How UMass Built a Blueprint for System-Wide T&E Transformation

Modernizing travel and expense in higher education goes beyond upgrading a system. True success hinges on aligning policy, people, governance, and culture across a complex organization with unique structures, autonomous units, and thousands of employees who experience travel in different ways.

In a recent episode of SAP Concur Conversations, host and Global VP of Customer Advisory, Jeanne Dion, sat down with Dave Nero, Associate Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at the University of Massachusetts, and Shannon Nortier, Principal Consultant at Supply Chain Partner, to unpack how UMass transformed its T&E program from a patchwork of tools into a unified, modern, system-wide platform.

Their story offers a blueprint for any organization, inside or outside of higher education, looking to modernize T&E with purpose, clarity, and lasting impact.

You can listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite place to find podcasts.

Strategy Before Technology Is Non-Negotiable

Many organizations start their T&E journeys with technology first, but as Dave explains, UMass learned early that transformation only sticks when it starts with the why and the foundation beneath it.

“Well, this is sort of how we approach all projects here… you're putting in a new piece of software in a topic without significantly preparing for it is a fool's errand,” he says. “We are foundationally built on knowing how important it is to do a significant amount of preparation.”

Rather than “lift and shift” their old processes into new technology, UMass began with deep policy work:

“We then embarked on a very long process of updating our policy and what we call our administrative standards… We spent probably two full years going word by word, row by row through both the policy and the standards,” Dave explains.

For Shannon, this approach is what set UMass apart long before implementation began.

“They had a clear why… they updated their policies first,” she notes. “Most customers really should consider relooking at their policies… making sure that they have that internal alignment within their organization.”

Jeanne reinforces this idea throughout the conversation: before any technology can succeed, organizations must understand the outcome they’re driving toward, not just the tool they’re buying.

Innovation Requires Structure, Leadership, and a Dedicated Function

One of UMass's biggest accelerators was something many organizations lacked: an internal innovation function dedicated to strategy, change, and system-wide transformation.

Dave describes UMass’s Innovation Center as a crucial piece of the puzzle.

“We’ve made an investment in building a team who start our day thinking and working on strategic projects, and we finish our day having done nothing but that… This isn't nice to have stuff. I feel like this is as important as anything else.”

This team ensured the project didn’t compete with day-to-day operations, and more importantly, maintained momentum across all five campuses.

Leadership support also played a defining role. With CFOs, CIOs, CHROs, and financial leaders already accustomed to working in collaborative forums, decisions could be made quickly, openly, and with clear accountability.

“They are not a rubber stamp,” Dave notes. “They ask really hard questions. They demand high quality work, and that keeps us motivated as well.” Transformation requires more than software, it requires a repeatable engine for change, supported by leadership that expects and enables it.

Partnership Is a Force Multiplier. But Only When It’s Built on Fit, Flexibility, and Shared Ownership

When UMass selected The Peloton Group and Supply Chain Partners as its partners, they weren’t looking for a vendor, they wanted collaborators.

“Finding the right partner for any activity for us is a very tricky thing,” Dave shares. “Ultimately, it comes down to experience, cost and fit. And if those three boxes can't be checked, then it… doesn't make sense.”

Shannon saw the relationship the same way, “They didn't hand things off. They stayed deeply involved and heavily invested throughout the process… It was a true partnership.”

Together, they navigated one of the most complex challenges in higher ed T&E: rolling out one unified instance of Concur to nearly 10,000 employees, even across campuses with different cultures, workflows, and approval hierarchies.

UMass held to a core principle, “If you go in saying everything must be standard, you will fail. And if you go in saying everything needs to be different, you will fail,” Dave explains.

Collaboration wasn’t a project phase, it was the operating model.

The Takeaway

The UMass journey shows that modernizing T&E isn’t just about choosing a solution, it’s about choosing an approach.

Their blueprint includes three foundational principles that any organization can adopt:

1. Start with policy, alignment, and clarity.

Technology should accelerate transformation, not define it.

2. Build a repeatable internal engine for change.

An innovation function or dedicated strategic team creates momentum that outlives any single project.

3. Choose partners who match your culture and reinforce your strengths.

Experience, cost, and fit matter, and so does mutual respect.

UMass proved that even in complex, decentralized environments, unified T&E is possible when strategy, preparation, and partnership lead the way.

🎧 Listen to Dave and Shannon’s full conversation on SAP Concur Conversations to explore how these principles can help you modernize your own T&E program.