Category Archives: Travel & Expense Management

Concur Acquired by SAP

PayStream Advisors just learned of big news concerning one of our partners: Concur, a leading concur Travel and Expense (T&E) management provider, has just been acquired by one of the biggest names in financial automation, SAP. Though we are excited to hear of this new connection for Concur, we are not especially surprised, as the company has never failed to work towards greater improvement and innovation for their products and their customers.

Steve Singh, Concur CEO, announced the acquisition only yesterday. Because SAP delivers software and services to more than 261,000 companies globally, Mr. Singh expects new resources, expertise, and value for Concur customers, as well as greater opportunity for Concur to work with developers and partners to extend the capabilities of their platform. “We expect our focus on innovation and on the success of our customers to be even stronger in the years ahead,” said Mr. Singh.

The company already has a good eye on their customer’s needs, as they have made recent movements in many areas of the travel industry to bring innovative enhancements to their offerings. Earlier this year, Concur partnered with US Air to expand their corporate booking capability, and shortly after that they improved their TripLink capabilities to include a variety of unique hospitality and transportation options. Concur’s corporate customers can now use TripLink to easily expense their uses of Uber, AirBnB, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Overall, Concur’s recent improvements have provided companies with an increased visibility into travel spend, as well as an increased set of travel options.

Their recent acquisition is set to be completed early next year. In the meantime, Steve Singh urges open communication from his customers: “We value your feedback, and our whole leadership team, along with our account managers, is available to answer any questions you may have. We remain 100% committed to your success and thank you for your business.”

PayStream is looking forward to seeing what Concur will do next, and we are excited for this change. To see more about Concur’s innovation as seen in their solution’s offerings, download your free copy of the Travel and Expense Management Report.

The IBM GERS Migration: Getting Chrome River Ready

During PayStream’s partnership with Chrome River we have discovered a few interesting variables chrom that set them apart from many others in the financial automation industry. The company, known for providing highly configurable expense and invoice management solutions, has emerged as a front-runner in financial software for the past several years—they were recently recognized on the annual Inc. 500|5000 list, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies, for the third year in a row. Much of their success is due to the company’s dedication in serving their customers in the best way possible, and much of what has set them apart from their competitors is their adept ability to clean up the messes that their competitors leave behind. Chrome River’s offerings provide a unique combination of customizable features and simplistic operation at a much lower cost than some of the bigger, more intensive software. When organizations’ have tried and failed with an expensive, hi-tech solution, Chrome River is one of the first places they will turn for an alternative route to efficient P2P processing.

One of the most recent incidences of Chrome River stepping in and taking over was seen in their selection by HARMAN International to replace IBM’s Global Expense Reporting Solution, GERS. IBM is gradually closing down the expense management platform, forcing many companies like HARMAN to search for replacement software quickly. HARMAN, a provider of audio and infotainment solutions, began an extensive Request for Proposal process in January, for which they invited several leading vendors in the expense management space to participate. HARMAN was looking for specific qualities to meet their own unique business requirements, including global capabilities and support, ease of use for end users, confidence in the implementation team, and integration with other systems including SAP, Carlson Wagonlit, and GetThere.

According to HARMAN, Chrome River EXPENSE was chosen from amongst the other providers’ solutions for its user-friendly interface, easy configurability, and the clear commitment to impacting customer service—aspects that HARMAN viewed as winning attributes. “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,” Sally Abella, Director of Corporate Travel at Harman.

The migration from IBM’s GERS to Chrome River is one the solution provider believes is the beginning of a trend among organizations, and that conviction was proven by their recent hire of Jeremy Soto and Chad Mills, two leading IBM GERS implementation experts, who will be helping Chrome River customers like HARMAN move from IBM GERS systems.

“Organizations have come to Chrome River with legacy systems — ranging from proprietary internal platforms to large, well-known systems in the industry – each with their own unique challenges,“ said Alan Rich, co-founder and CEO of Chrome River. “Our implementation team is expert at understanding customer requirements and utilizing Chrome River’s extensive configurability in a way that customers see tangible improvement in their processes and end-user satisfaction. Our job is to deliver enterprise solutions, and we’re thrilled to have Jeremy Soto and Chad Mills as part of our team.”

