Growth and Optimization
Your Ultimate Guide to SAP Concur Integration
Your Ultimate Guide to SAP Concur Integration
Fragmented data, weak spending visibility, and workflow inefficiencies across the organization all result when your technology solutions are disconnected and not smoothly working as one. Fortunately, they’re challenges that can be overcome by connecting your travel, expense, and invoice processes with your existing tech stack with SAP Concur integration. Businesses aren’t one-size-fits-all, and neither are the multiple approaches to Concur integration. Whatever method best suits your needs, the benefits are universal: improved data, efficiency, and decision-making.
Choosing the Type of Concur Integration that Works for You
Once your organization decides to commit to system integration and workflow automation, the IT team is in the spotlight to select, implement, and support the option that fits your organization’s needs, requirements, and capabilities. That duty applies whether a small business wants to manually upload vendor data each month via flat files, or a large global enterprise needs to integrate systems to satisfy complex compliance needs.
Recognizing that integration must occur is the simpler decision. Choosing an approach and executing it requires deliberate strategy. This blog is designed to help guide your journey by exploring:
- The benefits Concur integration can deliver to your organization.
- Four approaches to integration and the benefits and security each brings.
- Key factors to consider, including assessing your IT bandwidth and engaging stakeholders.
- How integrated solutions build strategic advantage.
Your SAP Concur Integration Playbook
If your organization is ready to connect systems and automate finance functions, this playbook explores integration options and key steps to take.
Get the guideHow Can Concur Integration Benefit My Business?
Whether you’re an IT leader at small business just beginning to integrate and automate, or a leader at a much larger organization working in multiple locations and industries, a Concur integration—whatever the chosen method—delivers common benefits and capabilities.
Concur integration provides:
- Extensive compatibility with virtually any system or solution, with over 330 prebuilt connectors for ERP, CRM, HR, and accounting systems and a network of 1,200-plus solution and service partners.
- Rigorous security and compliance that protect your data and business through regular reviews, certifications, and industry-standard encryption.
- Improved efficiency and decision-making by automating data flows, reducing manual work, increasing spend visibility, and strengthening and accelerating reporting, all of which also free IT teams for value-driving work.
- Agility for growth with integrations and solutions that adjust with regulations and the evolving needs of the organization. In other words, you’re not stuck with a system that holds you back.
Surveying the SAP Concur Integration Landscape
Listen in as Bob Hutton, SAP Concur Product Manager, gives an overview of the different types of integrations available from Concur.
Watch the videoWhat Types of Integrations Does Concur Offer?
From do-it-yourself basic integration to managed services for more complex requirements, businesses can access an integration that fits its needs regardless of the organization’s size or existing systems.
On-Demand Integration
A good fit for smaller organizations and those testing deployments or connecting little-used systems, on-demand integration offers simplicity and control. It’s a straightforward, file-based system with manual imports and exports involving CSV, XLS, and other standardized formats. Requiring minimal IT resources, the approach enables compliance and custom data mapping.
STFP Integration
Particularly suitable to midsized organizations, secure file transfer protocol (STFP) can exchange flat files on a scheduled basis with ERPs and other systems, minimizing manual transfers and IT team time. This model supports validating and error handling, customizable field structures, end-to-end encryption, and scalability.
Pre-Built Connectors
This is your plug-and-play option, with turnkey connectors from Concur or over 300 partners in our App Center. The integrations come preconfigured for ERP, travel, accounting, and HR applications, resulting in accelerated implementations and requiring minimal IT resources. Concur and partners manage updates and ensure ongoing compatibility with your platform, and pre-built connectors can readily scale with your organization and new workflows.
Managed Integration Services
Have a complex integration that’s beyond the bounds of your in-house expertise or resources? Concur managed integrations included a wide range of services and specialized guidance from our integration professionals encompassing assessment, design, implementation, and optimization to satisfy your business objectives. Specific options include client web services’ extensive suite of Concur API integrations, extract services, and custom integration and workflow automation. Across the options, organizations obtain project management, flexibility, and experience oversight to help ensure your organization gets exactly what it needs from Concur integration.
How to Choose Your SAP Concur Integration Path
Organizations clearly have multiple Concur integration options to weigh. Our infographic offers a decision tree to help clarify your business objectives and make a selection.
See the infographicHow Should the IT Team Approach an Integration Initiative?
The IT team will likely bear a big share of the responsibility for selecting an integration path and overseeing implementation, but going it alone can endanger success.
Here are things to consider and steps to take:
- Assess your team’s skills and ability to commit resources to managing your chosen option.
- Determine how quickly you need the integration to go live, as that can influence your choice.
- Ascertain the special needs of your business, as regulated industries and international operations may have compliance needs best suited to managed integration services.
And, importantly, be sure to involve leaders from finance, travel, HR, and other functions to determine requirements and goals. In addition, communicate regularly to build trust and buy-in, while staying informed of any changing stakeholder needs or expectations.
Conclusion: A Strategic Advantage with Concur Integration
Choosing the right approach to integrating your finance automation and travel management tools with the rest of your tech stack is no small task. But it’s important to take the long view and look at the integration option as a journey or an evolution instead of a one-off project. By choosing Concur integration, you’re enabling the business to build on its interconnected foundation of Concur solutions for travel, expense, and invoice, elevating its end-to-end operations. And with the scalability, resources, and experience of Concur as your partner, you’ll gain a strategic advantage in navigating a challenging business landscape.
FAQ: Your Guide to Concur Integration
Q: Why does integration matter for travel, expense, and invoice processes?
A: Disconnected processes and systems lead to dispersed data, weak spend visibility, and inefficiencies. Integrating Concur with your existing systems creates end-to-end data sharing that improves efficiency and decision-making.
Q: What benefits does Concur integration provide?
A: Concur integration with existing ERP, CRM, HR, and accounting systems offers strong security and compliance, automated data flows, enhanced accuracy, reduced manual work, greater spend visibility, and scalability to support growth.
Q: What Concur integration options are available?
A: Concur integration options range from on-demand, file-based uploads for smaller organizations to secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) integrations, prebuilt connectors for plug-and-play deployment, and managed integration services for complex needs.
Q: How should IT teams choose the right Concur integration approach?
A: IT should assess internal skills, resource availability, timeline expectations, and compliance requirements. Involving finance, travel, HR, and other stakeholders helps ensure alignment and long-term success of your Concur integration.
Q: How does Concur integration create strategic advantage?
A: By connecting finance automation tools with your other business applications on a scalable foundation, organizations gain agility, better insights, and a more resilient platform to support evolving business demands.
