SAP Concur Fusion 2024 Recap

By our experts from FROSCH and TCG

SAP Concur hosted its annual Fusion user conference at the Venetian Resort, March 19-21, 2024. More than 3,000 attendees gathered in Las Vegas for education sessions, inspiring keynotes, and a sneak peek at new solutions and features from SAP Concur. Chase Travel Group was represented with two booths: FROSCH, an SAP Concur Elite TMC Partner and TCG Consulting, now also known as Corporate Travel Consulting, an SAP Concur Certified Implementation Partner (CIP).

The business development and sales teams, including subject matter experts, met with prospects and clients eager to learn what’s new in the industry and how to improve their travel and expense programs. In addition, our Expense and Invoice Practice Lead, Edward Curtis, was invited to speak on a panel for the regulated industries titled “Ensuring Accountability and Transparency in Audit and Policy Compliance.”

In case you missed it, here are five key takeaways from the event to consider:

1. AI helps to enhance user experience and data accuracy

Generative artificial intelligence technology is not new to SAP Concur. The in-product assistant chat features, travel recommendations, and AI technology applied to ExpenseIT such as receipt capture are only a few examples of how AI helps users with accuracy and automation. Although AI does the manual work for you, organizations need to understand what data to input, what filters to use, and learn about their options to set up their systems and processes for success. That’s where our CIP team comes in to help advise and provide best practices and peer comparisons to enable optimization of your data and program.

2. Ensuring transparency

One of the powerful features of SAP Concur solutions from our perspective is it enables TCG’s TCO-TMPE methodology to uncover hidden spend. However, as we’ve experienced working with many organizations, not all trips and costs go through the travel program. There are always exceptions and bypass. To ensure transparency, we need to consider all channels of spending including non-employee spending that impacts travel and expense program costs.

3. Creating compliance and a clear policy

When was the last time you reviewed your travel policy? How many pages is your travel policy? Do your employees know where to find the policy? These are a few questions to ask yourself if you want to improve your travel program, support the duty of care for your travelers, and protect employees and the company. Many times, we hear about clauses in policy that are outdated or simply too abstract that it can be misinterpreted. Clear and concise policy is not only important for contractual reasons and savings but also understanding and easier adoption.

4. Creating an enhanced travel experience

The travel experience begins before a trip is even booked. It starts with a great travel management company. If you’re looking for high-touch and high-tech service, consider your company values. Does your current TMC align with those values? What promises have they made, what promises have they broken? True partnership means both your organization and your TMC work together to provide a common goal which should be to provide your travelers the tools and service they need to get from point A to point B with the best experience possible – safely, efficiently, and effectively.

5. The cost of doing nothing

We must adapt and re-evaluate constantly to improve. The world is continuously changing, and technology and the travel industry have changed dramatically over the years. These changes affect our businesses and our people. By doing things because that’s the way we’ve always done it is a death sentence. SAP Concur has remained notably advanced in their solutions, however just because your company has the product doesn’t mean you’re utilizing it to its full capabilities for your company as it is today. An assessment of your program can help.