SAP Concur article discusses how expense automation and mobile AI are changing traditional expense reporting. It cites client PoHwer reducing claim compilation from 3-4 hours per month to 30 minutes. The article also notes that 95% of CFOs consider cloud-based applications critically or very important to financial performance, and advises businesses to embrace automation with an open mind.
SAP Concur's blog notes that AI can reduce manual effort and errors while improving employee retention, engagement, and productivity. It argues that barriers to AI deployment are lower than ever, with RPA and low-code/no-code tools enabling in-house bot development. AI-powered document analysis can automate expense and invoice approval, freeing employees for higher-value work.
SAP Concur published a blog post discussing the impact of technology on the future of K-12 schools. The article notes that automating administrative tasks can free teachers and staff to focus on teaching. Smart expense management systems can help schools control budgets, improve efficiency, and enhance supplier relationships. Additionally, technology can strengthen compliance and reduce fraud risk. The article was written by Sasha Nunes, COO and co-founder of N&B Team Consulting.
A SAP Concur blog post argues that manual expense reporting is slow, error-prone, and costly over time, with every step requiring manual handling. Paper receipts get lost, making reconciliation difficult. The post recommends moving to an automated system to save finance team time, reduce errors, speed reimbursement, and improve employee satisfaction. Automation also enables mobile receipt capture, eliminating lost receipts and improving real-time visibility into company spend.
The SAP Concur blog published an end-of-year survival checklist for finance teams, noting that December 19 was the busiest expense day last year. It recommends reducing distractions, holding team planning meetings, and evaluating and automating expense processes to handle the year-end peak. The checklist covers turning off message alerts, scheduling focused work time, holding year-end planning meetings, creating vacation calendars, reviewing current expense processes, and identifying automation opportunities.
A SAP Concur blog post says AI has entered the workplace, helping save time and reduce paperwork, for example by replacing paper receipts and tedious manual data entry with automated travel and expense management tools. A.G. Lambert, SVP of product strategy at SAP Concur, says "AI doesn't replace employees, it augments them." The post mentions a partnership with Forbes examining how technology improves business processes, highlighting AI-assisted auditing, travel policy bots and tools that improve cash flow management.
SAP Concur blog cites an AMI Partners survey of over 400 financial decision-makers at SMBs, identifying barriers to automation such as lack of IT expertise, cost, and resources. However, automation delivers time savings (15% decrease in expense report processing time, 16% decrease in invoice processing time), cost savings (average annual savings of $30,000 for T&E automation and nearly $34,000 for invoice automation), improved employee satisfaction (up to 80% reduction in reimbursement time), and better compliance.
SAP Concur announced its 2020 Innovation Awards winners at its annual Fusion customer event: Airbus Americas, Cisco, Globe Telecom, PACCAR and VMware. Airbus Americas adopted a paperless T&E solution, saving $1 million in employee hours over three years and lifting travel policy compliance to 85%. Cisco deployed Concur Travel and Expense in more than 88 countries in under a year, with employee satisfaction rising from 48% to 77%. Globe Telecom reached 100% adoption four months after go-live. PACCAR identified $100K in potential annual savings. VMware cut its expense processing and payment workflow from up to 11 days to four or less and saw a 75% reduction in employee complaints.
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA), whose employees spend most of their time outdoors, needed mobile expense management. The organization adopted SAP Concur's Concur Expense solution to automate expense report submission, review, and processing, integrating with enterprise resource management systems and credit card programs to give finance teams greater visibility into employee spend. Employees can submit expenses via mobile phone anytime, reducing paperwork and errors and speeding up reimbursement.
Global medical devices company Smith & Nephew shifted from an overly compliance-driven approach to an employee-centric focus after management changes, scaling operations across 44 countries. Using focus groups and surveys, it applied AI and Concur Detect to streamline travel and expense processes and ensure compliance, returning over 20,000 productivity hours to employees, with managers no longer approving expenses individually.
