SAP Concur NextGen UI – It’s Time to Switch

Naomi Hamlin | 20-05-2022

Expense management is an essential task for most organisations but one that can be cumbersome, time consuming and, at times, carries risk for the business. The good news is there’s not long to go until October 1, 2022 when the Concur Expense and Concur Request NextGen UI irons out many of the frustrations and boost many of the efficiencies associated with expense processing.

Get Switched On

If you haven’t already switched your users over, you need to be planning and preparing for it now. Our mission is to make this as seamless and stress-free as possible. To help your organisation communicate the changes and make the switch in plenty of time, we’ve created this Information Sheet packed with advice, tips and links to helpful resources.

Let’s look briefly at what the switch means for users who might be resistant to change or who assume that the updated UI offers a purely visual “new look” to existing functionality.

From our research, we know that users prefer an intuitive UI that does the hard work for them, leading them from one task to another and prompting them if and when they hit a roadblock. In response, task flows have been optimised within the updated UI and we’ve made everything more usable, efficient and accessible.

Once moved over, employees will encounter fewer issues, fewer escalations. As a business, you’ll reduce inefficiencies, boost employee experience and free up time to spend on more value-add tasks.

Space, Visibility and Functionality

The updated UI offers better visibility with more white space and a tiled-layout. This doesn’t just look better, the updated UI is easier to use regardless of any user disability, whether that’s visual, auditory, motor, cognitive or speech.

With more room to work on screen, employees have a greater chance of making more sustainable options when they are available, a big plus point for many businesses today. Cues and alerts prompt users to take the next best action, improving employee experience and compliancy.

We’ve also added features and functionality that address new ways of working and the changing demands of employees. With the increasing popularity of hybrid working and the preference for using mobile apps to conduct business tasks, it’s crucial that users get the same experience across all devices.

Mobile Parity

A Gartner survey found that digital workers increased their reliance on portable devices during 2020, with workers reporting an 11% increase in the proportion of their work time spent on laptops, smartphones or tablets. The proportion of their time spent on desktops declined by 8%.

With mobile usage on the rise, it’s important to give employees the opportunity to submit and approve expenses whilst on the road. This in turn speeds up the expense process, driving efficiencies.

To meet this need, we’ve added mobile parity to the updated UI so there is no difference between the mobile and desktop functionality of Concur Expense and Concur Request – users get the same experience, so are less likely to delay expense tasks until they’re in the office.

Mileage Service

With health issues at play, there is a growing preference for travelling to meetings or the office by car rather than taking public transport. In response, the updated UI includes a Mileage Service which gives your business automatic best practice government and company mileage rates, support for mileage-expected expenses and mileage calculator integration with Concur Request.

For businesses paying the government rates, the mileage service will keep these rates updated in real time, doing away with manual updates and resulting in reduced rate administration. Other benefits include support for all vehicle types and corresponding distance bands, a simplified vehicle registration process, improved compliance and additional rates and regional rates support.

These are just two of the updated functionalities we’ve added to the UI and you can learn more about the new features by visiting our Information Sheet and accessing the relevant training documents.

Who Needs to Switch?

All Concur Expense and Concur Request users need to switch before the deadline of October 1, 2022. Depending on whether you’re a user or an administrator, the experience of switching to the new UI will be different.