{"id":12499,"date":"2016-06-10T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=7821"},"modified":"2021-08-16T18:20:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T16:20:36","slug":"concur-analytics-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/concur-analytics-tour.html","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned At The Concur Analytics UK Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"london<\/p>\n

I recently had the opportunity to join Concur experts as part of an Analytics tour in the UK, with\u00a0two presentations in in Manchester and London.<\/p>\n

As you probably know, SAP acquired Concur<\/a>, a leading provider of travel and expenses solutions, a little over 18 months ago.<\/p>\n

Concur is focused on providing the “Perfect Trip<\/a>” with alerts and automation providing the most seamless travel experience possible.<\/p>\n

I’m a keen user\u00a0of Concur myself via the TripIt<\/a> application. I simply forward my email travel notifications (flights, hotels, etc.) and it assembles them into trips and adds relevant information (maps, weather, etc.).<\/p>\n

Brian Tarble<\/a>, Concur’s Senior Director of Global Product for analytics opened the sessions with\u00a0an overview of current innovations in the company\u2019s Concur Intelligence<\/a>\u00a0solution.<\/p>\n

\"concur<\/p>\n

This includes more persona-focused dashboards, better cleansing and normalizing of data, and more proactive analytics with automated triggers and actionable alerts.<\/p>\n

Up until now, Concur had focused on providing solutions for two main roles: travel managers and users, but came to realize that when it came to analytics, there were many other profiles that\u00a0needed access to travel information. And so the company has worked to provide\u00a0different interfaces and analytic dashboards for department managers, expense managers, finance managers, travel managers, vendor managers, and legal & tax managers.<\/p>\n

For each “persona”, the company did research into\u00a0the problems faced by the role, the insights they might need, and — most importantly — how that insight could\u00a0be turned into concrete actions.<\/p>\n

\"concur<\/p>\n

For example, rather than just sending a report that summarizes prior and future travel compared to budget, department managers should be able to set\u00a0a trigger\u00a0when the travel expenses reach, say, 80% of the budget. And since the point is to help managers better manage<\/em> expenses, not just view them, the analytics system\u00a0should be able to\u00a0automatically trigger changes to operational processes.\u00a0For example, by adding an extra authorization step into the existing travel booking workflow.<\/p>\n

As with all analytics, getting the right data is a big part of the problem. To fix this, Concur does a lot of work to connect, clean, and normalize all relevant data elements across the travel booking system, the travel company, data from credit cards, HR information, and the expense system.<\/p>\n

\"concur<\/p>\n

This helps organizations spot problems and fraud that might not come to light if you analyzed\u00a0data from any one of the disparate systems used as part of the travel and expense process.<\/p>\n

For example, imagine an employee who doesn\u2019t book travel through the corporate system, who claims fees for extra miles as \u201cexcess baggage\u201d, and travels in business class despite only being authorized to travel in economy.<\/p>\n