SAP Concur Delivers Must-Have Tools for Managing Today’s Business Travel

At this year’s Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) Convention in Atlanta, we honored the hardworking travel managers who juggle the challenges of business travel and bring tremendous value to their organizations. SAP Concur teams are focused on providing the industry’s best travel and expense solutions to manage corporate travel costs, deliver exceptional traveler experiences, and simplify the travel and expense process from start to finish.

?We recently conducted our sixth annual SAP Concur Global Business Travel Survey of 600 travel managers across six markets and, for the fourth year in a row, found that virtually all (99%) say that their job will be more challenging in the next 12 months. Thirty-seven percent say that continuing to deliver high-quality travel programs despite increased stress is making it difficult for them to succeed, and 31% say they are struggling to remain motivated in the role due to feeling undervalued. In response, 21% of surveyed travel managers say they are likely to search for a travel manager position at a different company in the year ahead, while 20% are likely to search for a new position outside of travel management altogether.

?At SAP Concur, we understand the difficulties that travel managers face today and aim to simplify their work. We develop and deliver to customers the tools that help them ease the complexity of market forces , like growing needs for compliance and flexibility, rising costs, managing content fragmentation, and calls for sustainability through truly integrated corporate travel, all while still giving them their choice of TMC and GDS.

?Managing Rising Costs with AI

We recently analyzed Concur Expense data collected in 2019 and 2023. The average expense for airfare was $770 in 2023, up 10% from $698 in 2019. The average gasoline expense transaction increased by 37%, and the average expense for a meal increased by 30%, in the same time period. Today, about six in 10 travel buyers (59%) expect to see an increase in their company’s business travel spending and volume compared to 2023—opening the door to even higher costs in 2024.

?There’s an incredible opportunity to control costs with generative AI. We recently debuted new Business AI capabilities in SAP Concur solutions, including Request Assistant, which uses generative AI to provide intelligent cost estimates for trip planning with efficiency. Additionally, ExpenseIt now itemizes hotel folios using generative AI, increasing the accuracy of the results and saving time.

?SAP has made incredible progress as an industry leader with generative AI. In June, at our Sapphire annual customer event, SAP and Microsoft announced plans to integrate their AI copilots Joule and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. With the integration, Joule would automatically block travel dates in an employee’s Outlook calendar when they use Joule to book a flight in Concur Travel.

We’re continually meeting with our customers to understand other applications of responsible AI that can make employees, travel managers, and accounting teams more productive.

This is an excerpt of my latest post on the SAP Concur blog. The full content be read here .