How to prioritize T&E AI capabilities for maximum ROI

AI investment is accelerating, but results aren't guaranteed. Across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, 83% of surveyed CFOs planned to increase AI spending despite economic pressure¹, yet choosing which capabilities to fund first remains a critical challenge. For finance leaders, travel and expense (T&E) is one of the most direct and measurable places to demonstrate AI's business value. (Source 1: orgvue)

Six T&E Priorities to Direct Your AI Investments

Finance leaders can align AI investments to the T&E outcomes their organization needs most. This guide maps six priority areas to specific AI capabilities and the results each delivers:

• Improve financial visibility: Connected spend data, real-time reporting, and AI-driven benchmarking give finance teams a current view of budget performance and emerging trends. 47% of finance leaders expect to improve real-time spend visibility if volatility continues.
• Strengthen cost control and cash flow: Pre-spend estimates, budget checks, and embedded spend controls keep expenditure within guardrails and reduce the risk of overruns.
• Maximize operational efficiency: AI automates routine tasks such as expense creation, receipt processing, and invoice coding, reducing expense report creation and submission time by approximately 30%.²
• Mitigate risk and improve compliance: Policy controls, anomaly detection, and automated audit tools identify higher-risk activity early. 57% of SAP Concur integrated T&E customers reported improved policy enforcement, compared with 42% using competitors' solutions.³
• Enhance employee experience and productivity: Conversational assistance for booking, automated expense reporting, and in-workflow policy guidance reduce friction and free employees to focus on higher-value work.
• Build agility and resilience: Scalable, flexible T&E platforms adapt as business needs evolve, supporting growth without requiring a platform overhaul.

The guide also includes a five-step roadmap to help finance leaders move from priorities to action, from assessing current process gaps to sequencing capability deployments.

SAP Concur brings over 10 years of AI experience in T&E, processing 1 billion transactions annually across 96 million users in 150 countries, with 71% of SAP Concur customers reporting an ROI of 100% or more, compared with 48% using other solutions.⁴

(Source 2: SAP Value Advisory; Source 3, 4: One system, more return: The ROI of integrated travel and expense, Emerald Research Group)

Download the Guide

This guide gives finance leaders a framework to match T&E AI investments to business priorities, with a six-area capability-to-outcome map and a five-step roadmap for moving from priorities to implementation.