New Concur Travel Innovations Reduce Time and Costs Associated with Booking and Managing Travel

Concur (PRNewsFoto/Concur)

BOSTON, July 16, 2017 /CNW/ -- Concur, an SAP company and the world's leading provider of travel, expense and invoice management solutions, today announced expanded Concur Travel features to reduce time and costs associated with booking and managing travel, including new TripLink supplier connections, virtual cards, and increased branded fare content. Between 2015 to 2016, Concur reduced the average time it takes users to book air travel by 14 percent, saving businesses an estimated $275 million in labor costs.

"At Concur, our goal is to make travel booking and expense management as easy and seamless as possible," said Tim MacDonald, Chief Product Officer at Concur. "We've found that every second we can take out of the process is worth nearly $1 million. That is money our customers can save and invest back into their business."

Managing business travel has gone beyond basic booking and Concur's connected ecosystem brings key data, tools and apps travelers are using together all in one place. This allows travel managers to see and manage travel, while also delivering a more seamless experience to business travelers.

The Concur Travel updates announced today will help travelers further streamline booking and give travel managers greater visibility and policy control, cutting the time and investment necessary to book and manage travel. These include:

• New TripLink supplier connections and increased adoption: Concur TripLink, the industry's first platform to enable companies to capture reservations booked outside a corporate travel system, continues to create more efficiencies and closes the duty of care gap. To date, TripLink has captured more than 2 million bookings that otherwise would not have been visible to travel managers. Nearly half of these were captured in just the past 10 months. For TripLink customers, they are now able to see and manage 9% more of their travel than without TripLink.
  As Concur continues to expand its TripLink network, travel managers have greater visibility and control, even with bookings made directly on supplier sites. Most recently, Concur cemented agreements with British Airways, Iberia, and WestJet that enables mutual customers to capture business travel bookings made directly on their websites.
• Virtual Cards for hotel bookings: Concur will offer virtual cards, powered by Conferma, for users booking hotel accommodations via GDS. By providing a unique payment number for each hotel transaction, virtual cards give travel managers more immediate visibility and control of hotel spend, and reduces the chance of credit card fraud. Over time, Concur plans to offer the ability to pay for other expenses and establish additional virtual card partnerships to expand this capability to even more customers.
• Branded fares: Concur Travel will feature additional branded fare content which includes major airlines such as American Airlines, Delta, Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa, Air New Zealand (within New Zealand) and more. Branded fares allow business travelers to book low-cost airfares bundled with select travel perks (such as a checked bag or priority booking) and flex options in one purchase.

Concur Travel updates were announced this week at GBTA Convention 2017, the business travel industry's largest annual event, and will become available on a rolling basis over the coming months in 2017. GBTA Convention attendees can learn more about these latest innovations at booth # 1337.

About Concur
For more than two decades, Concur, an SAP company, has taken companies of all sizes and stages beyond automation to a completely connected spend management solution encompassing travel, expense, invoice, compliance and risk. Concur's global expertise and industry-leading innovation keep its customers a step ahead with time-saving tools, leading-edge technology and connected data, in a dynamic ecosystem of diverse partners and applications. User-friendly and business-ready, Concur unlocks powerful insights that help businesses reduce complexity and see spending clearly, so they can manage it proactively. Learn more at concur.com or the Concur blog.

©2017 Concur Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Media Contact:
Carrie Peters
Concur
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