line through better vendor and asset management," said Eric Goodness, research vice president, Gartner, Inc. "When evaluating telecom spend management solutions, companies must consider the delivery model and functionally that best suits their needs, including the ability for the software to integrate with existing infrastructure, automate invoice processing and workflow management, and provide audit capabilities that ensure accurate payment of invoices."

New enhancements to EMS 11 and operations support include an Auditor Toolkit with leveraged Customer Service Records (CSR) capture capabilities, call accounting integration with VOIP support, hierarchical invoice approver/reconciliation functionality and Six Sigma processes for all business process outsourced clients. New user-friendly, productivity-oriented features include screen consolidation and workflow automation for business process automation.

"We operate in a fast-paced, highly transactional business, which is supported by extensive telecommunications and IT infrastructure. While telecom spend represents one of our largest expenses, we recognized that it could also be one of our greatest opportunities for creating new efficiencies and squeezing out additional cost savings," said Shane Miller, senior vice president IT operations, Tickets.com. "Symphony's EMS 11 software easily handles our complete accounts payable cycle while providing comprehensive invoice audit capabilities to ensure our vendor contracts and invoices are in-synch. As a result, working with Symphony has helped Tickets.com reduce telecom spend by more than 15 percent."

The company's solutions include a suite of modular applications and services with multiple delivery options, including a hosted SaaS or fully outsourced model. With its SaaS model, users gain secure, Web-based remote access to EMS 11. Symphony's solutions configure, maintain and support the hardware and software environment while hosted at its ISO-certified, secure data center. However, some organizations may prefer Symphony Spend Management Solutions' fully outsourced telecom expense management offering. With its managed professional outsourcing services, Symphony Spend Management Solutions becomes an extension of clients' telecom and IT departments, with full responsibility for processing, audit and reconciliation; inventory audit and network optimization; cost allocation and financial management; strategic sourcing; service delivery management, help desk; and call accounting.

"With a successful track record for creating long-term outsourcing engagements that result in process improvement and efficiencies for its clients, Symphony Spend Management Solutions represent deep expense management expertise that enables large global enterprises to implement a closed-loop expense management process, resulting in greater control and cost reductions," said Alan Harlan, president, Symphony Spend Management Solutions. "With the enhancements of EMS 11 and our outsourced services capabilities, we are providing companies with a complete telecom spend management solution with enhanced workflow management and process automation features that offer clients greater opportunities to rein in expenses and streamline management of their complex wireless and wireline telecom and IT investments."

Pricing and Availability

EMS 11 is available immediately as a Web-based server system. Pricing is dependent upon the service model that best suits clients' needs. For more information, e-mail SMS-Sales@symphonysms.com or call Alice Arterburn, director, business development at 1.615.231.6183.

About Symphony Spend Management Solutions

Symphony Spend Management Solutions, a business unit of Symphony Services, monitors, manages and minimizes clients' indirect costs through proprietary software and technology-enabled outsourcing services. The company's full suite of flexible solutions provide clients with a global view of costs generated by assets, work orders, usage and service provider invoices, as well as the key business processes associated with them, such as vendor invoice management, provisioning and billing/chargeback. More than 300 clients across financial services, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, consumer products and pharmaceutical industries utilize Symphony Spend Management Solutions to gain control of expenses, improve their bottom line and optimize performance. For more information, please visit www.symphonysms.com.

About Symphony Services

Symphony Services is a global provider of collaborative, full lifecycle outsourcing solutions for commercial-grade software, product engineering and analytic processes. The company helps clients optimize performance and time-to-market, delivering superior value by integrating world-class functional and technology expertise with deep domain knowledge and global operations excellence. Symphony is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, with offices in Waltham, MA, Dallas, TX, Nashville TN, Harrow, UK and delivery centers in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune, India. For more information, please visit www.symphonysv.com, e-mail us at info@symphonysv.com or call Heather Dalloul, director, business development at 1.650.935-9534.

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