This SAP Concur blog post offers advice for new finance leaders on building relationships, understanding company culture and politics, and managing up and down in their first 90 days. It emphasizes establishing strong working relationships through frequent two-way communication, one-on-one meetings, understanding company mission and decision-makers, and exploring cross-functional teams' finance needs.
A SAP Concur blog post by former Chief Revenue Officer Christal Bemont discusses how small business owners can balance work and life by automating financial processes. The post notes that automation eliminates tedious tasks, provides real-time spend visibility, and helps forecast the future. SAP Concur is sharing resources through National Small Business Week.
SAP Concur blog notes that automating AP processes not only saves employee time and improves invoice efficiency but also boosts vendor satisfaction. Vendors can check payment status via a portal, companies avoid late fees and interest, and may even get early-payment discounts, creating a virtuous cycle.
SAP Concur describes Concur Expense: integrating travel and expense in a single solution, employees can go from trip to expense report with one click. Smart matching combines credit card transactions, booked travel, and e-receipts; built-in audit rules instantly highlight exceptions; finance leaders get a unified view of travel and expense spend. Hotel e-receipts are automatically itemized, and the system notifies employees of incomplete entries. Employees can view, add, and submit expense reports via mobile, and managers can approve on the go. Concur Expense analytics dashboards provide spend views and travel KPIs. Tungsten Automation used reporting tools to reduce travel spend by 15% over…
The SAP Concur blog notes that admissions, athletic recruiting, and advancement staff at higher education institutions often drive to recruit students and fundraise, and manual mileage tracking leads to inaccurate data, fraud, and expense errors. It cites three benefits of mobile apps: GPS-accurate distance tracking saves money, automated tracking saves time, and it supports policy compliance. It references National Center for Education Statistics data projecting a 20% enrollment increase for college students older than 25 by 2023.
The article emphasizes combining employee sentiment data with operational data to create more effective T&E policies. By understanding the reasons behind employee behaviors, companies can adjust policies to improve compliance and satisfaction. For example, discovering issues like low meal limits or poor supplier performance and making improvements.
A SAP Concur blog post suggests finance teams plan expense management improvements before year-end. It recommends reviewing expense management processes, categorizing changes into long-term and short-term goals, and prioritizing quick wins. It also advises saying goodbye to manual processes and choosing suitable automation tools like Concur Expense, noting that employees can complete expense reports 60% faster with online tools.
Part 2 of SAP Concur blog focuses on best practices for returning to the workplace. It references CDC resources and lists practices customers are following: controlling cash flow, expanding T&E programs globally, implementing new remote spend policies, setting further controls and compliance, instituting project codes for COVID-19 expenses, automating AP, and improving WFH employee experience. Emphasizes using CDC tools and automated spend management to address pandemic challenges.
The article outlines six applications of AI in back-office expense management: increasing expense report reliability (only 20% of expenses go through proper auditing), reducing fraud risk (ACFE reports average annual fraud loss equals 5% of an organization's revenue with average loss per case of $1.5M), gaining control of regulatory compliance, adapting to policy changes, boosting employee experience, and recovering tax (42% of employee spend submitted for VAT/GST reimbursement does not meet reclaim requirements due to incorrect data, and global market potential for VAT reclaim is almost $75 billion).
SAP Concur and The Wall Street Journal have collaborated on a podcast exploring how machine learning and AI automate the expense report process, including filling, approving, and compliance checks. The article mentions a company that deployed SAP Concur across 23 countries, reducing expense report review time from 10 hours a day to five minutes.
The article discusses how SMBs often rely on non-finance employees for credit card reconciliation, which becomes messy when multiple employees use multiple cards. Concur Expense and Concur Invoice can automate the entire credit card reconciliation process, importing transaction data from almost any source and automatically comparing it against card statements, receipts, and other internal data. This speeds up reconciliation, eliminates manual matching, and immediately spots errors, discrepancies, and unusual transactions.