Chrome River’s focus on customer-satisfaction has been obvious throughout PayStream’s partnership with the company, and they have always striven to meet their customer’s requirements, no matter how unique and complex the jobs may be. We have enjoyed our involvement with Chrome River so far, and we are looking forward to seeing how far the company succeeds in the years to come.

Peer-to-Peer Travel: Concur and the Big Breakdown

There is a big word that today’s modern traveler dreads to hear when embarking on a journey: breakdown. From a breakdown in a vehicle to a breakdown in communication, this word can put a wrench in an important corporate trip or a well-planned and well-earned vacation. However, in the current world of travel services, a good, hard breakdown is vital when it comes to connectivity barriers.

There are two companies in particular that are paying special attention to breaking down connectivity barriers by creating easier access to transportation and accommodation: Airbnb and Uber. In unique ways, they cut out the middle man and allow individuals to directly offer their own space and transport to travelers, creating a peer-to-peer network and eliminating booking companies, reservation fees, and the miscommunication that can come through multiple channels of travel arrangement. Airbnb is an online marketplace for accommodations that allows homeowners to rent out their rooms to travelers. Uber, a transport network company, operates as an alternative to a taxi service— mobile apps connect passengers to drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services.

In a recent webinar focusing on supplier connectivity, PayStream’s Henry Ijams spoke about P2P trends, the biggest of which he said are coming in the form of an innovative use of collaborative paradigms. “P2P managers want to narrow the gap that comes from failed connection and communication between buyers and suppliers,” said Henry. “…They realize the only way to streamline their process is to streamline their connectivity.”

Henry used Uber as an example of a company that was placing uber importance on a connective strategy. By quickly and easily putting people who need rides in contact with people who have cars, Uber is displacing regular taxi services and transforming the transportation services industry. In the same way, Airbnb creates a peer-to-peer network through their booking service, diminishing the need for hotel rooms, and bringing diversity and personalization to a sometimes lonely travel necessity.

The innovation of these two companies is inspiring, and it comes to no surprise for PayStream to hear of a recent partnership between concur Uber, Airbnb, and the leading travel and expense management solutions provider, Concur. With this collaboration, business travelers can use these alternative services to book their trips and complete their expenses without sacrificing accuracy, visibility and manageability. For Airnbn, integration through Concur TripLink will enable employers to gain full visibility into each booking to ensure Duty of Care requirements are met. Uber’s integration with the Concur platform will provide Concur business travelers with the ability to request, ride, pay, and automatically expense their transportation– all from their mobile phone. According to Concur, both of these partnerships will make the benefits of collaborative consumption available to the business world.

Concur’s primary focus in travel and expense management has always been to create the “Perfect Trip”, and they do this by looking for the most innovative ways of streamlining business activity and business spend from anywhere in the world. As the market for travelling services expands and changes, it is only natural that Concur uses their own pioneering drive to follow these changes.

“This new generation of platform partners reflects the transformation taking place for today’s business customer,” said Tim MacDonald, executive vice president at Concur. “By partnering with these innovative companies, we are building a connected platform that radically improves the experience for the business traveler.” Not only is Concur acting as a P2P innovator by embracing and cultivating a peer-to-peer network for business travelers, they are helping to legitimize and strengthen Uber and Airbnb’s alternative services in the corporate travel market as much as in the leisure travel market. “With Airbnb and Uber, we are enabling, in business travel, what consumers already enjoy about collaborative consumption in their leisure. Capturing this spend then gives companies greater real-time transparency into traveler expenditure and itineraries.”

