Home » Training Software » Is SAP Concur All It’s Cracked Up To Be?
What is Concur?
Concur is a cloud-based solution designed to improve process automation, integration, and analytics across various business processes, especially travel and expense. It usefully provides a modern user experience, with comprehensive mobile support which aligns with modern digital initiatives.
Concur is one of the leading platforms for travel and expense management. It’s a solution that’s responsible for investment and innovation, and can be integrated with multiple business functions.
The main solutions Concur offers include:
- A Booking Engine for Travel
- Expense Management
- Analysis
- Invoice Management
- Travel Request
Why Do You Need It?
Concur allows you to connect travel, expense, and invoice spend, but why is this important?
Differentiate from the Competition
Businesses are often prone to exceeding their travel, expense, and invoice budgets, despite cash flow being a high priority.
A connected business function offers a single view of spend, which helps your business stay within budget.
Gives You More Visibility and Control
Maintaining control over spend management is no easy task.
The ability to monitor company-wide spending from a single location is highly advantageous, because you can more effectively accrue, budget, and spot spending patterns. This enables you to control costs before they spiral out of control.
It Helps Decision Making
Travel, invoice spend, and expense are often handled by different departments.
This can cause confusion, especially when there’s a lack of communication between important factions. This can create a disjointed setup where suboptimal choices are made.
By implementing a single system, your team can more effectively report on employee spend whenever and wherever they need it. This facilitates well-informed decision making throughout the organization.
Drives Business Efficiency
By automating processes, you can reduce the time employees spend on mundane tasks.
This also reduces data-entry errors, utilizing one comprehensive system where employees aren’t bombarded with learning different tools for every distinct process.
Reduce Late Payments
Prompt payment is essential for maintaining healthy business relationships. With Concur’s automated approach, you’ll reduce processing times, and the inevitable volume of admin that comes with it.
Paying employee expenses and supplier invoices promptly keeps important stakeholders happy.
Retains Employees
Staff are undoubtedly the most important resource within your organization, making their satisfaction a top priority.
When staff have to grapple with multiple clunky platforms, they can become frustrated, and more likely to leave as a result. Reduce employee turnover with Concur, while keeping your staff motivated to meet business goals.
How Should You Roll Out Concur?
In today’s shifting business environment, flexibility, adaptability, and scalability are crucial for long-term success.
By embracing new technologies like Concur, your business is more likely to have longevity. To help you with a smooth roll out, WalkMe for Concur is a great solution. It helps users get the most out of the platform, maximizing their software investment.
This will streamline the Concur training process, via a digital adoption platform that promotes software proficiency.
Resistance to Change
Humans naturally resist change, especially when it threatens the environment they’ve grown accustomed to. When implementing platforms like Concur, it’s important to leverage an effective change management strategy.
We are creatures of habit, but to stay up-to-date with the latest technology, it’s important for employees to embrace new processes. You’ll inevitably face resistance, so one of your main jobs when rolling out Concur is to manage change effectively.
When staff are fully on board, their objectives will be aligned with the best interests of the company, and they’ll be better equipped to meet company goals.
What’s the Best Way to Roll Out Concur?
Many organizations prefer a pilot-type roll out, which offers more control. This approach will gradually introduce your team to Concur, starting with a pilot group as a foundation for future infiltration.
Finance professionals are normally responsible for managing the roll out, since Concur plays a huge role throughout the finance function.
The implementer must be a change champion, who’s willing to promote the overarching benefits of the platform. When the benefits of Concur are communicated, staff are more likely to embrace it.
Pilot Groups
By initially selecting a technologically savvy control group, organizations can more effectively phase their roll-out. Once they’re familiar with the software, your pilot group can train other individuals.
What’s most important is your pilot group are trained effectively, so they can share their knowledge for maximum impact. Teachers should be well-respected and patient for their learners to be receptive.
Give your pilot group everything they need to be successful, providing the correct online resources, personalized training sessions, and the necessary support. Your pilot group will be early champions, and early adopters of bottom-up change management.
Communicate Effectively
Communication is critical at every stage of implementation. Executive sponsorship will help encourage staff to support change, alongside a dialogue which explains the rationale for introducing Concur.
Employee buy-in will be secured if you can communicate how their jobs will become easier, and ultimately improve their functions in the long run.
Staff should realize the potential ROI from early on, especially the pilot group. If they understand the reason for introducing the technology, they’ll be positioned to communicate the benefits throughout their training efforts.
The main benefit to promote is the ability to capture and manage data on a single platform. By preferencing this point, you’ll have a much better chance of encouraging staff to adopt the platform, especially when you combine this with empathy.
