SAP Concur's blog discusses how AI is transforming travel management by connecting booking, expense, and approval processes. It cites that organizations using AI-powered Concur Travel and Expense report 19.2% faster travel bookings, 21% lower travel and expense costs, and 78% improvement in policy compliance.
Italy-based Smartness has raised €47 million in Series B funding led by United Ventures and CDP Venture Capital SGR, with participation from existing investor Partech. The company's agentic AI platform automates operations for hotels and vacation rentals, serving over 5,000 customers in 41 countries. The funding will support European expansion, with a goal to triple revenue in 2026.
SAP Concur blog discusses that after finance teams deploy automated expense tools, early results are positive, but inconsistencies emerge later, such as out-of-policy expenses being approved and teams interpreting policies differently. This stems from a lack of governance. With global business travel spend projected at $1.69 trillion, small inconsistencies can multiply. The article recommends aligning policy design, approval logic, and governance to ensure automation delivers consistency and confidence.
SAP Concur published an article on how colleges and universities can improve compliance through automated travel and expense management. Research shows 63% of organizations cite time wasted on audits due to non-compliance, 64% of higher education institutions take over 60 days to process vendor payments, and 37% of expense reports are still manually audited. Automated tools can identify non-compliant transactions early, reduce audit workload, and protect institutional funds.
SAP Concur article discusses the importance of automated fraud detection in expense management. Citing 2025 report: 77% of finance leaders know an AP fraud victim in past five years, only 35% consider their prevention measures very effective. It highlights AI/ML for real-time monitoring and anomaly detection, and introduces SAP Concur solutions.
SAP Concur article explains accounts payable (AP) definition, importance, and challenges, highlighting manual process drawbacks. Introduces automated AP workflow: invoice intake, data validation, approval routing, payment, and audit trail. AI and OCR improve accuracy, optimize cash flow, enhance fraud detection, and tax compliance.
Swiss group booking specialist Lobby raised $2.2 million in funding from Founderful, with GetYourGuide co-founder Pascal Mathis joining the board. Founded in 2025, the company plans to expand into meetings, experiences, cruises, and airlines. Its AI platform helps hotels automate group booking requests, reduce manual processes, and increase conversion rates.
At SAP Concur Fusion 2026, SAP announced expansion of Joule AI solutions, including integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot, two new Joule Agents for expense automation and pre-submit audit, and new partnerships with Amex GBT and Visa to streamline travel and expense management.
The article discusses financial complexity in healthcare, including fragmented spend processes and compliance pressures. By automating financial workflows and connecting spend data, healthcare organizations can improve transparency, reduce fraud risk, and ensure resources are directed to patient care.
Malaysia-based travel seller AA Aviation signed an agreement with Amadeus for an end-to-end solution including automation, mid- and back-office systems, and an online booking tool, to enhance operational efficiency and competitiveness.
SAP Concur announced its Innovation Award winners at Fusion 2026, including LTM, Schwarz Group, Natura, Wipro, Royal Mail, and Staple AI. These organizations achieved significant improvements in travel and expense management through automation, AI, and integrations, such as saving hours, improving compliance, and reducing costs.
In a SAP Concur Conversations episode, Saia LTL Freight's Director of Finance Operations Ed Hebert shares how the company transformed its travel and expense (T&E) data from a tactical process into a strategic storytelling engine. By analyzing patterns and automating a reconciliation process, Saia reclaimed approximately 42 workdays annually, reduced burnout, and improved decision-making across the organization.
SAP Concur's guide highlights the strategic role of accounts payable (AP) in spend management for 2026. It offers five recommendations: remove manual friction, use invoice data for visibility, connect AP to total spend, build in risk and compliance, and design scalable processes. Citing Ardent Partners, best-in-class AP teams process invoices in 3.1 days at 80% lower cost.
According to SAP Concur research, finance teams in 2026 face ongoing volatility, with 35% of CFOs citing poor cost management as a top internal threat. Leading organizations are shifting from reactive to proactive spend management, integrating travel, expense, and accounts payable, and leveraging automation and AI for efficiency. Adopting SAP Concur can reduce business travel and expense costs by 23%, increase policy compliance by 28%, and enhance forecasting confidence.
Perk (formerly TravelPerk), an intelligent travel and spend management platform, launched a global ad campaign including its first CTV ad, exposing 'shadow work' costing businesses over $1.7 trillion annually. The campaign humorously shows how hidden tasks like booking trips and filing expenses derail breakthroughs. Perk aims to eliminate these manual tasks with its AI-native platform.
SAP Concur's blog highlights the benefits of integrating with cloud ERP, including unified data, real-time visibility, improved compliance, and greater efficiency. Through automated workflows and real-time data synchronization, organizations can eliminate data silos and achieve a single source of truth for spend management.
SAP Concur and Workday have different priorities in T&E management. Concur is purpose-built for global travel, expense, and compliance, offering end-to-end visibility and proactive compliance. User reviews show higher satisfaction for Concur in bank/credit card integration and currency conversion. Concur users save an average of $777K annually and see 32% higher compliance.
