Making the Most of Your SAP Concur Data

Naomi Hamlin | 26-11-2020

Data is one of the most powerful assets your business has. In one of the podcasts in our SAP Concur Conversations series, Value Engineer Matthew Ditch and Senior Client Sales Executive Daniel Phillips take you through all of the data you can get from your SAP Concur solution and how to use that data to inform decisions and help you achieve your strategic goals.

To hear their insights and advice in full, listen to the full 20 minute podcast now. And read on for a few of the highlights.

The Value of Being Able to Rapidly Aggregate Data

For many organisations, the biggest hurdle to analysing data is aggregating it in the first place. Data is available from multiple sources – TMCs, online booking tools, offline travel data, credit card data, procurement cards, expense submissions and ERP data are just the start. In many cases, the data is also incomplete or fragmented.

The joy of a holistic end-to-end solution such as the SAP Concur platform is that all the data flows into one place, so you can get the visibility you need much more easily. From a spend governance perspective, this is a big win.

When it comes to analysing the data, there are several different options depending on your requirements. For some organisations, the standard dashboards and reports give them everything they need. For other clients, a more consultative approach is what’s helpful. This is available via our Consultative Intelligence service, where you get help from SAP Concur experts in analysing your spend data. Data can also be exported for offline interrogation.

What Can You Do with the Data?

One of the biggest questions clients have is how to maximise the value of their data. The best way to answer that question is to turn it on its head. Instead, ask yourself ‘What is the strategic goal I want to achieve?’ Because by attaching your data analysis to a specific KPI or business objective, it’s going to be more meaningful for your organisation.

Using Data to Enhance the Employee Experience

For example, enhancing the employee experience might be a key metric. In this case, you’ll want to look at how you can help employees work smarter so they can be at their most productive. By looking at the operational and transactional data, you can see where you are now and where you want to be in the future. You might want look at how best to drive mobile adoption and the use of T&E apps. Automating mileage would also improve efficiency. However, both sound a note of caution and stress the importance of balancing the operational side of things with the human element and how both need to work in harmony to achieve the greater engagement you seek.

Using Data to Improve Policy Compliance

Alternatively, it might be that policy compliance needs to improve. In this instance, you might want to look at hotel spend, including the meals and parking that go along with it. A per diem spending cap – set at different levels depending on the city or country – might help reduce spend by as much as 5 or 10%. You could also look at cash transactions, noting that transactions with round number values could be a flag for non-compliance. Daniel recalled a client who moved to SAP Concur solutions to improve efficiency by removing Excel spreadsheets from their processes. They achieved the efficiencies they wanted but they also identified that 26% of spend was out-of-policy, which enabled them to make huge savings as well.