SAP Concur published an article explaining how the 'Intelligent Enterprise' concept applies to travel and expense management. It states that by collecting, normalizing, enriching, and connecting previously siloed data, companies can improve visibility, focus, and agility in spend control. Finance teams gain better control over spending, while HR, travel managers, and security officers can improve the employee travel and duty of care experience. The article emphasizes that bringing travel, expense, and invoice management systems together eliminates complex user experiences and accelerates value creation.
A SAP Concur blog post outlines the hidden costs of a sluggish, manual expense process. Relying on paper and spreadsheets leads to back-and-forth communication among finance, employees, and managers, with every claim requiring manual validation and approval. Paper receipts get lost and manual data entry invites errors. Employees delay submissions due to tedium, hurting cash flow, and reimbursement averages nine days from approval. The post also notes that without automation, companies miss spend-analysis opportunities, while automated systems can reduce expense submission complications and errors by 36%.
A SAP Concur blog post emphasizes the importance of financial visibility, noting that without comprehensive reporting tools, there are gaps in spend visibility, especially in employee spend and accounts payable. It cites a 2017 Forrester survey of 378 global finance and IT leaders, showing only 38% of companies are very satisfied with their T&E reporting and analytical capabilities. Manual processes like spreadsheets are slow and error-prone. The article recommends automated cloud-based solutions to improve data accessibility, reduce data entry time, and cut reporting time from weeks to minutes. The same survey shows 38% of IT and finance decision makers cite increasing automation as a top…
A SAP Concur blog post notes that cumbersome travel and expense processes can lead to employee dissatisfaction and turnover. It recommends simplifying processes, eliminating paper receipts, and automating approvals and expense management to boost productivity and engagement. Citing the Great Resignation, it emphasizes that employees leave due to unnecessary processes. With SAP Concur tool enhancements, companies can control costs, simplify processes, and free finance teams for strategic work.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses accounts payable challenges facing higher education institutions during the pandemic: declining enrollments, student refunds, campus closures, and paper invoice backlogs from remote work. It cites an IDC white paper reporting that organizations using Concur Invoice saw average annual benefits of $662,700 ($3,258 per 1,000 invoices) and a three-year ROI of 634%.
SAP Concur cites a June 2021 Wakefield Research study of businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees, finding that 95 percent of corporate travelers are willing to get back on the road for work and 81 percent are concerned about their careers if travel does not pick up in the next 12 months, and outlines how Concur Travel automation helps control costs, support sustainable travel, and keep travelers safe.
A SAP Concur blog post examines the potential benefits of invoice management automation for small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) in accounts payable (AP). Citing AMI-Partners, it notes the typical SMB works with 190 suppliers and vendors, generating 2,280 checks annually if one check per vendor per month; 42% of surveyed SMBs report invoice reconciliation errors; and accounting/finance staff spend 14% of their time each week processing invoices. The post states automated invoicing solutions yield average annual savings of US$34,000 and US$11 per invoice, and promotes Concur Invoice and its ROI calculator.
A SAP Concur blog post reviews how companies adapted travel and expense management during the first two years of the pandemic. Serco used Concur Travel reports to quickly locate employees and facilitate safe returns; Penn State managed unused airfare through an online booking tool; CAF America allocated $1,500 per employee for home office equipment, with 80% submitting reimbursements totaling over $42,000 in under two weeks; The Tech Interactive adopted cloud solutions for electronic invoicing and mobile expense reporting.
A SAP Concur blog post explains how finance automation improves business cash flow. Manual paper-based processes make information hard to find in a timely manner, while automation solutions like Concur Invoice and Concur Expense allow data to flow automatically into systems, providing real-time visibility. The article cites Hammerson as an example, where spend visibility enabled better cash flow forecasting for growth planning. Automation also generates standard reports automatically, speeds up AP processes to reduce late payment fees, and frees up finance team time. Research suggests finance automation saves over 15% of time for those processing expenses and invoices.
SAP Concur consultants interview Carina Soubiea from OSIsoft about global expansion and implementation. She shares lessons on timing, tracks, resources, and focus areas to help businesses prepare for cross-border growth.