A SAP Concur blog post uses four personas to show how its platform integrates travel, expense and invoice management. It cites data that nearly four in ten CFOs list manual processes as a top challenge; teams using SAP Concur process about 35% more invoices monthly and 1.5 times more expense reports, and are five times more efficient than users of other solutions; users spend nearly 20% less time booking trips and 12% less time filing expenses.
SAP Concur published an article on how Concur Invoice simplifies accounts payable. The tool uses AI, OCR, machine learning, and human verification to ensure invoice data accuracy, and supports digital storage of paper, email, or electronic invoices. It offers real-time spend visibility, automatic audit trails, pre-spend controls, and workflow automation including cost coding, dollar thresholds, and exception management, with integration into ERP, accounting, and payment systems. Citing the 2024 SAP Concur ROI Research Study, organizations using the tool achieved 35% more invoices processed per month, 20% cost savings, 70% increase in policy compliance, and 10% less time on invoice approvals.
SAP Concur published an article on the value of integrating corporate cards and P-cards into one workflow. Corporate cards cover everyday expenses like employee travel and meals, while P-cards cover vendor or department purchases with richer data and stricter controls. Integration enables real-time spend visibility, streamlined reconciliation, unified approval workflows, and stronger compliance and control. Citing the Weatherford case, which previously had 40+ card programs and dozens of local systems, integration delivered a 47% boost in workforce efficiency, 25% lower T&E operations costs, and an estimated $5 million in savings.
SAP Concur published an article on AI applications in travel, expense, and invoice management. AI has been infused into its solutions for nearly a decade, reducing repetitive tasks and empowering finance teams with insights. Applications include ExpenseIt scanning receipts, Verify auditing millions of expense reports to flag outliers and potential fraud, and Intelligent Audit blending AI with human expertise to uncover non-compliant spending. AI also enables real-time policy enforcement, natural-language queries, and more accurate travel cost forecasting. SAP Concur emphasizes it does not use customer data to train external models and follows SAP's global AI ethics policy.
SAP Concur published an article on AP automation strategies, metrics, and solutions. It notes AP has shifted from a back-office function to a strategic powerhouse, recommending tracking metrics such as invoice processing cycle time, cost per invoice, exception rate, touchless processing rate, and staff time on supplier inquiries. According to industry benchmarks, top performers achieve invoice processing time of 3.1 days, cost per invoice of $2.78, exception rate of 9%, touchless processing for nearly half (49.2%) of invoices, and 13.4% of time (5.36 hours weekly) on inquiries. The article also covers Concur Invoice's end-to-end automation and a roadmap from manual to touchless AP.
SAP Concur published an article noting that nearly half of finance leaders worldwide know of a company in their professional network that experienced spend management fraud in the past three years. The article highlights the costs of manual expense management, including missing receipts, time-consuming reports, out-of-policy purchases, unclaimed VAT and fraud risks. Automated expense management can reduce risks and improve productivity, citing a study estimating a T&E solution saves 13 hours weekly per finance or accounting team member.
A SAP Concur blog post states financial crime accounts for up to 5% of global GDP, with an estimated $800 billion to $2 trillion laundered annually. In the U.S., financial institutions face penalties of up to $500,000 per violation. It says organizations handling international travel, cross-border payments or complex expense categories must comply with AML rules, and describes how real-time transaction monitoring, enhanced due diligence, intelligent risk assessment and simplified reporting can reduce compliance risk.
SAP Concur highlights four key benefits of Concur Expense: cash flow visibility, risk minimization, streamlined workflows, and scalability. By automating data imports and integrating with ERP and other systems, Concur Expense improves efficiency, enhances compliance, and supports multiple currencies and complex regulations.