Through these partnerships, Concur is breaking down connectivity barriers between the buyer and supplier and between corporate strategy and modern innovation. This story is inspiring for PayStream and hopefully for any financial professional or business leader looking to take their own organization to the next level in connective collaboration. For more stories of innovative companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Riverwalk01 Concur, register for this year’s PayStream Summit conference and take your own journey to San Antonio, Texas. Held on the city’s beautiful and famous Riverwalk, Innovate 2014 will feature two days of insightful and educational sessions with key business leaders who have been pioneers in the field of AP and P2P Innovation.

Coming Soon: Migrating Expense Systems with Chrome River

Chrome River, a leading expense reporting solution provider and PayStream Advisors partner, is tackling a hectic, confusing, and frustrating problem with one word: simplicity. The problem is managing business travel expenses, and the solution is an easy-to-use expense reporting tool that provides speed, efficiency and accuracy. Chrome River believes that complex problems require chrom simple solutions, and this is why we think they are the perfect company to host the upcoming PayStream webinar, Migrating to a New Expense System: The 5 Must-Have Features.

This exciting webinar is a must-see for anyone who is planning to migrate off of their existing expense reporting system, whether it’s a manual process or an automated system, to a more advanced and streamlined expense reporting tool. The webinar will feature PayStream Advisors Managing Director Henry Ijams, and Frank Davis, Managing Director of Chrome River. Together they will discuss research results and market trends found in PayStream’s recent Travel and Expense Management Technology Insight Report, as well as the steps companies can take to implement and utilize the perfect expense reporting solution.

As part of Chrome River’s innovative team, Mr. Davis has a lot of experience with expense reporting services, and he knows the ways in which they can be used to optimize and streamline company travel—both before and after the return flight. He is aware of the headaches that a manual reporting process can bring to organizations, from employees waiting weeks for reimbursement, to the AP staff manually verifying and approving each expenditure. From his own involvement with Chrome River’s EXPENSE application, Mr. Davis knows the criteria a reporting tool should meet to make the entire process effortless, and he will candidly share his expertise in the webinar.

Mr. Davis will go over the efficiency, controls, visibility, and resulting ROI of the 5 Must-Have Expense System Features. He will show how optimizing these features can positively impact each of the primary constituent groups in the expense report process—The Expense Owners, The Approvers and The Finance Team. He will also illustrate some of the ways Chrome River’s EXPENSE tool meets the criteria for an effortless process through streamlined functions that take the labor out of the process.

PayStream’s own research shows that travel and expense management tools are becoming more and more essential as the global market grows and becomes more technologically driven. Connection from one end of the world to another is almost effortless, and expense reporting should not be the area that slows business travel down. We believe Chrome River’s focus on simplicity in expense reporting tools is the perfect approach for the diversity and complexity of corporate travel, and we are very excited to hear the things they can share with us at our upcoming webinar. To join us on July 29th at 2:00 PM and hear what you need to know about travelling with ease and efficiency, register for free here.

Concur Soars with United Air Partnership

Concur, a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, has partnered concur with United Airlines this week—an impressive move that will provide business travelers with expanded booking capabilities. With over 20,000 global clients and 25 million individual users, this will be a valuable development for Concur company value.

With this partnership, mutual Concur and United clients can gain access to corporate direct travel bookings on United.com and on United apps by leveraging Concur’s TripLink product. TripLink allows users who are booking directly with United to link their Concur and MileagePlus profiles and receive corporate benefits. The alliance of these companies’ functionalities creates an innovative travel management capability—one that is already in high demand.

“Some of our mutual customers already book directly with United and others have requested that we integrate our booking platforms with Concur,” said John Slater, United’s vice president of sales, Americas. “The flexibility offered in Concur’s TripLink product will enable these customers to realize the benefits of negotiated United corporate rates while receiving traveler authentication and integration with Concur Expense.”

Through this connection, travel management visibility and control is increased—after booking with United, users’ trip data will be sent back to Concur to populate travel and expense reports on Concur and related platforms, satisfying employers’ reporting, policy compliance and duty of care requirements. This collaboration will also bring companies greater savings through corporate program advantages, and due to out-of-program booking capability, traveler tracking is also improved. Ultimately, compliance is made easier for users and their employers through greater communication and spend management, enhancing organizations’ efficiency and productivity.

