[See also, Fred Fredericks, SAP Concur General Manager and Chief Product Officer]
The industry has delivered a partnership so big that it calls for a two-fer on BTN's 25 Most Influential: two executives recognized for single strategic industry move.
When American Express Global Business Travel and SAP Concur announced in October
they would join up a technology development team to deliver an
integrated travel management company-booking-expense platform experience
for current joint clients, the electricity through the industry was palpable. Was that shock or excitement? It was both.
The
architects of the partnership are longtime industry innovator and GBT
chief product and strategy officer Evan Konwiser alongside SAP Concur
chief product officer and newly titled (since August) general manager Fred Fredericks.
The value proposition, in short, is that each of the biggest managed
travel service and technology companies are coming together to innovate
more strategically and faster to deliver a seamless end-to-end
experience for travelers and for travel managers who engage with all the
associated tools. Artificial intelligence-driven innovation will be
central to the effort, and with all the data available via the partners' channels, that innovation should be swift and well-informed.
How the two companies innovate together will be one thing to watch—and could land them on next year's Most Influential, who knows? The power of this year's announcement, however, has been its potential to re-shuffle the relationship deck for a massive number of companies.
Since the October announcements, Konwiser and Fredericks have stayed somewhat behind the scenes in terms of delivering the value prop to the market. Both companies have opted for execs like SAP Concur president Charlie Sultan and GBT global clients EVP and Americas general manager David Reimer to field industry questions.
Who's lodging those questions? The easier answer might be who's not. If your program does not touch the former CWT platform (acquired by GBT this year, see Paul Abbott), does not touch any of Amex GBT's platforms and does not touch the Concur booking tool, the partnership may be just noise in the background. Navan clients, Travelperk clients, possibly Direct Travel clients if they've opted for the Spotnana platform (but many haven't) or FCM's
Corporate Traveler Melon clients, CTM Lightning—if your program fits a
profile like that, where booking tools and TMC are two sides of the same
coin, no questions.
There's an argument that the success of those tight TMC-booking tool setups—some of which also include payment—was a driving factor in the GBT-Concur partnership. After all, those other platforms have been winning some big, innovative clients (e.g. see Ariel Cohen).
If any of those conditions do apply—and they likely do for most managed programs in the U.S.; they certainly do for a majority of the BTN Corporate Travel 100—those programs have questions to ask and decisions to make.
Former CWT clients now have a new variable when asked to adapt to the GBT environment: Will they go with the fast innovation and end-to-end platform? The industry has suggested GBT may push Complete over its native Neo, though GBT maintains it will continue to offer both. Will they go for Egencia, which is planned for a Concur expense integration? Or will they stick with "new" Concur travel, which just finished its global rollout? There are additional options in booking tools, and many programs use them, but both Complete partners have indicated that keeping up with so many integrations in the market has been a roadblock to innovation. The tight partnership is meant to bypass distractions and run fast with a soulmate.
Current GBT clients will have largely the same options. Will this proprietary partnership encourage them to leave a different third-party booking tool to run with new team? That may largely depend on whether their company already uses Concur expense, which is definitely part of the value prop. There are large clients who have told BTN they will "never use" Concur for competitive reasons, and perhaps the partnership pushes them one step away from GBT as their service provider.
What about Concur clients that aren't with Amex? Concur maintains
it will continue to advance the new Concur Travel booking tool at the
right pace—only that some of the tighter integrations will be directed
toward the GBT platform, and that won't be possible with every TMC. So, unless you are with Amex GBT on Concur, you're not getting those.
So that begs the question: What about all those TMCs that aren't Amex GBT? Many went "all in" to gain Elite status in the Concur partner pecking order, which Amex GBT had not done in order to preserve its platform versatility. Those relationships now will change, and the company has stated that it has informed TMC partners about that new structure. BTN reached out to TMCs for their impressions of the new structure but got little response, with one CEO calling the outreach, a “heavily NDA’d conversation.”
How it will play out on the innovation front will be an ongoing development. Players like ATG, BCD Travel, Christopherson Business Travel and Omega World Travel among other TMCs have their own proprietary booking tools. Will they plow more investment into those or perhaps take on a technology platform like Spotnana? And, if they do, can they compete with a new industry giant like Complete?