Concur Technologies is claiming record customer growth as it nears the launch of its integrated booking and expense tool, although competitors maintain that there is a limited market for such a product.
The solution combines Concur Expense Service and Cliqbook Travel, which Concur assumed following its acquisition of Outtask at the beginning of this year
(BTN, Feb. 6), should be available by the end of September, if not before, according to Steve Singh, CEO of the Redmond, Wash.-based expense solution supplier.
"For too long, the complete end-to-end service has not been available," Singh said. "This is the pinnacle of where it ought to be, and it hasn't been done for decades."
Automating the process from booking to reimbursement increases accuracy and compliance while easing the booking and reporting process for the traveler, according to Concur. Ultimately, this will help companies drive down the costs of managing expenses.
At the same time, the end-to-end solution will be a deterrent to employees who routinely book outside the preferred corporate tool, Singh said. By using an integrated booking tool along with an integrated corporate card, about 90 percent of an expense report would be prepopulated for the employee, and the time to fill out a report would be cut from about 30 minutes to about five minutes, he said. Similarly, many of those travel managers who have integrated corporate cards and expense reporting programs already report increased card usage following the integration.
"When you have an integrated service, you're increasing the reasons why a customer would want to use the service," Singh said. "One of the biggest challenges we've seen in the online corporate booking tool arena is their adoption has tended to be very low. Historically, it's been around 25 percent."
Acuity Brands, an Atlanta-based lighting fixture and chemical provider, uses both Cliqbook and Concur's expense tool, and manager of employee accounting Heather Anderson said she is looking forward to trying out the integrated tool. While Acuity Brands has used Concur for several years, it switched to Cliqbook only recently, just prior to its acquisition by Concur, she said.
"Definitely from the traveler side, I see it could be a huge advantage. We have the feed from American Express, so this would be the icing on the cake," she said. "On the office side, I would think that we would see more visibility, as you're going through one system at that point."
While Concur's integrated solution is new to the market, there are established methods for corporations to link their booking and expense tools. Data aggregators, for example, can match booking and expense data for companies who use different providers for booking and expense tools.
Other companies have integrated tools to create their own versions of end-to-end technology. PNC Bank, for example, developed such a system when it overhauled its travel program a few years ago
(BTN, Oct. 27, 2003).Partially because of these availabilities, many of Concur's competitors have already said they have no intention of following a similar business pattern
(BTN, April 3). Extensity, for example, said it would rather market its integration with booking tools as an open approach rather than buying a certain solution. Tony D'Astolfo, vice president of sales for Rearden Commerce, said that moving away from lock-ins was more of the business trend he was seeing.
"There's an absolute goodness in automating processes," according to D'Astolfo. "That's definitely the direction we will take, but this is not a closed network. It encourages many people to do this."
To that end, Rearden is in talks with several expense reporting providers to enhance its services by integrating to their expense tools, D'Astolfo said. The most imminent agreement is with ExpenseWire, and some of those integrations should be manifested by later this year, he said.
Analysts also have said that large corporations with established booking or expense tools are unlikely to switch suppliers solely for the purpose of having a ready-made, consolidated tool. Even so, Concur has been reporting record sales and exponential customer growth in recent months.
By the end of this fiscal year, Concur expects to have signed 1,600 new customers, up from 900 last year and 300 the year before, he said. Recent new customers of at least one of the tools have included Dole Food Co., Royal Caribbean Cruises, DRS Technologies and Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.
Singh said there's no doubt that the results are related to the upcoming integration. During the past five months, 19 existing customers on one product decided to also use the complementary product for integrating purposes, he said.
"We sold to more new customers in June than ever before," Singh said. "The demand we're seeing for both products is absolutely driving the better expectations for our business."