“As booking options expand, our customers have been looking for ways to gain greater control over their travel spending. This partnership really addresses this growing need – managing blind spend,” said Steve Singh, chairman and CEO at Concur. “Our goal is to work with United and other partners to give our customers a transparent view of their spending, visibility to their travel plans, and give their employees an effortless road to compliance.”

Concur’s continuous company goal has been to bring business travelers one step closer to “the Perfect Trip.” By aligning themselves with one of the most influential airline companies in the travel industry, they are certainly taking themselves nearer to that goal. For more insight into Travel and Expense Management Solutions and solution providers like Concur, download PayStream Advisors’ Travel and Expense Management 2014 Report.

Chrome River Begins Innovative Partnerships

PayStream Advisors partner, Chrome River, chrom has made two exciting partnerships over the last month, both with companies that will help broaden the solution provider’s global capabilities. Chrome River specializes in reporting and invoice management services, creating solutions that benefit the complete AP process automation and cost control. Their solutions uniquely combine the latest available internet technologies with the work of industry-leading implementation and support experts. With these new partnerships, they will be able to utilize their own progressive strategies with Western Union Business Solutions’ payment functions and Grasp Technologies’ business travel solutions.

In their partnership with Western Union Business Solutions, Chrome River will integrate their online expense reporting and invoice management with cross-border payment processing in order to provide customers with cost and operational efficiencies. This collaboration will bring Chrome River a secure, integrated payment processing solution to send and receive international payments and manage foreign currency exchange. In turn, Western Union Business Solutions customers will now have access to an easy-to-use, SaaS-based expense reporting and invoice processing solution that can accommodate complex functionalities and integration with ERP and financial systems.

“We are proud to be part of an ecosystem with Western Union Business Solutions that is focused on providing seamless solutions to our enterprise customers,” said Alan Rich, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chrome River. According to Mr. Rich, this partnership is in line with the company’s strategy to make travel easier and more efficient for their customers.

This strategy is one step closer to success after Chrome River’s most recent partnership with Grasp Technologies, a leading provider of travel data acquisition and analytics solutions. The companies’ collaboration will provide enriched booked and expense data for their customers, allowing for greater visibility and control across electronic travel management. Chrome River’s total picture of travel spend with Grasp’s powerful data-enrichment will give organizations a comprehensive view of employee travel activity and compliance, as well as the ability to discover opportunities for process improvement and cost savings.

From an independent perspective, this combination will be very effective for the travel industry. Carol Ann Salcito, the president of the travel consulting company, Management Alternatives, is especially optimistic. “Organizations struggle to get a comprehensive 360-degree view of all travel, whether it’s booked through their corporate systems or booked separately by travelers,” she stated. “This partnership between Chrome River and Grasp bridges that gap, and will in turn provide organizations with a solution to this long-standing problem.”

PayStream Advisors believes Chrome River is making smart business decisions in choosing partnerships from which they can continue to grow. We see this building-block strategy taking them very far in the travel automation industry—and beyond.

Basware: Building Strong Solutions

Basware has renewed their agreement with a financial services group in Finland this week. Basware has been providing the Travel & Expense Management solution for the Finnish company since 2008, and the renewal will feature new services to aide in the centralized processing and automation of travel and expense reports throughout the organization. The value of the agreement is EUR 400,000 over three years.

This is the second extension of services for Basware in the past few weeks. Their business relationship with a brewing company was renewed in the beginning of June, and Basware’s top goal in the new contract will be to supply the delivery of accounts payable automation and e-invoicing services for the company’s North American operations. Basware’s first contract with the company involved the implementation of solutions for accounts payable at their headquarters in Europe. The value of this latest agreement is approximately EUR 300,000 over three years.

Esa Tihilä, Basware CEO, believes that this continued relationship is the result of the high level of connection Basware is able to offer to its customers. “The customer is able to easily collaborate across the Basware Commerce Network, the largest open business network in the world, whilst driving efficiency, scale and strengthening supplier-buyer relationships.”

