Gelco.com Case Study
International Market Research

The Client
Gelco provides e-commerce solutions to private and public sector firms in the areas of expense management and reimbursement. Business and travel expenses are entered and managed through a comprehensive web-based product suite. Gelco processes these transactions and reimburses their user base within three business days. Gelco's Expense Management division serves over 1.3 million users in over 1,100 corporations and government agencies, including American Home Products, Ericsson, BellSouth, Gartner Group, The Toro Company and Reebok International, Ltd. and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Challenge
When asked by Phillips Electronics to expand their successful expense management services to associates outside the U.S., Gelco immediately listed “going global” as a corporate imperative. Ralph Bernstein, Gelco's Vice President of Sales and Marketing knew that competitive pressures wouldn't yield and was assigned the task of making a global services vision a reality.

The Pentonian Solution
“I selected Pentonian because of their ability to immediately get answers to my burning questions about the international considerations and implications for moving our business model overseas,” said Bernstein. Pentonian immediately engaged its network of relevant industry analysts, and surveyed lawyers, systems integrators and the top five financial institutions in each European country to provide answers to Bernstein's knowledge list. Items such as legal, banking, cultural, linguistics, and localization were researched to provide specific answers to Gelco's requirements in a research report.

The Results
“Pentonian produced a report within a very short time-frame which contained the exact level of detail I needed providing answers to my 'knowledge list' of questions,” said Bernstein. Using the information provided by Pentonian, Bernstein formulated a global rollout strategy, which allowed Gelco to secure all of Phillips' international business and laid a foundation for an international rollout of all of their solutions.

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