What is Automation Without Integration? Connect SAP Concur to Your Finance Systems
Kirk Hayes is Director of EMEA Platform and Product Partnerships for SAP Concur
We’ve spoken at length about the undeniable benefits that automating your expenses, travel, and invoices can bring. Automation saves time and money for finance, employees and the business alike. According to research, automating with SAP Concur solutions saves the typical small-to-medium-sized business $39,000 annually. But what happens in your back office once you have automated those previously manual processes? How easy is it to transfer that data into your finance system and is there more work to do there?
If you want to maximize efficiency, make the most of your time and see more benefit, you need to think about how your automated systems fits together and with the rest of the systems in your business.
Let’s take an example. Say you have a relatively automated expense process up and running in your business. It may be efficient and offer better visibility and insight than ever before. But can it “talk” to your supplier invoice solution so you get a full picture into spend? And can it integrate with your finance system so that the data feeds through without having to be rekeyed?
Automation can only take your business so far. If you want to complete the automation process and harness everything it has to offer, then integration of your systems is the final, but very important piece of the puzzle.
SAP Concur and systems integration
There are several ways you can connect your systems to your back office finance function. You can do it on demand, over FTP or via web services. But the quickest, easiest and safest way is to use one of the built-in connectors SAP Concur has to offer.
Every connector has been developed with in house R&D or in partnership with innovative technology providers, and has been designed to add even more value to your business. If you’re considering automating your spend processes with a new provider, make sure to establish exactly what work will be required to get your data to sync with your ERP.
At SAP Concur, we have connectors that support a range of finance systems, including:
- Access Dimensions
- Brightpearl
- Ebizframe ERP
- Evo-ERP
- Exact Globe
- Microsoft Dynamics
- MomentumPro
- Netsuite
- Sage
- SAP
- SYSPRO
- Unit4 Business World On!
- Xero
And together with our partnerships with innovative developers such as Codeless Platforms and ExcluServ, we’re building new connections all the time.
With an SAP Concur connector, expenses, invoices, purchase orders and their associated cost center lists are automatically transferred from your SAP Concur system into your ERP system every 24 hours, giving you near real-time synchronization.
There are also none of the headaches traditionally associated with getting two systems to talk to each other as the hard development work has been done up front. Deployment is also quick and easy, and in some cases takes only a few days. Support is available for every one of them too, so if you have a technical question, help is always at hand.
And while every connector is pre-built, they can also be customized to give you exactly what your business needs. For example, you can choose which data you want to be synchronized between systems.
The Benefits of Connecting Your Systems with an SAP Concur Connector
Once your SAP Concur connector is up and running, you have removed another element of manual data entry and the associated risks of human error from your finance process. The result is you reduce operational costs and improve your efficiency thanks to the time you are saving.
In other words, when you integrate SAP Concur and your ERP system with an SAP Concur connector, you take automation to the next level and maximize the value it has to offer.
If you would like to discuss systems integration with an SAP Concur expert, get in touch with us here