SAP Concur published a guide for small and midsize businesses on managing business expenses, noting that SMBs can be overwhelmed by expense data without a systematic approach. The guide defines business expenses and categorizes them, including operating expenses, payroll, office supplies, professional services, insurance, software subscriptions and travel expenses, while distinguishing capital expenses. It highlights the inefficiency and risks of spreadsheet-based management, such as manual entry errors, outdated data, delayed reimbursement, and elevated policy-violation and fraud risk, and recommends separating business and personal finances, standardizing expense categories, adopting mobi…
SAP Concur argues that amid hybrid work, rising compliance risks and tighter margins, expense policies are shifting from paperwork to a strategic asset. It lists three signs of an outdated policy: teams still emailing spreadsheets to claim mileage, frequent employee questions about whether a claim is allowed, and finance discovering out-of-policy spend after the money is gone. Outdated policies lead to inconsistent tax and audit compliance, employee confusion over reimbursables, manual processes that delay reporting and skew forecasting, and hidden overspend in decentralized or remote teams. The article recommends clear guidelines, automated workflows, real-time spend visibility and flexibl…
SAP Concur published five steps for strategic spend management in growing businesses: understand the business impact of spend management, build flexibility into processes, give everyone real-time insight into spending, simplify and automate compliant spending, and align spend strategy with broader business goals. The article cites Ben Wright of Oxford Economics saying a spend-management strategy is critical not only to control costs but to potentially drive growth and profitability. It recommends mapping spending rules to goals such as cashflow resilience and sustainable travel, including eco-friendly travel options in booking tools, enabling mobile receipt capture, and integrating expense,…
SAP Concur published a guide to help accounts payable teams craft a vendor invoice policy. It notes that without a written policy, AP staff burn hours hunting for approvals, correcting coding errors and untangling exceptions. A clear company-wide standard speeds approvals, reduces the risk of lost, late or duplicate invoices, and strengthens vendor relationships through on-time payments and fewer disputes. The article offers seven tips: invite participation from finance, IT and business units; prepare for objections; streamline vendor workflows by encouraging emailed PDFs and ACH payments; post the policy on the intranet and require annual e-sign-off; run a broad review for clarity; optimiz…
SAP Concur explains how mobile spend management apps improve business expense control. It notes that relying on paper receipts and manual tracking leads to lost documentation, delayed reimbursement, errors and non-compliant claims. Mobile spend management software enables instant capture and categorization of expenses, real-time syncing with cloud financial systems, faster travel booking, approvals and reimbursement cycles, and better visibility into spending trends. ExpenseIt uses OCR, machine learning and generative AI to read receipts and categorize expenses, while Concur Detect automatically checks expenses against company policies. SAP Concur cites data showing a 47% reduction in missi…
A SAP Concur blog post discusses the definition and implementation of sustainable growth, emphasizing a balance of environmental, social, and economic considerations. It notes that the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) measures a company's maximum growth without financial leverage, and describes how SAP Concur solutions support sustainable development in travel and expense management through automation, green labels, and carbon budgets.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses the unique expense management challenges nonprofits face, including donor transparency requirements, compliance complexity, multiple funding source restrictions, and limited resources. It recommends adopting automated expense management solutions, such as SAP Concur's cloud platform, to improve transparency, reduce administrative burden, and ensure compliance.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses challenges U.S. state and local governments face in expense management, including outdated systems, manual processes, and compliance risks. Citing Wakefield Research data, it notes 29% of industry leaders use outdated T&E solutions and 30% use outdated accounts payable solutions. It recommends automated systems to improve transparency, security, and efficiency.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses challenges healthcare organizations face in spend management, including strict regulations, manual processes, and compliance risks. Citing Wakefield Research data, it notes 29% of healthcare leaders say their T&E solution relies on manual data entry, and 22% know their T&E solution does not meet regulatory requirements. It recommends automated systems to improve compliance, reduce errors, and enhance employee satisfaction.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses strict compliance requirements aerospace, defense, and government contracting organizations face in spend management. Citing Wakefield Research data, it notes 37% of government contractors say their T&E solution lacks real-time visibility, and 40% say the same for their AP solution. It recommends automated systems to improve compliance, reduce risk, and enhance financial reporting.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses practical applications of AI in spend management, including auto-categorizing transactions, identifying duplicate submissions and potential fraud, matching receipts to credit card charges, and recommending policy-compliant alternatives. Citing McKinsey, it notes AI could create up to $4.4 trillion in annual global economic value, 92% of companies are increasing AI investment, but only 1% consider themselves mature in their AI approach.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses the risks of corporate non-compliance, including legal and financial consequences, reputational damage, operational disruptions, and fraud and financial loss. Citing ACFE data, it notes about 5% of revenue is lost to occupational fraud annually, with a median loss of $145,500. It recommends clear policies, formal approval workflows, automated compliance tools, and employee training.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses the impact of expense process improvement on productivity. It notes that manual expense processes consume significant employee time, create cognitive load, and affect team collaboration and organizational efficiency. It recommends automated expense management solutions, such as ExpenseIt, to automatically capture and categorize receipts, streamline approvals, and provide real-time data visibility.
SAP Concur's blog lists 8 ways automation saves K-12 schools money, including reducing invoice processing costs, reclaiming staff time, preventing errors and overpayments, real-time visibility, reducing compliance risks, speeding reimbursements, smarter vendor decisions, and proactive budget management. Data cited: AP departments without automation spend $6.30 per invoice vs $1.45 with automation; organizations using Concur Expense reduce expense report errors by 52% and boost compliance by 65%.
SAP Concur's blog introduces the opportunity cost analysis framework to help businesses evaluate resource allocation decisions. The article explains the opportunity cost formula and lists application scenarios such as capital investment, product development, time management, and technology selection. By quantifying the sacrifices of each option, companies can gain a more holistic view of the true cost of decisions, especially when budgets are tight. Using travel and expense management as an example, it illustrates how automated solutions reduce opportunity costs, citing survey data: integrated travel and expense platforms can increase policy compliance by 26%, save costs by 21%, and double…