A SAP Concur blog post argues that controlling spend and optimizing cash flow can help companies of all sizes be more resilient, but manual expense management processes make that elusive. It cites a 2020 Oxford Economics survey of 2,000 small and midsize businesses: almost all respondents plan to shift manual finance processes into the digital realm over the next few years; 45% expect to increase efficiency by minimizing error, risk, and cost, 43% expect to boost productivity via transformation and intelligent process automation, and 40% expect to free up employees for higher-level tasks. The post promotes Concur Expense features such as customizable expense policies, expense visibility, an…
SAP Concur announced it was named a 2025 G2 Best Software Award winner on the Best Accounting and Finance Software list, its fifth consecutive year, based on nearly 6,000 reviews. Additionally, SAP Concur was recognized as a leader in G2's Summer 2025 Grid Reports across four categories: Expense Management, Travel Management, Invoice Management, and AP Automation, earning 43 leader awards including Small-Business, Mid-Market, and Enterprise segments. User reviews cite automated T&E management, reduced manual processes, improved compliance, and faster reimbursements.
A SAP Concur blog post notes that SMB growth brings more employee spending and expense reports, while manual processes are inefficient and risky. Studies show automated travel and expense users save an average of US$30,000 annually, or about $600 per year per employee using the application, and $20 per expense report. The post recommends choosing cloud expense management solutions with automation, spend visibility, data consolidation, and scalability.
SAP Concur hosted multiple sessions at SAPPHIRE NOW focusing on machine learning, AI-driven fraud detection, and travel and expense management transformation. IBM will share how SAP Leonardo Machine Learning improves T&E app user experience; Shell will present consolidating multiple global expense management systems into one integrated system serving 90,000 users; EY will show how to use T&E data to reduce cross-border tax and immigration risk. Sessions also cover AI and machine learning driving intelligence, compliance and fraud detection best practices, employee spend visibility, and end-to-end integration with SAP ERP and S/4HANA.
A SAP Concur blog post cites Gallup data that only 15% of full-time employees are highly engaged, while 85% are not engaged or actively disengaged. AMI-Partners research shows 93% of SMBs have employees who travel for work regularly, but only 21% use a dedicated travel and expense solution, and more than half lack well-defined travel and expense policies. The article says SAP Concur customers save on average US$23 per expense report.
This article discusses the critical role of intelligent technology in travel and expense management. It notes that companies need to manage T&E through transparency rather than more rules, and describes how SAP Concur solutions help employees simplify booking and expense reporting through a central platform, mobile apps, and automatic data flows, while providing spend visibility and compliance support for finance and travel managers.
SAP Concur published an article citing a survey of UK finance leaders, finding 81% have blind spots in their company's travel, expense and invoice spend. A typical company spends more than 10% of its annual budget on T&E. The article lists sources of blind spots: retrospective expense claims prevent cash-flow forecasting; around half of employees prefer to book independently even when the company has an online booking tool; supplier spend is fragmented across channels; more than two-thirds of finance leaders lack confidence in employee T&E policy compliance; and 77% of UK finance leaders lack confidence their business could quickly and accurately locate business travelers in an emergency.
SAP Concur celebrates the 10th anniversary of its open platform, which has grown to over 75 APIs and 250+ partner applications since 2011. The article highlights progress in accelerating integration, simplifying development, boosting compliance, and expanding the partner ecosystem, including new scenarios like Travel to Reimburse.
A SAP Concur blog post introduces a travel and expense management maturity model developed with IDC, dividing corporate spend management into five stages: legacy applications, automated point solutions, connected platform ecosystem, integrated application suites, and intelligent/predictive processes. The post notes legacy systems relying on spreadsheets and non-integrated systems risk untimely expenses, inaccurate accruals, and non-compliant spend, while the final stage uses predictive processes, machine learning-based fraud detection, and near real-time data visibility to increase business agility and resilience.
SAP Concur published a blog post introducing a new email setting in TripIt that allows users to control which itineraries are shared with SAP Concur. Users can customize plan-sharing preferences for each connected email address, such as setting work email to auto-share and personal email to not share. Users can also edit individual trips to choose whether to share. The feature aims to help users separate business and personal travel while streamlining expense reporting.