The article introduces how Concur Invoice helps higher education institutions automate accounts payable, reduce manual work, provide spend visibility, and enable remote invoice approval via mobile app, ensuring audit compliance.
SAP Concur published an article examining the hidden costs of manual, paper-based expense management. It provides a formula for calculating cost per expense report and cites multiple data points: 81% of finance leaders admit to blind spots in travel, expense, and invoice spend; automation can reduce AP data entry time by 37% and invoicing errors by 33%; the typical organization loses 5% of annual revenue to fraud. The article also notes that organizations creating exceptional employee experiences see 17% higher productivity, 21% higher profitability, and 24% lower turnover.
SAP Concur announced its 2019 Innovation Award winners at its annual Fusion conference. The awards received 58 entries from customers across 11 countries, with five best-run organizations selected. Winners drove automation, integration, and analytics into travel, expense, and invoice processes. Alteryx saved more than $130K on travel in the last year using SAP Concur and Rocketrip; NEC reduced time spent on travel and expense management by 40%, translating to approximately 200 million yen ($1.8M USD) per year; RED achieved more than 20% annual savings on taxi services by introducing Uber for Business.
A SAP Concur blog post offers four tips for optimizing expense processes: 1. Audit existing processes to identify bottlenecks and fraud opportunities; 2. Evaluate for change, leveraging mobile apps and automation tools to improve compliance and efficiency; 3. Focus on saving time to save money, streamlining processes reduces rework and delays; 4. Take the expense process to the next level by following best practices. The article emphasizes that a clear process reduces employee confusion, non-compliant expenses, and delayed reimbursements, while also decreasing fraud risk.
A SAP Concur blog post offers recovery preparation advice for small business owners, including setting up expense policies, optimizing AP processes, smart tracking and monitoring of spending, and using technology to increase efficiency. Citing U.S. Small Business Administration data, small businesses generate 44% of economic activity. The article also notes that companies adopting cloud-based technology to automate expense management increased process efficiency by 42%.
SAP Concur published an article explaining the value of expense management automation. It states manual expense management takes a toll on productivity, employee happiness, and the bottom line, while automation can streamline operations, cut costs, and reduce time-wasting tasks. The article analyzes benefits for finance, IT, employees, and CEOs, and lists capabilities automated software should have, such as e-receipts, auto-populating expense reports, ERP integration, card reconciliation, secure data tracking, and mobile app management.
SAP Concur Senior Vice President Nick Evered told BBC News how digital solutions help companies cut costs and protect travelers. The article notes business trips are expected to grow 3% this year, making it more important than ever for businesses to streamline T&E management. A fully automated digital T&E solution unites data in one place, delivering cost savings through reduced management time, detection of expense-report errors and visibility into employee spend, while knowing where travelers are at all times helps fulfill duty-of-care obligations.
The article offers advice for small business owners to manage project budgets to prevent overruns and cash flow issues. Tips include: scope the project carefully and communicate clearly, budget realistically with contingency, check in on the budget regularly, and make it a habit. Automating expense and invoice management makes tracking costs and budgets easier.
The article emphasizes the need for government agencies to adopt modern AP software to address remote work and efficiency challenges. Automation captures, validates, and approves invoices, shortens processing times, avoids late fees, and integrates with travel and expense management for better visibility and fraud prevention.
SAP Concur published a blog post discussing the trends and challenges of employee initiated spend. The article notes that employees are spending more across more categories and using more payment methods, expecting a consumer-like experience. Decentralized spending makes it difficult for finance and procurement teams to manage centrally. Key challenges include: the largest unmanaged spend category, more payment methods, traditional booking channels being insufficient, suppliers rewarding employees directly, and finance departments unable to keep up. The article recommends automating spend processes and connecting all spend data for complete control.
SAP Concur research shows 69% of U.S. companies are not confident in reclaiming VAT from U.S. travelers going overseas. Cost containment is the leading reason for re-evaluating processes. Automation and cloud technology can simplify VAT reclaim, with a case study showing a 75% increase in reclaimable VAT.
