KUALA LUMPUR: To quite a few professionals overseeing travel and expense management, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) area is one synonymous with Concur, an enterprise software company that was acquired by SAP in 2014.
The New Straits Times had previously reported that AirAsia Global Shared Services had implemented an integrated travel and expense Concur solution aimed at making travel and expense management more user-friendly for AirAsia Group employees, and in particular for AirAsia Global Shared Service and finance staff.
Nearby at Mitsui Premium Outlet, its parent company Mitsui and Co. Asia-Pacific had also adopted the SAP Concur platform together with Concur Travel alongside Concur Expense and the mobile app to handle the region’s 700-plus monthly travel requests.
Its general manager (information systems) Ikuo Hayashi said the SAP Concur platform had enabled Mitsui to migrate its IT systems to the cloud while standardising operations across the region.
“We are satisfied with our IT investment in Concur and are developing further opportunities to improve employee productivity,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mitsui project manager Judy Goh said most Mitsui employees using the Concur mobile app had been able to complete travel and expense forms 50 percent faster.
“This increases employee productivity and reduces administration costs,” she said.
Mitsui is one of the world’s most diversified and largest trading, investment, and service conglomerates operating in 66 countries.
According to SAP Malaysia managing director Duncan Williamson, consumerisation is driving rapid evolution of the travel, expense and invoice industry.
“The future of successful business applications will be in the ability to balance consumer-grade experiences with needs of the business,” he said.
“SAP provides the largest global network of digitally connected companies for businesses to collaborate, organise and innovate business models in entirely new ways,” added Williamson.
SAP Concur managing director (Southeast Asia) Madanjit Singh said that SAP Concur is focused on “developing simple, intuitive solutions that benefit travel managers and business travellers”.
“SAP Concur delivers consumer-grade travel, expense and invoice experiences that lead to better compliance and accuracy, helping businesses see spend clearly and manage it proactively,” he said.
For example, Uber could be synced with Concur, allowing ride details to flow directly into business traveller expense reports.
“With SAP Concur, companies are able to gain visibility and proactively manage travel and expense spending,” Madanjit further said, adding that employees could then better manage overall spend with automated travel and expense management features from their mobile devices.