SAP Concur Delivers Enriched Travel and Expense Experiences at Fusion 2024

SAP Concur kicked off Fusion 2024 today to bring together SAP Concur customers and partners to explore the future of integrated travel and expense and the impact of generative AI. Today, we are announcing SAP Concur product developments and partnerships to help customers on their journey.

Enriching the Evolution of Concur Travel

The new booking experience in Concur Travel launched last August, featuring a consumer-grade user experience with a streamlined booking and checkout process. The new experience includes omni-search capabilities that automatically merge options for many locations, such as airports, city centers, or company locations, delivered by a robust travel ecosystem. It also offers increased global content coverage, including additional New Distribution Capability (NDC) content via the Sabre GDS, better imagery, and richer descriptions in one view.  The revamped Concur Travel delivers a modern, intuitive experience that is adaptable for web and mobile and tailored for the traveller.

Many TMCs agree the experience is much improved. According to Flight Centre Travel Group Global Manager of Travel Distribution Nicola Ping,

“Flight Centre Travel Group believes that the evolution of the Concur Travel platform is a huge step forward in offering a retail-like experience for NDC air content in a corporate environment. Our partnership and collaboration with SAP Concur brings together the entire value chain to focus on delivering solutions that work in a complex travel ecosystem.”

At Fusion, we are announcing incremental content and features as part of the evolution of Concur Travel:

• In-app emissions data: Now, employees can further consider environmental impacts when booking through the replatformed Concur Travel. Through an integration with Thrust Carbon, one of the travel industry's leading independent sustainability intelligence platforms, evolution of Concur Travel users can view and sort the greenhouse gas emissions of each flight segment, as well as rail and car rental options, and browse hotel providers by emissions, certifications, and sustainability scores.
• Enhanced hotel and rail content: We’re providing greater choice of hotel content with new direct integrations to American Express GBT, BCD, CWT RoomIt, FCTG, and HRS designed to enhance the traveller’s shopping experience by providing more options, clarity, and transparency for bookings. Additionally, users can search, book, and purchase UK Rail content.
• Microsoft Teams integration: Sharing travel itineraries with coworkers is now easier than ever. Travellers can share a reservation from their Concur Travel trip list to a Microsoft Teams chat, so that their coworkers can book the same trip and join them.
• Request Integration: Concur Request enhances compliance processes by automating and simplifying spend requests and approvals. When integrated with Concur Travel, the approval process becomes more efficient through automated workflows. Users can easily book a trip in Concur Travel, and a request is automatically generated and completed, offering a seamless experience.

“The evolution of Concur Travel isn’t a destination,” according to Charlie Sultan, president of Concur Travel at SAP Concur. “It’s a standard – one that will continue to evolve and set the stage for greater innovation and acceleration for a truly integrated corporate travel and expense experience that can take advantage of the latest developments in AI.”

Given the proliferation of airline and hotel content that is outside of legacy technology, and increased costs assessed by several airlines for not booking direct, we have continued to invest in TripLink. Our investment ensures that travellers continue to have access to a wide range of corporate and consumer fares while still enjoying their corporate benefits and allowing travel managers to completely manage their travel programs regardless of where travel is booked. To that end, we recently announced  the Concur TripLink hub, a new home within SAP Concur solutions to help streamline enrollment in TripLink and TripIt Pro. Travellers can easily connect their loyalty accounts to preferred travel partner integrations and gain even more benefits from business travel. For travel managers this means more visibility, improved policy compliance and the ability to provide travellers with more flexibility.

Travel disruptions are part of the new normal of travel, which is why we’ve also made changes in TripIt Pro to help travellers make informed travel decisions. Now, TripIt Pro Risk Alerts notifies users in real-time when a potential disruption may impact their trip. With timely info, users can be better prepared for the next step in their itinerary – whether that’s showing up to the airport early, rescheduling a flight, or doing more research into alternate plans. The alerts cover a wide range of events, including:

• Weather
• Political unrest and labor action such as demonstrations and strikes.
• Communication outages and select airline alerts.

Reimagining Expense Reports

Our vision is to create the perfect expense experience – one where expense reports practically write themselves. We’re working on making that vision a reality by redefining what is possible in spend management through integrated solutions, robust data, and generative AI.

The reimagined Concur Expense experience is AI-powered, optimised for mobile and already being used by early adopter customers. Expense reports are automatically created and easily managed thanks to the following capabilities and a new partnership with Mastercard:

• Automatic expense entry, itemisation, and categorisation with ExpenseIt
• Timeline view of expenses
• Intelligent notifications such as missing receipts, missing attendees or expense reports ready for submission
• Attendee suggestion based on expense type and amount
• Automated expense creation for Mastercard transactions. Our new global integration will pull real-time spend data from Mastercard corporate card purchases to automatically populate expense reports in Concur Expense and alert users if additional information is needed. As part of the new partnership, we’re also working with Mastercard to provide travel and finance managers with the power to set spending controls and restrictions to help encourage expense policy compliance.

Additionally, we are announcing our new Data Delivery Service, which provides customers direct access to their Concur Expense data flows without manual reports or downloads. Now, customers can bring their Concur Expense data into their instance of SAP Analytics Cloud, their data warehouse, or any other third-party analytics tool to view a complete picture of spend and improve data management. Companies will be able to discover new analytics and insights, combining data sources across their organisation to make more informed, efficient decisions.

SAP Business AI in SAP Concur Solutions

At SAP, we deliver AI that is built for business. It is relevant, reliable, and responsible, and fundamentally changes the way companies operate, enabling them to create greater value more efficiently. AI is only as good as the quality and breadth of the data it draws upon, and SAP Concur is the global market leader in travel and expense solutions, with more than 92 million end users booking travel and/or processing expenses. For a decade, we have been infusing AI into SAP Concur solutions including ExpenseIt, Verify, Intelligent Audit, and Concur Invoice. At Fusion, we are excited to debut new Business AI capabilities in SAP Concur solutions:

• Concur Request: Now uses generative AI to provide intelligent cost estimates for trip planning, saving employees time and effort.
• ExpenseIt: We’ve also brought capabilities from ExpenseIt on mobile to the web interface so customers can upload receipt images to ExpenseIt web, where it taps AI to automatically create a new expense with several key fields prepopulated. Plus, ExpenseIt now itemises hotel folios using generative AI, increasing the accuracy of the results, and saving employees time. 
• Generative AI search: A new capability within Concur Support allows SAP Concur customers to type questions in natural language and get quick answers using generative AI without having to submit a support ticket.

To learn more about announcements at SAP Concur Fusion or to join the virtual event visit here. Additionally, see the blog and video for information about our vision for the future.