Tag Archives: Concur

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.

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.

The Red Cross Shared Service’s 90-Day AP Transformation

red-cross

PayStream Advisors was privileged to sit down for a chat this week with Michael Harris, the Senior Director of Finance at the Red Cross Shared Services Center. Mr. Harris is long-time friend of PayStream, as well as a past speaker at our annual Innovate Summit conferences, and he told us a little about his company’s transformative experience of streamlining and centralizing their back-office, AP, and procurement processes.

The Red Cross success story involves the company consolidating AP operations in over 600 chapter offices down to 40 regional centers. They took a huge step further by consolidating those 40 locations into one centralized shared service center in Charlotte, NC in 2012. Their last transition involved the automation of non-purchase order invoices and took a remarkably short period of 90 days. Since then the company’s entire AP procedure has improved—last June, they were processing over 20,000 paper invoices per month, and this June that number had lowered to only 9,600. They handle almost 85% of their invoices electronically, and for the most part, the only papers the center still receives are the utility bills and some purchase order invoices.

Part of what makes the Red Cross story so unique is the complexity of their AP process. As a humanitarian, non-profit organization, they don’t make many straight through purchases, but conduct many direct expenditures for disaster relief funding and emergency assistance. This means their payments are usually only made once or twice to the same location, and that location can be almost anywhere. Due to their humanitarian focus, many purchases are locally-driven. The Red Cross has around 25,000 active suppliers on an annual basis, which creates a lot of AP work for field staff processing to support regional purchases. This also makes it difficult to centralize invoices because of challenges to get the invoice back to the proper location. Unlike consistent, recurring suppliers, one-time or ad-hoc suppliers can’t be easily onboarded.

Though these complexities alone seem substantial, one of the most difficult parts of the Red Cross’s process is their approval workflow. Mr. Harris explained that most field employees “wear different hats,” accomplishing more than just one job in the field. This makes it ineffective to set up approval workflow based on job title, so the Red Cross organizes workflow routes by policy rather than a person’s title.

All these factors ensured that the company’s AP transition to electronic processing would be difficult, and the organization knew they needed a solution that was flexible enough to meet their diverse approval needs. Fortunately, the Red Cross found both flexibility and determination with the Concur Invoice solution. Mr. Harris remembers the collaborative and attentive work Concur delivered, and how they went above and beyond to tailor their Expense Management software to the Red Cross’s complex workflow process in particular. “I wrote down the exact specifications of concur what we needed,” said Mr. Harris, “and within twenty-four hours, Concur had a demo for us with a solution that matched 85 percent of what I had written down.”

Although Concur is best known for their travel and expense management software, they showed remarkable dexterity in their collaboration with the Red Cross. Before, the Red Cross staff experienced frequent delays from the difficult and wide-ranging movement of documents, but now, Concur’s Invoice solution enables them to maintain complete control of invoices—they can load the invoices directly into a system, gaining transaction speed and visibility. As far as how those on the field feel about the new solution, Mr. Harris told us they “love it because it empowers them.” Every aspect of their work now defaults to one system, making the process “very, very smooth.”

What’s next for the Red Cross Shared Services? Mr. Harris says they are placing more focus on the P2P process, looking to transform their P2P platform by developing procedures that will streamline the process of inventory items.

PayStream is happy to have the friendship of Mike Harris and the Red Cross Shared relief Services Center, and their success story is a true sign of the transformative power of an automated AP process. We wish them continued success in their operations so they can continue to deliver in their humanitarian mission.

Michael Harris
Michael has over 30 years procure-to-pay (P2P) experience with notable achievements in accounts payable, sourcing, contracting, procurement, inventory management, warehousing & distribution, real estate management, finance, manufacturing, sales & marketing, R&D, ERP production and IT systems support.

For more inspirational stories of AP process transformations like this one, register for this year’s PayStream Summit conference in San Antonio, Texas. 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.

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.

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.

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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