SAP Concur blog highlights that county finance departments face declining funding and rising service demand. Brookings Institute projects state and local income tax revenues to decline by 4.7% to 7.7% from 2020 to 2022, a loss of $22 billion to $40 billion. The article recommends cloud-based invoice management, automated expense reimbursement, and integrated card feeds to improve efficiency, potentially reducing invoice processing time by 75%, paying vendors 13% faster, and increasing AP staff efficiency by 45%.
SAP Concur published an article offering tips for small businesses to prepare for Small Business Saturday. In 2016, an estimated 112 million consumers reported shopping at small businesses on Small Business Saturday. Tips include preparing early, offering a special deal, automating back-end processes, paying vendors on time, and partnering with other small businesses. The article also promotes products like Concur Expense and Concur Invoice.
SAP Concur published an article explaining how intelligent spend management helps organizations achieve business outcomes. The article groups employee-spend business outcomes into three pillars: controls and compliance, spend visibility and management, and employee satisfaction and workforce engagement. It recommends capturing every source and category of spend in a unified view and adopting best practices such as using mobile devices for receipt scanning, leveraging OCR and machine learning to automate invoice data capture, and integrating travel reservations with expense reporting systems.
SAP Concur published an article outlining three benefits of native integration between its solutions and SAP ERP: improved spend visibility, reduced manual work and integration complexity, and synchronized systems. The article states that native integration connects travel, expense, invoice, and financial data, helping IT and finance teams reduce manual work, improve spend visibility, support compliance, and make faster decisions. The integration supports near-real-time financial posting and can manage access via SAP Cloud Identity Services.
SAP Concur published an article explaining machine learning (ML) applications in travel, expense, and invoice solutions. It describes Concur Invoice using SAP Leonardo to extract and classify data from invoice images; Concur Expense integrating with Office 365 to create expense entries from emailed receipts; ExpenseIt using ML to turn receipt photos into completed expense reports; Concur Detect by AppZen auditing 100% of expense reports; and ML use in TripIt and Concur Locate.
A SAP Concur blog post argues that HR and finance leaders who collaborate can improve data visibility, simplify workflows, and stay flexible. It cites Oxford Economics that nearly a quarter of finance leaders cite lack of visibility into company spending as their biggest challenge, and McKinsey research that 50% of manual work can be automated. EY research shows 41% of collaborating finance and HR leaders experienced 10% EBITDA growth.
SAP Concur published an article exploring how finance managers can help businesses identify and manage business risks beyond T&E compliance, including human error, machinery and technology lifecycles, business policies and best practices, strategic direction, and reputational risk. The article notes technology can help spot errors like duplicate invoices, and automating processes frees finance staff to analyze data and support strategic direction more effectively.
A SAP Concur blog offers four ways to simplify invoice management in the hybrid work era: automate invoice processing and connect with expense report and p-card processes; integrate with back-end ERP, finance, and accounting systems for accurate data and a single source of truth; flag errors and missing information before invoices reach AP to reduce exceptions; and automate payments through integrated, controlled processes via banking and financial service partners.
A SAP Concur blog post describes a global survey of 1,500 finance executives by Oxford Economics and SAP examining what separates leading finance leaders from followers, compiled into the report Effective Spending Management Boosts Performance. The report lists six traits of top finance leaders, including strong influence beyond finance, driving strategic growth, improving efficiency with automation, effectiveness at core finance processes, collaboration with business units and handling regulatory change. The post says 95% of CFOs consider cloud-based applications critically or very important to financial performance.
This SAP Concur blog post discusses the health of life science organizations, focusing on employee engagement, compliance management, and financial visibility. It cites a Deloitte study showing only 56% of life science employees are satisfied with their work, compared to 70% in other sectors. The article suggests using automation to reduce administrative burdens and improve engagement, emphasizes the importance of tone from the top for effective compliance programs, and recommends tools like Concur Invoice to streamline accounts payable and increase financial visibility.
