Refresh and Replatform with SAP Concur: Boosting Efficiency, Scalability and Optimisation

In today's fast-paced business environment, it’s imperative to leverage every available opportunity for agility and innovation in Travel and Expense (T&E) and invoice (AP) management – and this means continually rethinking your technology stack.

Replatforming is undertaken to improve performance, scalability, reduce security vulnerabilities or to modernise outdated technology. Forward-looking businesses are refreshing their existing SAP Concur platform, upgrading to a newer version or making changes to the underlying stack that supports it. Many consider it an important step in the transition of their current ERP processes and data to S/4HANA (S/4) and the cloud.

In this blog, we'll explore the common drivers for replatforming and how a refresh of your SAP Concur platform can be a game-changer in optimising performance and meeting business demands.

What Does Replatforming Entail?

Replatforming typically involves moving from one set of technologies, programming languages, frameworks or infrastructure components to another. The process could entail a version upgrade, which allows you to take advantage of new features, improved data security and bug fixes. Or it could involve transitioning from on-premise servers to cloud-based hosting or between different cloud providers for better scalability, reliability and performance.

What Are the Main Drivers of Replatforming?

Replatforming is driven by organisational changes, new system ownership or changing business priorities. Here are just some of the key drivers:

Flexibility and scale: Over time, custom fields can become exhausted, hampering the ability to expand into new markets thus limiting growth potential.

Reporting: A tangled web of interconnected data fields can make extracting meaningful insights a challenge.

Expansion: When two companies merge or undergo an acquisition, it may be necessary to review legacy systems and explore the benefits of a unified platform.

Cost control: Newer versions may offer more cost-effective pricing models or better ways to manage business processes.

Global integration: The absence of a unified global system design can lead to inefficient and disjointed decision-making and suboptimal system configurations.

Changing system ownership:  The centralisation of operations or the promotion of a shared-services model in order to lower costs can drive the need standardisation

Evolving travel programmes: Changes in an organisation’s travel approach, such as adopting a Travel Management Company (TMC), may require an upgraded platform to meet shifting requirements.

What Are the Benefits of Replatforming?

A fresh SAP Concur platform enables you to access the most up-to-date SAP Concur features and worldwide T&E and AP standards, aligning them with your organisation's existing policies and corporate goals.

Let’s look at some of the key benefits of replatforming.

Scalability:  Provides the scalability needed to accommodate growth and expand into new markets, businesses or products with less time and effort.

System maintenance: An optimised SAP Concur site simplifies system administration, reduces maintenance costs and streamlines deployment projects.

Reporting: Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities are critical for making data-driven decisions. More robust reporting tools and dashboards, help to gain better insights.

Compliance: Keep up to speed with changes in regulatory requirements, tax laws or company policies and make adjustments accordingly.

New functionality: Leverage new features and integrations such as SAP Native Integration (ICS), enhancing functionality and efficiency. Staying on a supported version of SAP Concur to receive regular updates, bug fixes and technical support.

Security enhancements: Improve authentication and authorisation mechanisms, encryption and compliance with security best practices.

Site Consolidation: If your organisation has adopted new systems or platforms (e.g., ERP, HR software) that need to be integrated with SAP Concur, replatforming may be necessary to ensure seamless data migration and process automation.

An Easy Switch for Big Gains

Replatforming with SAP Concur is straightforward and seamless, especially if you take care in preparing and planning for it.

As part of your refresh, ICS configuration takes place as a workstream within the overall refresh project. The refreshed SAP Concur system works well with SAP on-premises solutions like ECC immediately without losing any features. You can also use the SAP ICS Service on both ECC and S/4 simultaneously for a smooth transition.

An Integration Wizard tool makes it simple to connect with ECC or S/4, regardless of business size. After the first project is complete, your setup is ready without requiring further IT intervention.

Embracing the newest capabilities of SAP Concur solutions can enhance your organisation’s T&E and AP processes, improve scalability, simplify user experience and unlock access to innovative features.

With minimal effort, and in very little time, you can gain greater value from SAP Concur before you begin any additional deployments, freeing up resources for ongoing digital transformation and ultimately improving customer experiences.

Ready to improve your business's efficiency and competitiveness for the long term by embracing the replatforming journey with SAP Concur?

We’ve created this handy step-by-step guide to replatforming to ensure you’ve thought of everything and are ready to go!