SAP Concur & Amex GBT expand Complete travel platform

SAP Concur and American Express Global Business Travel have introduced new features in their Complete travel and expense platform, expanding the alliance's combined booking, servicing, payments and expensing offer.

The updates include an integrated travel support tool, a new home page for travel managers, broader travel content across air, hotel, ground and rail, and a closer link between Concur Expense and the Amex GBT Egencia platform.

Customer uptake of Complete has grown since the companies formed their strategic alliance, while product and engineering teams have been working to connect Amex GBT's travel marketplace and servicing operations with Concur Travel & Expense.

One of the main additions is a chat-based support service that can transfer travellers from an automated system to a live travel counsellor when needed. The feature is in pilot with customers.

SAP Concur said its Joule artificial intelligence system will be added to that support flow. Joule will be trained on Amex GBT's common customer enquiries and supplier marketplace data to answer routine questions during a trip.

If a request needs further help, the conversation can move to a live Amex GBT travel counsellor without the traveller leaving the Complete platform. This is the first of several new functions being rolled out for Complete users.

Manager tools

Another update is aimed at corporate travel managers, whose remit often spans travel policy, approval workflows, reporting and traveller duty of care. Complete is adding a new home page designed to bring SAP Concur and Amex GBT information into a single view.

The home page will serve as a central starting point for programme monitoring, report access, approvals and duty-of-care information. It will initially offer core insights, with broader analytics and reporting to be added later.

Another part of the update focuses on travel inventory. Amex GBT's marketplace is being incorporated into Complete, giving users access to the company's air, hotel and ground transport content.

That includes New Distribution Capability airline content, core Global Distribution System content, and hotel listings from Booking.com and Expedia. Complete users also now have access to more than 80 rail providers, broadening options in markets where rail is widely used.

SAP Concur and Amex GBT are also working on a single implementation model for wider NDC access across their systems. The aim is to give customers more consistent access to airline content without requiring them to manage how that content is sourced.

Expense link

In expense management, Concur Expense is being integrated with Amex GBT Egencia. The move is intended to allow Egencia bookings to flow directly into Concur Expense, with eligible items pre-populated using itinerary and transaction data.

That means travellers will not need to re-enter booking details or manually upload receipts for those transactions. Finance and travel teams should also gain faster, more accurate expense information for compliance, reporting and spend visibility.

The integration is currently in pilot for joint customers and is part of a broader effort to connect booking and expense processes more closely.

Charlie Sultan, President of Concur Travel at SAP Concur, said customer response had shown demand for a single workflow across travel and expense tasks.

"Rapid adoption of Complete reflects customers' demand for a more unified, modern travel and expense experience that brings booking, servicing, and expensing together with less disruption and faster time to value," Sultan said. "As we continue to build on our strategic alliance with Amex GBT, we're focused on delivering innovations that make business travel simpler, smarter, and more connected."

Amex GBT said the alliance had enabled both sides to build joint product plans and bring marketplace and servicing tools into the Concur environment.

"The strategic alliance has unlocked the ability for us to co-develop the roadmap to deeply build Amex GBT's capabilities, including marketplace and servicing into the Concur ecosystem. Our joint clients told us they wanted an improved UX, a more integrated experience, and more speed of delivery, and we are doing that. The foundations are built, thousands of clients are starting to see the benefits, and we are piloting the roll out of new features and experiences together," said Evan Konwiser, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Amex GBT.

The companies also outlined the scale of the joint travel marketplace they are building, with access to more than 600 airlines and more than 2 million properties. They also announced a TMC Partner Program with GBTNetwork that introduces Gold and Silver recognition levels for travel management company partners.

"These updates build on the foundation of the alliance, where SAP Concur's leadership and vision on Artificial Intelligence and integrated travel and expense solutions, combined with Amex GBT's robust business travel marketplace and servicing platforms bringing customers the content they need in this fragmented environment have combined into a truly collaborative roadmap, one harmonized experience, and a joint commitment to innovation that benefits travelers, travel managers, and finance teams alike," said Fred Fredericks, General Manager and Chief Product Officer of SAP Concur.