A SAP Concur blog post states that manual mileage reporting is inefficient and error-prone, and that enabling mobile automated mileage capture can significantly reduce the time employees spend submitting and approving mileage. For most SAP Concur customers, mileage accounts for 2% to 12% of overall expensed spend. SAP Concur experts estimate at least one minute can be saved per mileage transaction; using a $37.50 hourly rate and 33,000 entries, that equals about $20,625 in savings. Recommended practices include enabling GPS auto-capture, configuring the auto-deduct commute option, promoting rideshare where appropriate, and using data to monitor mileage trends.
SAP Concur published an article identifying five spend management issues businesses often overlook during expansion: insufficient preapprovals making future spending hard to forecast; limited audit resources while errors and fraud typically consume 5% of annual revenue; insufficient process automation; big data that is hard to turn into usable insights; and unclaimed VAT refunds in cross-border operations. The article suggests expanding SAP Concur solutions to address these challenges.
The article presents eight best practices for improving expense management processes to help finance teams avoid surprises such as unaccounted expenses, missing receipts, and fines. Recommendations include: CFOs should take charge of expense report errors and view them as opportunities to improve processes and training; tighten expense management to reduce fraud risk; and leverage automation and mobile technology to enhance expense visibility and real-time data access.
A SAP Concur blog post features a podcast conversation between Jeanne Dion, director of the Value Experience Group at SAP Concur, and Siegfried Krause, co-founder of neylux. neylux specializes in business travel and expense management and is a certified SAP Gold Partner. Krause describes a customer case: neylux built a passive-approval solution where employees enter key data, audit tasks are fulfilled at the end of the process, and the manager then receives a summary page and PDF by email, addressing issues with staff afterward if needed, avoiding downtime from waiting for a manager's signature early in the process. The automated process also sped up reimbursement, helping the client reduce…
SAP Concur launched a Business Agility Assessment tool that helps companies evaluate their spend management processes through seven questions. The assessment covers the level of automation in expense and invoice management, integration with back-end ERP/HR/CRM systems, data reliability, spend control, and solution provider capabilities. The tool scores based on answers and provides improvement advice and a spend management toolkit.
SAP Concur's blog notes that non-profits can improve efficiency through cloud-based automated expense management. Prison Fellowship achieved a hard-cost ROI of 3:1 and soft-cost ROI of 4-5:1 using Concur Expense with Policy Audit. Simons Foundation gained near real-time spending visibility with Concur Expense and Concur Invoice. The article also notes that over 20% of organizational expenses are non-compliant.
SAP Concur published an article examining the impact of manual expense reporting on businesses. Manual processes affect not only finance teams but also employees and approving managers, accumulating time costs far exceeding the amounts on the statement. Automation reduces time spent on expense report creation, review, and approval while improving accuracy. Mobile apps allow employees to create and update expense reports while traveling, reducing lost receipts and errors. Concur Expense enables employees to photograph receipts with their phones, with finance teams and approving managers able to access data in real time and approve on the go.
A SAP Concur blog post notes that as the U.S. elderly population grows, demand for mobile healthcare rises, increasing driving mileage for healthcare staff. Manually tracking mileage is complex and expensive, and self-reported mileage can lead to fraud and compliance risks. SAP Concur's Concur Drive solution automates distance capture, improving accuracy and reducing spending.
A SAP Concur blog post offers six ways to optimize invoice processes during disruption. Citing a GBTA survey where 96% of businesses described COVID-19's impact as significant, it recommends accelerating invoice capture, approvals, and processes. Methods include: doing things digitally, eradicating duplication and fraud, on-the-go approval, automating policy adherence, keeping communication with suppliers, and spotting trends to adapt. The article also describes how Concur Invoice provides visibility, speeds up payments, and integrates travel and expense data.