Hand up if you book corporate travel, juggling multiple booking platforms, an expenses app, hotel accounts and have also engaged a travel agent to pull it all together for you? Hand up if you’d like to make a digital travel diary entry then have generative AI do all the bookings for you – from the comfort of your mobile phone?
While it is not quite there yet, that’s the goal of Charlie Sultan, who leads the strategic direction and market expansion of SAP Concur’s travel solutions offering, Concur Travel. Prior to his current role, Sultan held key leadership positions at SAP Concur, including chief operating officer and senior vice president of strategic planning, where he was instrumental in advancing supplier relations and content strategy.
While Concur decided 20 years ago that integrating travel and expenses made a lot of sense for a company to help it increase its productivity, and made enhancements as it went along, it is now ready to move on to the next phase, which goes beyond just integrating travel and expense to figuring out how does a company make life more productive, not just for the traveller, but for the accounts payable group, the HR and the finance department.
SAP is now transforming the way businesses run with Joule, its generative AI copilot, embedding it in SAP Concur solutions, which bring the portfolio one step closer toward a fully automated travel and expense management process. The launch of new Concur Travel coincides with businesses balancing tight cost and compliance controls with rising employee expectations for flexibility and convenience.
In Concur Expense, Joule helps to ensure that expense reports are ready for submission with minimal effort. For example, Joule can assemble a timeline view of expenses, review for mistakes or missing expenses, and make recommendations for how best to complete the expense report. Additionally, Joule can answer employee questions so they no longer have to search through Concur Expense or the SAP Help portal, resulting in fewer support cases and improved efficiency for both employees and administrators. Joule with Concur Expense is expected to be generally available in the second quarter 2025 with some early adopters already using it.
“I think the most exciting part, really is, is the launching of Concur Travel, which is now the newest booking tool in the market,” says Sultan. “The reality is, is travel before could be done by travel companies. I think that the future of how fast technology is moving really lends itself to the companies that are going to be able to take the best advantage are going to be those that are working with real technology companies.
“And I don’t think that all companies are gonna be able to make those investments. I think that the number of companies that can make investments in travel and expense and in ecosystem is not as wide a number of companies that can just specialise in travel going forward.”
So, all things to all people?
“I think the opportunity to be able to do that is far greater if it’s all sort of operating within one company’s data and ecosystem than it is if you’re trying to piece together lots of different companies as you go along… having a different company for travel, a different company for expense, a different company for invoice, a different company for HR. And so the opportunities are there.”
Working with existing partnerships
While Concur Travel will search for the best possible price offering, it can also integrate with existing partnerships and global distribution systems in real time. SAP Concur and American Express (Amex) are expanding their partnership to simplify expense management for shared customers. One-third of SAP Concur customers currently use the Amex corporate card to capture expense transactions. To streamline the end-to-end experience, SAP Concur and Amex are launching a real-time authorisation data capability whereby Amex corporate card purchases automatically generate and categorise expenses, starting with meal transactions, in Concur Expense, at the time of spend.
Last year, it also took a big step with partner Mastercard. Meal expenses purchased with participating Mastercard corporate cards are automatically populated in Concur Expense, and alerts are issued if any additional information is needed.
“One of the really nice and unique things about Concur is the fact that we work we work with a multitude of partners,” Sultan says. “So if you want to have Concur work with AMEX… or any one of, I think, 700 different partners, you can have it work that way if you wanted to work with the Sabre GDS or the Amadeus GDS, or the Travelport GDS, and so, as opposed to a lot of the other solutions out there that are very much a TMC-centric solution or a one-GDS solution, we offer the companies the full flexibility that they can operate with any one of those.”
As Jonathan Beeby, managing director, SAP Concur Australia and New Zealand, adds: “We’ve got many customers who have multiple TMCs. So if we look at our some of our biggest multinational organisations in Australia, with presence in countries all around the world, they will pick the TMC that meets the requirements for them in that local market, but the technology they use is being standardised across, so they get the best of both worlds in that sense.”
Concludes Sultan: “I think what’s nice for the customer is that we’re not owned by a TMC, we’re not owned by a GDS. We are just a technology company providing what they need.”
