SAP Concur dominates BTN’s Corporate Travel 100 as a booking tool provider. Of the companies for which BTN can determine a primary booking tool, Concur is named about three-quarters of the time, with just a couple of companies indicating they were looking to move off the platform or at least going out for a request-for-proposals exercise. A platform shift for the booking tool translates easily into a trend in among CT100 companies.
Concur introduced its redesigned user experience in the fourth quarter of 2023, putting a lot of big companies into action, starting with U.S.-based firms operating in the Sabre environment and rolled out the functionality to additional geographies and global distribution systems over the course of the following year. Some members of the CT100 reporting an arduous transition period with some missing functionality and slow implementation times.
That said, the new platform served New Distribution Capability delivered content, which enabled a number of CT100 companies to pilot those emerging channels. Salesforce at No. 47 in the CT100 based on 2024 U.S.-originating air volume partnered that year with American Express Global Business Travel and Concur as one of the first companies to achieve NDC at scale through the new Concur interface. The company reported in August 2024 that it was on a trajectory to save $1 million in annual air spend going through NDC channels, primarily with United. The tech company pushed that initiative forward with other airlines in 2025.
[For more on NDC as a trend, see Trend No. 3]
On the heels of rolling out what has come to be called Concur T2, the new partnership with Amex GBT adds a new wrinkle. Citing the pace and complexity of the T2 rollout due to its hundreds of TMC partners and unique configurations, Concur executives characterized the tight partnership with GBT as a fast track to innovation and seamless travel booking, service and expense experience. They touted a new joint GBT-Concur development team. How that might impact companies that have direct relationships with Concur—that include unique configurations—or that choose not to partner with Concur for their technology stack are questions that some CT100 companies already have voiced to BTN.
An active LinkedIn commentary over the weekend regarding the partnership has voiced both optimism in forging a rationalized path through the forest of business travel API complexities alongside skepticism that Amex GBT can simultaneously integrate a mega acquisition and develop the path to the future of managed travel technology.