A day in the life of a Concur account manager

Toni Forde joined Concur a year ago as an Account Manager supporting small, medium and national companies with less than 1,000 employees. What does a day in the life of an account manager look like and what support can you expect? We asked Toni to reflect on her first year in the role.

Every Concur client, no matter how big or small, has an account manager

I work with small and medium-sized clients in lots of different industries and roles – from administrator to CFO. I love that diversity and interaction I encounter with so many people.

As an account manager, I’m the main day-to-day contact for my clients with my main objective being to help them maximize their use of Concur. I spend the large part of my time answering their queries or covering more proactive outbound things, such as what’s going on at Concur, events that are taking place and upcoming product developments.

On average I arrange three to five business reviews a week. This is where I sit down with my clients and make sure that Concur is working for them in a way that supports their current business goals. These are held about every six months face-to-face, but often with virtual catch-ups in between. It can be more or less frequent depending on what my client prefers.

Showing people the power of Concur is always very satisfying

For many companies, the driver for implementing Concur is to automate the travel, expense and invoice process or move away from a paper-based system. It’s only once they’ve settled in a bit that they start to explore what else Concur can do and discover the power behind the reporting capabilities. The more people I talk to, the more I realise that it's big data and analytics that people are really looking for. We've got some really interesting reports we can share with clients and I love showing them where they can make more efficiencies. For example, once they can see all their travel suppliers in one place, they’re in a position to go back and negotiate discounts with them.

My clients are always showing me new things too. I find it very satisfying when this happens. Concur is designed to be a self-serve system that clients can take control of without any outside help, so when a client shows me something I didn’t know, it means Concur is doing its job.

Fusion Exchange London was an exciting time for me

I volunteered to be a track owner at Fusion Exchange and look after a track of the day. I did this because I wanted to get visibility into areas of the business I might not otherwise see. It was a busy time, but it was an amazing experience, not least because I got to put faces to names of people I’d only ever spoken to on the phone before. It was also great to hear feedback from clients saying how they’re in awe about how much is going on and how many new developments are coming down the line. One client said it must be an exciting place to work – I said they were right!

Concur is a company that’s ahead of the curve

Our clients really appreciate that it brings multiple systems together in one place and how much we reinvest in R&D to keep expanding our offering. Not only that, Concur has been designed to grow with them as they grow. Several of my clients have started with just a UK base but then have expanded overseas and Concur is able to handle that. I remain as their account manager throughout, so they’ve always got a single point of contact no matter which country has the query. It’s great to able to give them this level of personal support – although organising conference calls across the different time zones can be a bit of challenge!

If you have a question you’d like to ask the Concur Account Management team, call 01628 645 100.