Industry-First Solution Helps Companies Redesign Travel and Expense Programs Using Employee Sentiment Data

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and Qualtrics (Nasdaq: XM) today announced the availability of Concur® Experience Optimizer, a new solution that allows companies to improve employee experiences and confidently adapt travel and expense programs for the future of work. Concur Experience Optimizer combines the listening and analysis capabilities of Qualtrics EmployeeXM™, the leading product for employee experience management, with operational intelligence data from Concur® Travel and Concur® Expense solutions to help companies design travel programs for the hybrid workplace, improve spend management processes and increase employee retention.

Many employees are ready to return to pre-pandemic levels of business travel, with seven in ten (70 percent) expecting to go back to traveling as much as they did before the pandemic, according to recent research from Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, and the SAP Concur organization. A small majority (54 percent) of business travelers say traveling for business is still very important or critical to their role and over four in five (84 percent) say they are willing to travel within the next year.

Yet the experience of traveling for business is unlikely to go back to exactly the way it was pre-pandemic due to marked changes in employee expectations. Global business travelers expect new benefits — like the ability to choose direct flights or select premium seating — from their employers to help ensure their health and safety, research said. Alongside business travel, employee spending behavior is also evolving with more non-travel purchases initiated directly by employees, requiring new expense categories to support remote, hybrid and in-person work.

“People are a company’s greatest asset, and it’s no secret that retaining employees has become even more critical,” said Mike Koetting, SAP Concur solution area lead at SAP. “A company’s travel and expense programs can directly impact an employee’s experience. Concur Experience Optimizer helps organizations understand the reasons behind employee behavior so they can make adjustments that are in line with both employee sentiment and business objectives.”

“Our research shows that demand for business travel is returning to pre-pandemic levels, but getting the employee experience right is more nuanced and complicated than ever before,” said Jay Choi, Qualtrics chief product officer. “It’s critical for organizations to understand how employees feel about the new world of travel and use that experience data to meet their evolving health and safety needs.”

Concur Experience Optimizer uses technology from Qualtrics and SAP® Concur solutions, plus expert services from SAP Concur Experience Management consultants to help companies listen, analyze and act on employee feedback to create continuous feedback loops and understand the impact of adjustments made over time. Companies can easily capture employee sentiment with science-backed feedback templates and view the results through simple, intuitive dashboards that show the impact of sentiment against operational data metrics. Those insights can be turned into focused action plans to improve employees’ travel and expense experiences, compliance and budget predictability.

With Concur Experience Optimizer, companies can level up their entire program — from buying behavior to supplier options to workflow — to:

• Improve employee experiences: Better understand how policies are affecting employee sentiment, safety, well-being, productivity and attrition risk.
• Effectively manage spend: Gain insight into the critical influences that impact employee buying decisions and organizational spending patterns, supporting early detection of potential saving opportunities and closing policy and process gaps.
• Reduce risk and non-compliant spend: Identify risks in programs and adjust processes that allow for non-compliant and potentially fraudulent spending.
• Optimize programs for growth: Make confident travel, expense, compliance and spend management program adjustments to lead healthy business growth with enhanced visibility into critical business problems.
• ​​Drive sustainability: Make enhancements that align with organizational sustainability objectives, enhance the organization’s brand and reduce the carbon footprint

“Concur Experience Optimizer brings together the horsepower of SAP Concur and Qualtrics to allow finance leaders and travel managers to be active drivers of improved employee experiences,” said Kevin Permenter, research director at IDC. “This solution has potential to help companies get ahead of spend problems by shaping spend with employee sentiment as a guide.”

To learn more visit Concur.com/experience-optimizer.

About SAP Concur

SAP Concur is the world’s leading brand for integrated travel, expense and invoice management solutions, driven by a relentless pursuit to simplify and automate these everyday processes. The highly rated SAP Concur mobile app guides employees through business trips, charges are directly populated into expense reports, and invoice approvals are automated. By integrating near real-time data and using AI to analyze transactions, businesses can see what they’re spending, improve compliance and avoid possible blind spots in the budget. SAP Concur solutions help eliminate yesterday’s tedious tasks, make today’s work easier and support businesses to run at their best. Learn more at concur.com or the SAP Concur blog.

About SAP

SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as a sustainable intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 87% of the world’s total global commerce touches an SAP system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into sustainable intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want, without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

About Qualtrics

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, is changing the way organizations manage and improve the four core experiences of business—customer, employee, product and brand. Over 13,500 organizations around the world use Qualtrics to listen, understand and take action on experience data (X-data™)—the beliefs, emotions and intentions that tell you why things are happening, and what to do about it. The Qualtrics XM Platform™ is a system of action that helps businesses attract customers who stay longer and buy more, engage employees who build a positive culture, develop breakthrough products people love and build a brand people are passionate about. To learn more, please visit qualtrics.com.

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