Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for improving spend approval cycle time in a software-as-service (SasS) electronic spend management system based on community spend approval information. The techniques include the spend management system collecting information about spend approval cycle times across a community of users that use the system. A graphical user interface is then provided by the spend management system to individual customer users of the spend management system where the graphical user interface includes a graphical comparison of the user's individual spend approval cycle time performance against the community's spend approval cycle time performance. By doing so, the individual user can be motivated to improve or maintain his or her spend approval cycle time performance.

Abstract: Embodiments of the invention provide a software framework for hierarchically organizing individuals or other objects. For example, the software framework may be configured to hierarchically organize employees at a company. One embodiment provides a technique to aggregate one or more metrics associated with the individuals or objects and display the results in a user-friendly manner.