With 2018 here, here are a few insights from executives at global travel and spend management company, SAP Concur, on what technology trends will shape businesses big and small and impact employees most in the new year. Here are the topline trends:
- The sophistication of small business. Historically, enterprise tools have been too costly for small businesses but in 2018, small businesses will adopt cloud-based enterprise tools at a faster pace to enhance business functions.
Historically, enterprise tools have come with an enterprise cost, effectively pricing out many technologies for small businesses. Not anymore. The rise of the cloud has leveled the playing field by ushering in a world of web-based apps that are cost-effective for small businesses to deploy as they position themselves for rapid growth. In the coming year, small businesses will adopt cloud-based enterprise tools at a faster pace to enhance business functions. For example, we expect technology will help small businesses tackle traditional functions such as corporate travel management as well as take advantage of emerging technologies like chatbots. We will also see small businesses prioritize enterprise tools that are built to scale, poising them for growth while growing alongside them. – Christal Bemont, SVP and GM of the Small, Midsized and Nationals Business Unit, SAP Concur
- Preferences, predictive analytics, and personalization will change everything, including business travel.
“Technology is surpassing business travellers where they are and forecasting their next move. Predictive analytics will transform the traveller experience by anticipating, recommending and booking optimal travel itineraries based on past experiences, calendars, user profiles and preferred loyalty programs. Advanced technologies will take personalized travel experiences even further with customized room temperature, amenities and entertainment preferences ready upon arrival. On top of that, virtual concierges will offer 24/7 assistance to book dinner reservations, reschedule meeting spaces and request rides.”– John Dietz, Vice President, Concur Labs, SAP Concur
- Conventional expense reports are no more as businesses embrace paperless processes and a greater breadth of payment and reimbursement options.
As advanced technologies become further integrated into travel and spend management software, expense reporting will automatically happen in the background and save employees time to focus on business priorities. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and scanning recognition technologies will continue to eliminate manual expense reporting tasks, while paper receipts will become obsolete with the standardization of e-receipts and countries like France, Spain, China and Japan deregulating paper receipt documentation and validation. Machine learning and automation advancements will also make it easier to spot patterns across data, leading to a decline in expense fraud. In tandem, non-traditional payment technologies like Blockchain and vCards will fundamentally change the way transactions and reimbursements are handled, becoming the new norm for managed travel programs. – Hendrik Vordenbaeumen, Vice President of Product Management, SAP Concur
- Business traveller safety to remain a C-suite level priority, and turn to analytics to solve it.
In light of recent events and natural disasters, business traveller safety is a growing concern. When employees are traveling, the business is responsible for their well-being and safety, and yet GBTA found that nearly one in three travel managers do not know how long it would take their company to confirm the safety of every employee after an incident. This is a c-level responsibility and executives need to be assured their company can reach and account for their travellers during emergencies. In the year ahead, we expect duty of care to remain at the top of c-level priorities. Businesses will continue scrutinizing their data, systems, processes and procedures to determine how they can improve their ability to locate and communicate with their employees when the unfortunate occurs. – Mike Eberhard, President, SAP Concur
- Invisible employee spending becomes visible (and manageable) with data
Employees are gaining more access to and will spend more of corporate funds across more spend categories using more payment methods than ever before. This trend is poised to heat up as even more GenZ workers hit the workforce and are paying more supplier invoices directly with company checks; booking and managing travel directly on their mobile devices; and using corporate, ghost, virtual, or even personal cards for just about everything. This employee-initiated spend has fast become the largest unmanaged spend category in almost every company’s financial program largely due to the fact that there’s minimal or no forethought or oversight from finance and procurement managers into this spending. It doesn’t have to be this way. The technologies available to automate and track this spending have caught up with technologies used to spend the money. The future is here. With a better understanding of where employee spend is really happening and the categories it comes from, finance and procurement managers can develop a strategy to better manage it proactively and ultimately save money. – Guy La Corte, GM of Americas Enterprise Business, SAP Concur
Find out more about SAP Concur here.
Guest Post: SAP Concur’s Voice Assistant Technology Is Bringing Consumerization To The Corporate World
Posted in Commentary with tags Concur on March 30, 2018 by itnerdBy Kevin Craig, Managing Director, Canada, SAP Concur
Over the last few years we’ve seen the market for voice assistants grow rapidly — estimated to reach $7.5 billion by 2024. While assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are more commonly marketed to simplify life at home, their role at the office is saving businesses significant time and money.
Conversational interfaces are one of the fast-growing trends in tech, and voice assistants have helped bridge the gap between consumer convenience and workplace efficiency. The list of business applications for virtual assistants keeps growing.
Alexa for Business, announced this past November, is one of many new technologies based on trigger-response programs. Voice bots and interfaces, chatbots, and messaging platforms are each capable of capturing and filtering key information and delivering customized responses to users.
For example, SAP Concur—a leading travel, expense and invoice management company— recently announced integration with Alexa for Business, allowing business travellers to ask Alexa about upcoming business trips, flights, hotel bookings, and transportation.
Employees just have to link their SAP Concur account to Amazon, and their voice seamlessly triggers a personalized experience. Workers simply have to say: “Alexa, ask Concur” to access their latest business travel information. They can ask Alexa questions like, “When do I leave for my next business trip?” “What is my flight number?” “What hotel do I have booked?” Alexa will then be able to sort through the traveler’s bookings in the Concur system to retrieve the information.
This development represents a massive shift in workplace productivity and efficiency. Users no longer have to be concerned about keeping records, forgetting about minute trip details—all of this data is stored within SAP Concur software and can be accessed simply by asking Alexa about it.
Alexa for Business also has the power to place conference calls through companies like Cisco, incorporate calendars from Office365 and Google’s G Suite, and access Salesforce data.
SAP Concur has been working on the development of other virtual assistant platforms that seek to improve workplace efficiency. For example, we created a Concur Expense on Slack bot to bring SAP Concur to users, in Slack, where many customers spend several hours a day. With the bot, you can interact with Concur Travel and Expense in a conversational manner, sending requests instead of navigating webforms. This means you can type simple notes and instantly retrieve travel and expense information.
Virtual assistants are bringing the business world into the 21st century, introducing a consumer-driven experience that bridges the gap between convenience and workplace efficiency.
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