The services that help in strengthening these supplier-buyer relationships are powered by Alusta, Basware’s unified cloud-based platform for purchase-to-pay that is flexible and intuitive, allowing for easy user experience. Alusta has been the backbone of many successful business dealings for Basware, including a recent contract with a UK hospitality retail provider who hired Basware for the automation solutions the platform supports. Not only t Alusta: The Architecture of the Basware Commerce Network hat, but Alusta is strong enough to inspire and create partnerships with excellent potential—like the one between Basware and India-based IT solution provider, Mphasis. Basware’s platform and commerce network will be embedded within Mphasis’ own portfolio to provide transaction based e-procurement and invoice automation services to its clients.

From their recent ventures, it is clear that Basware is a respected and successful business partner. PayStream Advisors believes the strength behind these business relationships has a lot to do with the strength upon which Basware has built their solutions.

Transparent, Connected, Effortless: Concur Fusion 2014

Steve Singh is the founder and CEO at Concur, a globally recognized travel expense solution provider. PayStream had the opportunity to connect with Steve as well has his brother, co-founder and President, Raj Singh, at the Concur Fusion user summit in New Orleans a couple weeks ago. He opened the session with a broad summary of the goals that Concur is striving towards. While Concur’s goals are grand, the company is optimistic about obtaining them, though fully aware that the level of perfection they wish to attain takes time and effort. Concur would like to see every company in the world eventually use Concur to process their travel expenses. At first may seem a bit lofty given the growing maturity of the TEM market. However, when you see the passion and dedication that Steve and Raj have about reinventing the corporate travel supply chain, it begins to seem a bit more plausible.

The Singh brothers started the company 21 years ago based on the concept of diminishing the pain of filling out expense reports. The nature of their company has fully become about making a difference in their customer’s lives, and they see the creation of an open global platform essential to this process.

Ultimately, Concur’s mission is to create the “Perfect Trip” for each one of their customers, each time they travel. For Steve, the perfect trip revolves very much around the ease with which he can connect to his personal life while carrying on his professional life. He illustrates the possibilities of such easy travel with episodes from his own business trips, such as how he can send his sister a gift or connect with his children for their nightly FaceTime with only a few clicks on his phone. For Steve, the effortlessness with which he is able to complete these tasks is inspiring. He wants Concur to be that intuitive with features so streamlined that they seem to work like magic. “Here’s what’s not visible in those clicks,” he says, “it takes an open and connected platform to make all that magic happen….We have an opportunity, here at Concur, to make business travel that magical.”

A magical travel experience starts with a simple concept: the innovation of a global travel community. Companies today succeed by recognizing that great corporate travel can only happen by the collaboration and connection of global communities and platforms. This connection means tailoring to a customer’s personal preferences and a company’s specific needs in integrating with travel suppliers. Certain obstacles prohibit full integration, (Steve reports that on average, 45% of their customers travel expenses are not automatically imported into Concur’s platform), but Concur is determined to reach that 100% connection. “As we collaborate, we will move our industry forward, and that is beautiful….”

During his keynote, Rajeev summarizes successful integration with three interlinking and interchangeable words: transparent, connected, and effortless. For him, these words are simple descriptions of a company’s inherent rights. When Concur’s applications are available and properly utilized, these rights are upheld. When a company has full transparency, they should be able to see where and how their money is being spent, as well as how effectively budgets are being kept. When a company is connected, communication with their employees should be easy and accessible, and sharing information should be almost instantaneous. When a company’s trips are effortless, each stage of the journey (from the airport to the hotel and everywhere in between) should progress smoothly according to both the company’s procedures and the employee’s personal preferences.

Concur’s belief is that for transparency, connectedness, and effortlessness to combine effectively, there must be an open global platform and a healthy global ecosystem that allows for wider connection and easier movement around the world. However, this is not only desirable to bring about the “Perfect Trip”. According to Rajeev, this idea of an ecosystem is fundamentally about empowering the rest of the world.

