The number of software providers offering on-demand software to companies to manage employees spending has shrunk by one with the acquisition of Gelco Expense Management by Concur Technologies Inc. Gelco Expense Management is the largest provider of global expense management and reimbursement solutions, processing more than 100,000 transactions and making payments of $20 million each day. Concur's software as a service (SaaS) solution allows global companies to control costs by automating the processes; Concur enables companies to unite online travel booking with automated expense reporting, streamline meeting management and optimize the process of managing vendor payments, employee check requests and direct reimbursements. Based in Redmond, Wash., with $92.7 million in revenues, Concur will pay H-G Holdings Inc., the privately held company that owns Gelco and other subsidiaries, $160 million in cash.

Until now, Gelco and Concur have been competitors, says Aberdeen analyst Vishal Patel. But, Patel explains, a few years ago, the companies took different approaches to providing T&E solutions. Concur decided to become an end-to-end integrated software solution provider for all things related to travel and entertainment: a year ago, the company acquired an online booking company called Outtask and has been working to integrate that into their expense management offering. "With one solution, Concur wants to allow a business executive to plan travel online, book travel online, come back and do your expense reports within the same solution," says Patel. Gelco, he adds, has stayed out of online booking, taking the tack of becoming "the best of breed provider for expense reporting and expense management side of things." Gelco does the processing, auditing and payment of the T&E expense reports for its customers.

The acquisition allows Concur to strengthen its portfolio of services and scale up by adding Gelco's 1,200 clients and 625,000 users to Concur's base of 5,000 clients. This positions Concur to compete more effectively with big enterprise resource planning (ERP) providers such as SAP and Oracle and American Express.