A SAP Concur blog post argues that if corporate spend processes and policies have not adapted to remote-work realities, spend visibility will decline further. It recommends using corporate card data as the core of compliance management and adopting automated receipt capture, audit rules and flexible expense categories to address blind spots from personal-card payments, cash reimbursement and remote-work-related spend.
SAP Concur announced an expansion of its partnership with Brex, featuring SAP Concur solutions in the Brex Rewards Center. In spring 2020, Brex launched an integration with Concur Expense that allows charges on a Brex card to seamlessly flow into Concur Expense. Brex is changing the corporate lending landscape by opening up opportunities to a segment previously untouched by many corporate card programs.
Citing the Oversight Systems 2017 Spend Analysis Report, SAP Concur says the typical organization loses 5% of annual revenue to fraud, with 89% of that being asset misappropriation including expense reimbursement schemes, and 50% due to weak internal controls. It offers six tips: robust travel and expense policies, tools that make compliance easier, catching spend anomalies before they happen, reducing mileage padding, audits, and automatic monitoring of expense claim data. SAP Concur says it connects to spending data from suppliers, credit providers and other sources, and uses Concur Intelligence for reports, dashboards and real-time alerts.
A SAP Concur blog post analyzes the importance of travel and expense (T&E) management in the financial services industry. It notes that because employees like relationship managers and financial advisors travel frequently, T&E is a major cost center after personnel costs. The highly regulated nature of the industry requires T&E systems to enhance policy compliance, prevent fraud, and meet regulatory requirements like duty of care. The article recommends cloud-based solutions to enhance data security, reduce costs, and improve employee experience.
This SAP Concur blog post emphasizes the importance of automating accounts payable and expense processes to control stress. It notes that nearly half of all accountants work more than 13 extra days per year, and automation provides real-time spend visibility, improves operational efficiency, and promotes work-life balance. Through examples, it shows how automated solutions reduce errors, save time, and boost employee satisfaction.
A SAP Concur blog post notes that as manual financial tasks become automated, cloud-based expense management solutions are proliferating, and small businesses need to choose the right tools based on their situation. It suggests answering three questions to determine automation needs: whether employee fraud needs addressing, whether spend is managed reactively or proactively, and whether there is sufficient visibility into cash flow and expenses. Automated expense management systems capture and process expenses, improve audit efficiency, and spot discrepancies; mobile-enabled solutions allow employees to submit expenses on the road, providing near real-time spending data. The article also re…
A SAP Concur blog post makes a data-driven case for invoice automation. It says the average AP organization spends $9.40 and takes 9.2 days to process a single invoice, and that AP departments with no automation and inconsistent processes cost four times as much per invoice as those with end-to-end automation. 62% of organizations report financial losses from fraud in the last three years; 78% of AP departments increased ePayments last year; 19% experience fraud frequently and 33% occasionally; only 51% can immediately recognize AP fraud; and 36% use no technologies to detect or prevent finance fraud. 33% already use advanced analytics and 22% leverage AI to detect and prevent fraud.
The SAP Concur blog analyzes the outlook for business travel resumption in Asia-Pacific, noting wide variation in restrictions. China's domestic seat bookings were up 7% year-on-year, while international seats were down 98%. It recommends companies understand employee concerns, track fast-changing information, and build traveler safety into processes. It also mentions travel insurance exclusions for COVID-related costs, the burst Singapore-Hong Kong travel bubble, and the impact of supplier safety commitments on traveler confidence.
A SAP Concur blog post notes that the nature of corporate spending has changed significantly over the past five to ten years and continues to evolve, making tracking and managing spending more complex. Citing IDC research, it says many organizations still have shortcomings: accounts payable teams cannot effectively direct spending if they only orchestrate manual processes; budget managers are not truly managing budgets if they only track what is spent; and finance managers cannot ensure payment terms and negotiated rates on every transaction without the right tools. IDC created a five-stage maturity model, from manual processes and spreadsheets at the lowest stage to integrated solutions an…