You may possibly have noticed that there’s an election taking place in a couple of months. One of the time-honored tactics used by politicians from all sides is to throw out facts or statistics about your opponent, which may or may not have any basis in fact.
The world of business isn’t immune to this type of distortion of the truth, and sometimes sales people may fabricate things just a little to make their solution seem better than a competitor’s offering. So, we thought it was time to set the record straight about some of the myths you may have heard about Chrome River.
The myth: “Chrome River isn’t big enough to handle large organizations’ requirements.”
FALSE: Chrome River was built for large, global organizations. More than 500 organizations worldwide trust Chrome River, including brands such as Toyota, Cargill, Harman International, the International Air Transport Association and Fujitsu. More than 75% of the largest law firms in the U.S. and two thirds of the world’s largest law firms use Chrome River, as do countless major universities, non-profits and businesses from all different sectors. A typical global Chrome River customer will submit more than 10,000 expense reports per month.
The myth: “Chrome River doesn’t have global capabilities.”
FALSE: The Chrome River team spans North America, Europe and Australia, and in addition to these three continents, we also have customers across South America and Asia. In total, we have more than 1 million enterprise users who are based in, and submit, expense reports in more than 100 countries.
The Chrome River solution handles 183 currencies, and works with more than 40 global tax jurisdictions out of the box. The solution supports an unlimited number of languages, and is currently pre-configured in 11 languages. We also offer local customer support in six languages across North America, Europe and Australia. Companies like Sabre, Sonoco, Hard Rock Café and Goodman Networks and many others have switched to Chrome River from solutions such as IBM GERS, SAP T&E, and Concur.
The myth: “Chrome River doesn’t offer integrated booking.”
FALSE: Unlike some solutions that lock you into a single booking tool set-up, Chrome River offers the flexibility for you to choose whichever TMC or OBT works best for your organization. Chrome River works with more than 300 TMCs and booking tools, allowing us to focus on giving our customers the best possible expense management experience. We are the first expense management partner for Sabre’s mobile ecosystem. We’re also trusted by Sabre and Amadeus to power their own expense management for more than 10,000 employees around the globe.
Related: One-Stop-Shop vs. Best-of-Breed: What's Best for Travel and Expense?
The myth: “It takes two days for travel booking data to flow into Chrome River.”
FALSE: Chrome River was designed to integrate with any online travel booking tool, and our teams configure your system to work seamlessly with your choice of booking tool, so you’re not locked into a single vendor. As such, travel itineraries will appear in Chrome River within 1-2 minutes of the booking being confirmed.
The myth: “Chrome River isn’t as secure as our solution.”
FALSE: Chrome River provides the cloud infrastructure to ensure businesses can run their expense management applications in the cloud with the highest level of confidence. We provide comprehensive data privacy, data management, security and availability for running mission-critical cost control applications. With its multiple data centers, Chrome River provides enterprise-grade infrastructure while delivering proven scale.
Chrome River’s comprehensive and flexible application security incorporates 256-bit encryption standards, enterprise-grade password policies, support for SAML 2.0 Single Sign On, role-based field-level security and more.
Our operational security provides end-to-end controls including intrusion prevention and detection systems, strict security certifications such as PCI-DSS, SOC1 and SOC2, and stringent physical security protocols.
Chrome River provides multiple levels of data redundancy, world-class disaster recovery and enterprise-level scalability to keep businesses running 24/7. All of our security controls are tested on a regular basis using state-of-the-art assessment tools and outside auditors to monitor the core application, validate our processes, and assure compliance.
The myth: “Chrome River only offers limited reporting and analytics capabilities.”
FALSE: Chrome River’s world-class expense reporting and analytics tools allow a business to attain a comprehensive view of its travel and expense spending. The solution supports reporting for both inquiry reports and analytics reports. Inquiry reports are user-specific, and are designed to gain insight into users’ expenses and find ways to reduce their impact on company spending. Analytics reports are higher-level metric reports that can be used by managers to analyze expense spending.
In addition, Chrome River’s reporting feature allows users to customize standard reports to feature alternative metrics, and users can perform advanced functions with the data, including sorting, filtering, calculations, charting, roll-ups, and pivots. Chrome River’s ANALYTICS solution offers enterprise business analysts a big data tool using a columnar database, that allows them perform trend analysis of the information stored in their Chrome River system. This graphical, web-based tool enables users to discover patterns and dependencies in data.
The myth: “Chrome River doesn’t have a mobile app.”
FALSE: Chrome River is committed to cutting edge innovation, and therefore we’ve chosen the route of web apps, which are the latest generation solution to access business applications via the web, on any device. Chrome River’s web app works seamlessly across any mobile device, regardless of the operating system (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile or even Blackberry). It delivers exactly the same functionality, usability and look-and-feel, whatever device type or screen size is used, so there are no concerns about training users or supporting different app versions, or your end-users having different experiences, which you will have if you only use mobile apps. The web app is delivered through the browser simply by tapping the icon on your smartphone or tablet, just like any other mobile app that you use.
Related: Why Mobility is a Critical Consideration for Your Expense Management Strategy
The myth: “Chrome River takes a long time to implement.”
FALSE: Chrome River customers can be up and running in as little as six to eight weeks. Of course, the exact time to implement any expense solution (regardless of which vendor you choose) is dependent on a number of factors, such as the number of users / countries, the scope of business rules, the quantity of data feeds required, and how many features are being implemented (in fact, some of our competitors don’t even offer many of Chrome River’s advanced features).
However, as Chrome River is always implemented by our own team – not outside contractors – you can be sure that we’ve seen it all before. If your implementation is more complex than usual, our team will know exactly what to do to get you up and running as quickly as possible.
The myth: "Chrome River only works with law firms"
FALSE: As mentioned above, we work with more than 500 leading organizations worldwide, across all industries.
It's true that we started working with law firms back in 2007, and we continue to dominate that industry. In fact, the reason that we have been so successful with law firms is that they have some of the most complex expense management requirements that no other vendor can handle as effectively as Chrome River. Having perfected expense management for law firms, we also use this expertise to apply these great features and technologies to organizations across every other industry.
Chrome River works with some of the biggest and most respected brands in industries such as automotive, sports, agriculture, retail, manufacturing, technology, healthcare, travel and education.
When the two major candidates debate next week, the news agencies will have their fact checkers live-tweeting any falsehoods or misrepresentations, so you can cut through the noise. While you don’t get that luxury when you’re buying software, it’s nice to be able to set the record straight, and make your buying decision based on facts, not false claims.
By all means, request a demonstration of our Chrome River Suite – you’ll be surprised that a modern, mobile expense and invoice management solution can be so sophisticated and yet user-friendly. Like a perfect candidate.
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Our choice of Chrome River EXPENSE was made in part due to the very user-friendly interface, easy configurability, and the clear commitment to impactful customer service – all aspects in which Chrome River was the clear winner. While Chrome River is not as large as some of the other vendors we considered, we found that to be a benefit and our due diligence showed that it could support us as well as any large players in the space, along with a personalized level of customer care.
We are excited to be able to enforce much more stringent compliance to our expense guidelines and significantly enhance our expense reporting and analytics. By automating these processes, we will be able to free up AP time formerly spent on manual administrative tasks, and enhance the role by being much more strategic.