The employee experience
SAP Concur has placed a strong emphasis on employee experience as part of the new platform evolution. Features like travel collaboration through Microsoft Teams, one-way flex fare options for greater booking flexibility, and timeline views remove complexity from the travel process. Organisations get a more unified and intuitive user journey that drives higher policy adoption rates and lower program leakage, all while improving employee engagement.
The fact that it also is an app and as intuitive to use as any others means there is an expectation by Concur that it will be rapidly adopted, says Beeby.
“When I started at Concur, I was booking my travel and submitting my own expenses (even) before the onboarding process got to the bit where they were teaching me how to do both my expenses and book my travel,” he says. “So, they’re incredibly intuitive apps and they use established principles around user experience.”
The upgraded user interface also delivers richer content, improved imagery and increased visibility into sustainability ratings which allows travellers to make informed choices which are aligned with their business priorities and personal values.
Users can also gain easy access to carbon emission data and eco-friendly options, adding strategic value to corporate travel programs where environmental sustainability is non-negotiable. New omni-search capabilities also let users search by airport, city, or even company location for a faster and more intuitive booking experience.
Disconnected or fragmented systems create unnecessary inefficiencies, limit data visibility, and increase the likelihood of compliance breaches. By contrast, SAP Concur’s end-to-end approach brings travel bookings and compliance monitoring together into one intelligent ecosystem, dramatically improving efficiency, resilience, and business agility. The transition to the new Concur Travel experience is seamless, requiring no changes to user URLs, logins, passwords, or mobile apps.
“The new Concur Travel solution gives ANZ businesses a critical opportunity to modernise their travel strategies with localised support for one-way faring, updated policy enforcement by trip leg, and enhanced sustainable travel options,” says Beeby.
“And all that sense of foreboding of, ‘When I get back, I’m going to have all that admin to do!’ As Charlie said that the expenses (review) is pretty much written for you by the time you get back, and just a case of submitting it.”
What customers can expect
- One Way Flex Fare options – The new one-way fare options are replacing flex faring in the SAP Concur Travel platform and offer greater flexibility and cost-efficiency for business travellers and travel managers alike. Users can now easily search, compare and book local airline branded fares on a one-way flight basis alongside round-trip options within a streamlined interface— available on both our desktop and mobile application.
- Time savings: New Concur Travel reduces the steps needed to complete a booking by 40% with optimised booking workflows and faster checkout process. The new experience integrates with Concur Expense for a seamless end-to-end travel and expense process – from planning and booking to expensing, auditing and reimbursement all the way to the company general ledger.
- Enhanced user experience: A streamlined booking and checkout process, including a more user-friendly and intuitive UI, makes the experience more like that on consumer websites and apps. The new UX is adaptable on both mobile and desktop, designed to give users the ability to meet their needs and drive compliance across the end-to-end process. And with a 40% reduction in the number of steps needed to complete a booking, business travellers have more time to focus on strategic priorities vs booking their trip – while business leaders benefit from these time savings across their organisation.
- Updated content and images: Increased global content coverage including New Distribution Capability (NDC), better imagery, and richer descriptions, all consolidated into one view. The new UX will make browsing content seamless and intuitive, with the ability to easily view sustainability ratings and cost information.
- Travel collaboration: Employees can now conveniently share travel itineraries and deep links from their Concur Travel trip list to a Microsoft Teams chat, making it easy for their coworkers to book the same trip.
- Automated approvals: When booking via Concur Travel, Concur Request automates requests and approvals to help travel managers better control budgets and monitor for policy compliance—and all this is now available on mobile too
- Increased sustainability options: Sustainability continues to be a major priority for our customers. With the new Concur Travel experience, travellers can view information and filters to help limit their carbon footprint and make sustainable choices, making it easier to comply with company policies, limit the environmental impact of business travel, and collate data to meet voluntary and mandatory country reporting requirements – be they emerging standards in Australia or New Zealand, or the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
- Search Capabilities: Omni-search capability that automatically merges options for many locations, such as airports, city centre, or company locations, delivered by a robust travel ecosystem. Companies have the freedom to choose from among a wide range of suppliers, sources and content to support global travel requirements.
