Tag Archives: Travel and Expense Management

Concur Soars with United Air Partnership

Concur, a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, has partnered concurwith 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.

 

 

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.Fig6what percentofofexpense

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.