1. Success Profile
Award-Winning Expense
Benco Dental
Management Solution Provides
Pittston, PA USA
www.benco.com Benco Dental Better Cost Control
“SumTotal Expense Management enables us Benco Dental is the largest privately owned, full-service dental distributor in
to put the policy in place and have guidelines the United States. In addition to providing supply and equipment options to
for the travelers so they know what is expected dental professionals, the company also offers a comprehensive suite of services
of them.” including office design, equipment repair, practice coaching, financing and real
— Linda Tregea estate planning, wealth management, and dental-specific technology solutions.
Accounts Payable Manager With more than 30,000 customers in 40 states, the company relies on more than
Benco Dental 340 professionally trained sales representatives and 265 factory-trained service
technicians to meet customer needs and convert prospects into buyers.
While on the road, most of the company’s sales and service professionals may
Fast Facts incur expenses such as airfare, mileage, meals, lodging and office supplies.
Industry: Healthcare Although company travelers have limits on how much they are able to spend each
Region: North America day or each month, Benco Dental’s legacy expense management system made it
hard to enforce policies, ensure employees adhere to dollar threshold limitations
Users: 700+
and accurately allocate expenses to the correct account category.
Solution: SumTotal Expense Management
With their current expense management system at the end of its life, the company
decided to replace it with an automated expense management solution from SumTotal,
a global leader in expense and workforce management software and services.
THE CHALLENGE OF CONTROLLING
EMPLOYEE TRAVEL EXPENSES
“We wanted a system that was going to allow us to enforce our expense policies
and automatically communicate the guidelines to company travelers,” said Linda
Tregea, accounts payable manager for Benco Dental. “We also were not getting an
accurate view of expenses as they were incurred and knew that deploying a system
that would be able to categorize them the right way would be extremely beneficial.”
After a comprehensive review of several expense management systems, the
company selected SumTotal Expense Management based on its functionality and
ease of use. SumTotal Expense Management is a web-based application that
streamlines the entire process of employee business expenses from submission
to reimbursement to analysis and reporting. Benco Dental also chose SumTotal
based on the ease of ongoing system administration, ability to automate and
enforce expense policies, and ability to reduce costs.
www.sumtotalsystems.com

2. BUSINESS CHALLENGES “We wanted to be able to be our own administrator so we could make changes
■ Enforce expense policies as we needed, rather than having to call a help desk and wait for them to put
and communicate guidelines the changes in,” said Tregea. “With SumTotal, we are able to control the way
to company travelers information flows through the system.”
■ Categorize business expenses For example, when Benco Dental hosts special events, with SumTotal Expense
Management they can automatically create a rule that charges all related
■ Automate compliance expenses to a specific general ledger account. If they need to create an exception
SOLUTION to a capacity limit, for instance, when a sales representative entertains a client
versus having a single meal during travel, they can easily make that rule change
■ Implemented SumTotal in the system and see it reflected immediately.
Expense Management solution
to 700+ employees “The SumTotal system does exactly what it is tasked to do,” said a Benco executive
assistant. “It is very user-friendly and captures expenses in all categories that we need.
RESULTS By keeping the category-allowed expenses in check, it helps control overall costs.”
■ Improved instant visibility TECHNOLOGY ENABLES BETTER COMMUNICATIONS
into expenses
AND COMPLIANCE
■ Automatically enforce
Whitepapers While the technology transition was easy, changing user expectations and
or create policies Executive Guide: Improving Business Whitepaper: The Future
Talent Management
■ Audit expenses for accuracy Performance throughharder. Teams,
perceptions was Sales The former system had of Strategic Mobile Workforce
been in place for several years,
Compensation Management and and Customers not enforce things like dollar& Expensefor certain expenses,
Partners, because it could thresholds Management
or fraud detection and reconcile business travelers needed to adjust to heightened levels of accountability.
Performance Management
expenses Management (LMS)
in a timely manner
Learning ”T&E expenses are where a large part of the company’s money is spent, therefore
■ Reporting identifies
Extended Enterprise we wanted to hold our travelers accountable to their daily expenses and provide
opportunities to Planning
Succession save money Whitepaper Whitepaper: Applying Lean
Building a Business Case: managers,” said Tregea. “By moving to SumTotal, we were
information quickly to Manufacturing Initiatives to
■ Expenses can be Management
Hiring & Recruiting
approved E-Learning for External Audiences get a tighter grip Workforce &expenses and use
able to put our policies in place, around travel Expense Management
using smartphone technology the reporting features to determine where we can save and where our money is
Go
being spent.”
Benco Dental backed the change management initiative with training and
Case Studies: Orbitz, Cabela’s, DELL,
International Rectifier, help users understand how the system worked as well as
communication to LPL Financial,
Next Steps understand new company policies and policy enforcement. One new policy change
Pharmacy Systems, Inc.
was regarding cell phone reimbursement. Realizing the company was paying less
+1-352-264-2800
for company-issued phones and more for personal cell phones, they implemented
Contact Us on the Web a policy that would reimburse employees for all phones, but only up to the value of
Submit an RFP
the company-issued phone. By making that change and being able to enforce the
Downloadthe company FREE
policy, Additional was able to take advantage of significant cost savings.
