"Sometimes it's a little challenging to look in the
mirror when you're telling us how we're doing," Concur president Elena
Donio said about criticism of the company. Criticism has ranged from "terrible" product to
confusing interface. Donio, who has worked for the travel and expense technology
company for 18 years, said at the recent Concur Fusion conference, "Sometimes
it wasn't super easy to hear that feedback."
Still, an organization that served 32 million users in 2015
according to CEO Steve Singh, is too big to be failing. Here's what Concur has
done to improve customer service in the past year, according to Donio and other
executives at the recent Concur Fusion conference, where they also shared
coming enhancements related to its Perfect Trip aspiration.
What Concur Worked On
in 2015
The company grew its employee base by 30 percent, a third of
that in services and support, enabling the company to answer customer questions
three times faster than in 2014, Donio said. "Our support team has grown
significantly over the last year, which has allowed our employees to specialize
in specific areas of functionality so you have more educated service, more in-depth
service faster and with a more positive consistent experience," she said.
Likewise, chief technology officer Mark Nelson said, Concur
has improved performance. Reported incidents for the first quarter of 2015, the
first full quarter in which SAP owned Concur, decreased by more than 40 percent
year over year. "The impact of those Q1 [incidents] is down more than 60
percent than it was in 2014," he added. "This is hopefully linked to
a much better experience."
Also last year, Concur launched an expense landing page for
its website that reduced the time users spent on reports by 5 million hours,
according to Donio. "That's time people get to dedicate to the real work
you're in the business to do."
Coming Up
"When we were acquired, a lot of folks said, 'Innovation
will stop, the focus on us as a customer and helping to move our industry move
forward will stop,'" Singh said of SAP's acquisition
of Concur. "That hasn't happened and won't happen."
Most ambitious of Concur's initiatives is its plan to create
a platform for the Perfect Trip from planning and booking to expense reports
that write themselves. Toward that end, Concur has updated its TripIt Pro app. After reminding travelers to check into
their flights, it launches them into airline suppliers' sites or apps, where
they can check in, change seats and call up boarding passes. The tool
integrates with 25 airlines. Concur also is investing in services that
automatically incorporate regulatory updates—including mileage, travel
allowances and value-added tax rates—into the expense system and its
calculations.
But there's a distance to go to reach the Perfect Trip. "You
have to invest like crazy," chief product officer Barry Padgett said. Here
are the enhancements on Concur's horizon.
Role-based dashboards:
This feature will change in appearance and function based on the user, for
example, travel manager versus department manager. For travel managers, it automatically
will email at crucial points, say, before the end of a quarter to share budget
details and upcoming trips based on bookings and expensed data, explained vice
president of product management Sarah Kuberry. This kind of information will allow
managers to prioritize or postpone trips if needed. Padgett added: "We're
taking folks out of the reporting tool, putting them back where they live, which
is email, and making it role based. Whatever you need to know, we're going to
make it actionable instead of looking at last year's data."
Expense Assistant:
When switched on in the Concur platform, Expense Assistant, now in beta
testing, creates expense reports and automatically links booking, corporate
card and scanned receipts to expense items. The tool also itemizes hotel folios
and similar expenses that entered the system through Concur's ExpenseIt optical
character recognition technology, and the interface displays the receipt and
itemized line items side by side. Users then submit the report or edit it as
needed. A future iteration also will email users regular summaries of receipts,
marking those added to reports versus those scanned in on mobile and in need of
review.
Air-booking interface:
Concur will simplify the air-booking experience in its search interface. Users
have complained that the icons and color-coded buttons indicating preferred and
restricted suppliers were confusing, so Concur will replace them with simple
text. As carriers have introduced branded fares, Concur plans to make them easy
to view. "Suppliers are getting really creative on how they package their
products … and this caters to that," Padgett said. Concur plans similar
face-lifts for hotel, car and rail booking interfaces.
International
travel notices: Using itinerary data, the company plans to be
able to notify travelers' banks about upcoming international travel.