2014 TEM Report: Profound Growth in Use of Automation

PayStream Advisors has recently published our 2014 Travel and Expense Management (TEM) report and we’re excited to share with you what we’ve found. Manual data entry continues to rank as the number one challenge that organizations face in the expense management process. PayStream expects this challenge to fizzle away as the use of automated solutions continues to rise—Fifty-five percent of our survey respondents reported using a fully automated solution as their method of submitting expense reports (See figure below). We’ve also noticed over the last three years, the number of organizations using inter-office mail to submit reports and receipts has dropped from 37 to 30 percent.

One finding that should be of particular interest to organizations with a high level of employee mobility is the difference in average costs between survey respondents using fully automated, partially automated, and manual expense report submission methods. The difference between the averages of fully automated and manual reports was calculated to be $12.58. Considering close to 10 percent of respondents also reported to process more than 5,000 expense reports per month—this can be a six-figure difference in costs and therefore a huge opportunity for savings.

Modern TEM solutions continue to advance with groundbreaking mobile applications that make scanning images and populating and submitting reports easier than ever. These allow employees to focus on more important matters at hand such as pleasing a client, attaining a sale, or discussing partnerships. Several leading TEM solution providers helped fund this research and can be found in the latter half of the report. PayStream welcomes you to download a free copy of the report here.

A Vital Tool for Travel and Expense Management

Investing in a Travel and Expense Management solution (TEM) will increase revenues by decreasing the costs associated with expense reporting, improve expenditure visibility, and provide the necessary tools to manage spending processes that are efficient and effortless.

Concur, a leading provider of integrated TEM solutions, helps companies control costs and save valuable time through their cloud and mobile systems. Concur’s open platform enables an entire travel and expense organization of customers, suppliers, and developers to access and utilize Concur’s T&E cloud. The system quickly adapts to individual employee preferences and is individually tailored to meet the needs of companies large and small throughout the world.

Concur is a pioneer of cloud computing and is the only solution in the market that combines travel, itinerary and expense management into one integrated and easy-to-use solution. Concur’s solution follows robust business rules combined with automated travel requests or pre-trip approvals to ensure consistent travel policy enforcement. This practice puts organizations in complete control of their corporate expense system. Concur’s service helps companies enforce their T&E policies every step of the way – before booking, during the trip and when expenses are submitted and approved by including customized spending limits, preferred vendors, and a customized rules engine.

Concur travel booking is integrated directly into one seamless TEM process and connects to all major global distribution services, as well as directly with thousands of suppliers, enabling all bookings (hotel, flight, rail and ground transportation) to be completed without the aid of a travel agent. Concur’s solution enables users to drill down on specific hotel amenities such as the inclusion of a fitness room or pool, similar to popular online travel booking sites. Concur’s TEM services are designed with resilience and availability in mind. Their mobile platform not only allows users to log on through any web browser, but also allows users to access the solution directly from an optimized mobile application. This allows all users: employees, approvers, and auditors to use the application from virtually anywhere.

Concur’s process for submitting expense reports and receipts is done quickly and easily through the capture of e-receipts directly from travel providers. E-receipts include detailed folio data and are automatically uploaded into a traveler’s expense report. This time-saving process delivers actionable data that, in combination with the corporate card transaction information, provides an unprecedented view into every expense transaction. In the instances where e-receipts are not available, receipts can be submitted via email, fax, or using the Concur mobile application and the device’s camera.

Concur’s built-in workflow and audit rules allow managers to quickly and easily approve in-policy expenses. Concur’s service integrates seamlessly with virtually every back-office system, from enterprise-wide ERP systems to smaller and even home-grown back-office processes. With over 15,000 clients of all types, there likely isn’t a back-office configuration that Concur hasn’t worked with.

To learn more about Concur’s T&E Cloud ecosystem, download a complimentary copy of PayStream’s 2013 Travel and Expense Benchmark report. The report includes a detailed Concur profile and case study. Stay tuned for the upcoming 2014 TEM report that PayStream will publish in March.

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