Visit the Resource Center Go
Resources from SumTotal Management in place, Benco Dental is able to enforce
With SumTotal Expense
www.sumtotalsystems.com policies, have automatic compliance and improved control, and better management
of their employee expenses. Employees are no longer able to manipulate the
system or create a work around to override company policies. Using the system,
Benco Dental’s auditor and administrator are able to easily audit expense reports
and drive compliance.
Another benefit of SumTotal Expense Management is the ability to support digital
imaging of receipts. Because receipts can be faxed or emailed into the system,
they are available almost instantaneously. With their old system, business
travelers needed to physically mail receipts to accounts payable, where they might
have gotten lost or misplaced, and they were not readily visible online.
“For our users, being able to electronically submit receipts is better because it
simplifies the process,” said Tregea. “From an audit perspective, it is terrific. We
can go through expense reports and if there is something that is suspect, we can
www.sumtotalsystems.com quickly go back to the receipt and validate the legitimacy of the expense.”

3. About SumTotal SumTotal Expense Management also sends electronic files directly to American
Express for payment of corporate credit cards based on expense reports. This
SumTotal Systems, Inc. is the global leader shortens the cycle time and ensures timely payment to American Express and as a
strategic Human Capital Management result, is beneficial to the employee. Tregea notes that the biggest benefit is having
(HCM) solutions that provide organizations the receipts attached to the expense reports prior to approval – ensuring money is
with a new level of visibility to help make not going out without due diligence behind it.
more informed business decisions and
accelerate growth. Recognized by indus-
“SumTotal Expense Management enables us to put the policy in place and have
try analysts as the most complete solution,
guidelines for the travelers so they know what is expected of them,” she said. “As a
SumTotal provides full employee lifecycle
result, we have been able to get a tighter rein on our expenses. We also get a dual
management, including a core system of
benefit from the system because the cost to run SumTotal Expense Management
record, from a single provider for improved
is more efficient than with our previous system.”
business intelligence. The company offers
customers of all sizes and industries the
THE FUTURE: SOMETHING TO SMILE ABOUT
most flexibility and choice with multiple Moving forward, Benco Dental plans on offering the SumTotal Expense Management
purchase, configuration, and deployment mobile application to company users. This enables travelers to submit and approve
options. We have increased the perfor- expense reports from a handheld device such as a Blackberry® smartphone.
mance of the world’s largest organizations “There is a lot of downtime for some of these travelers whether they are in an
including Sony Electronics (NYSE: SNE), airport or sitting in a hotel room waiting for meetings or for overnight travel,” said
AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN [ADR]; London: Tregea. “Using their Blackberry, they can go into the system and approve or review
AZN), Amway (KUL:AMWAY), Seagate expenses as they come in.
(NYSE: STX), Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), and “From an approval standpoint, it is especially beneficial,” she continued. “Many of
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). For more our sales directors and managers travel 40-50 weeks out of the year. It is very
information, or to request a demo, please hard if the only way they can go in and approve expenses is by logging into the
call +1 (800) 881-2546 (US / Canada), computer and Internet. By offering the mobile application, it alleviates that delay
+1 (508) 358-1072 (international) or visit in processing.”
www.sumtotalsystems.com
Considering the company processes approximately 748 expense reports each
month with an average value of $611.70, eliminating bottlenecks in the accounts
About Benco Dental payable department is critical. The system alleviates the burden of administrative
Benco Dental provides more supply and intervention and makes auditing expense reports easy. Cautionary flags warn users
equipment options than any other full-service if they are going to exceed a dollar threshold before the expense is incurred and
dental distributor, an offering enhanced by a auditors and administrators receive automatic alerts for certain policy requirements,
comprehensive suite of services, including such as reviewing air fare expenses that exceed a certain dollar amount.
office design, equipment repair, practice “The partnership with SumTotal has been very beneficial for us,” said Tregea. “The
coaching, financing and real estate planning, bottom line is it comes down to the bottom line. We want to make sure we are
wealth management, and dental-specific spending wisely and SumTotal’s expense management solution does that for us.”
technology solutions. These services are By implementing an expense management solution with advanced functionality,
supported by over 420 professionally trained the entire expense management process improved at Benco Dental. Employees
sales representatives and 290 factory-trained are adhering to company policies and being reimbursed in a timely manner. The
service technicians. Put it all together, and business is able to gain insight into employee spending patterns and implement
Benco Dental offers all the tools to enable policies that help control costs. With tighter control on expenses and more rigorous
dental professionals to achieve their desired compliance, SumTotal Expense Management has given Benco Dental something
goals for success. For more information, visit to smile about.
www.benco.com or call 1.800.GO.BENCO
www.sumtotalsystems.com
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