eCB ResearchExpense is a web-based software application designed to optimize the management of online research. Integrated with eCB Framework, it becomes a hub connecting the various groups of users and systems involved with capturing, validating, processing and analyzing research expense data, and with deploying research applications. In this way, ResearchExpense dramatically increases the efficiency and thus reduces the costs associated with these tasks.

By creating its own layer of pre-validated and fully customized billing detail, ResearchExpense eliminates the need to rely on multiple interfaces to vendor-based billing systems for expense processing. In contrast to this costly, time-consuming and inefficient process, with ResearchExpense:

• Expense data is validated at the point of entry, therefore requiring very little, if any, effort to later investigate and correct invalid codes entered by users.



• Complete and pre-validated expense data is immediately available for processing. This means that the data can downloaded from the application's repository into the corporate accounting system at any desired interval. In contrast to typical billing cycles which can often take months, this speed of processing can have a tremendous positive effect on client recoveries, where the speed of billing is often a crucial factor (for example, in investment banking, consulting and legal work).



• Expense data captured is fully customizable - there is no restriction on the number or size of fields to associate with any research session. This means that an administrator can define exactly what data is needed to charge the transactions back to the appropriate client or group, and to ensure that each transaction is associated with sufficient backup data to support the cost charged.



• By removing the dependency on vendor-based billing systems, all the meetings, communications, documents and software customizations (both on the part of the vendor and the client) normally required to integrate a client's billing requirements with the vendors' systems and procedures, become completely unnecessary. In a large or medium-sized firm using a number of research vendors, this cost and effort can be substantial and the saving thereby achieved, dramatic.

The following items demonstrate how ResearchExpense can further help in controlling and/or lowering the cost of online research.

• Service Usage Analysis. Through the use of out-of-the-box reports and graphs, administrators can quickly isolate over-use, under-use or mis-use of the various research services by given employees or departments to:



• make adjustments to contracts (for example, increasing or decreasing the number of user licenses), and
• educate users or groups of users in the use of the research software to minimize the time online and reduce the expense of usage.


• Centralized Control. A single enterprise-wide interface to electronic research services has a number of advantages. First, it means that new Web-based services can be configured for use accross the enterprise from a single point. Second, it encourages a centralized relationship with vendors, which translates to better control of contracts and more efficient use of personnel resources. For example, there would be no need for each regional office to meet with vendor contacts and negotiate their own contracts, losing the advantage of the economy of scale.



• Independent Usage Tracking. By tracking research usage independently of the vendors' billing system, ResearchExpense provides a sanity check for bills that come in. For cases where the billing arrangement is not based on a fixed monthly subscription, a given month's charges can be compared historically with previous months, both on an overall basis as well as by a given group (such as a department). Also, when the vendor's billing backup has been imported, the administrator can run reports to spot noticeable variations in billing from month to month.

For a more detailed view of how ResearchExpense works, look at the sample screen shots in the Product Tour.