Just Because Cloud Chaos is Real Doesn’t Mean You Have to Live With It

If you’re in an IT department, you’re likely shaking your head right now. And chewing your fingernails. And quite possibly pulling out clumps of your hair. Because as more and more businesses make their move to the cloud, more and more lines of business are consuming mindboggling amounts of technology. Often without telling anyone.

It’s true, and if you’re in IT, you’re now nodding that weary head of yours. Individual lines of business are increasingly deploying point solutions without oversight–and when IT doesn’t know who’s using what (and users don’t know how to use the tech itself), you guessed it: Chaos.

Add it up for yourself:

• According to Blissfully SaaS Trends 2020, the number of SaaS apps in use per company is up roughly 30% year over year.
• Duplicate subscriptions (and how many times do you need to buy an app, by the way?) have increased 80%.
• Orphaned apps (which people aren’t using, just paying for) are up almost 100%.
• And in an enterprise-size company, IT is managing an average of 21,580 app connections with 60% of their SaaS stack changing every two years.

It’s tiring. It’s too much. And it’s time for a change. As your company takes a look at a key process–and the right solutions–for travel and expense, finance and IT should work together to gain control of it all and diminish chaos.

And to make sure you get a plan that works, you need to look at a few more numbers.

Which do you trust more: 800,000 user reviews or 80?

User experience matters more than ever, and because employees’ expectations are as high as their stress level, you’ll want to eliminate every possible point of friction or frustration from your travel and expense process. So when you’re looking for a solution, make sure the “5-star rating” doesn’t come from just five reviews.

And as long as we’re talking mobile, be sure you’re getting a fully functioning app that’s packed with features and functions and is entirely intuitive. The last thing you want is a responsive browser format squished down into your smartphone screen.

A functional app draws users in, simplifies their work, and keeps them on policy and in compliance. Anything less bogs them down and causes them to abandon your solutions as well as your processes.

Your ecosystem should have hundreds of components, not a couple.

The long-term success of your travel and expense solution is determined by more than the solution itself. It should attract industry leaders, as well as upstart innovators, giving you a full ecosystem of apps and ideas that extend your solution in every direction and allow you to tackle what’s critical to your company. You should be able to:

• Stay ahead of the unique tax and regulatory requirements that go hand in hand with global spending.
• Stay on top of the traveler and other employee safety requirements and risk assessments that have risen to the top of your priority list.
• Connect to all the new and emerging travel brands–from Airbnb to Uber–giving travelers tools they actually want to use.

The right solution cultivates and curates this app ecosystem for you, so you aren’t left trying to build or manage your own extensions. That gives you more time to focus on other work and gives finance more value.

Is “a lot” a number? In this case, yes.

Travel and expense solutions may not be as complex as ERP systems, but they at least need to be able to work together–and not merely “importing and exporting files” kind of work. There need to be automated and intelligent data and process integrations.

Your travel and expense solution also needs to work with payroll, with credit card companies, with TMCs and their systems, and with top travel brands from airlines to hotels, so traveler transactions flow right into your system.

You have to keep that spending data–and that’s a LOT of data–flowing from system to system automatically. So you need an automated, turnkey integration, and you can’t let finance settle for anything less.

24/7 is only a start.

Everyone comes to IT with questions, but the right cloud solution provides the answers for you. So be certain your solution offers program administrators 24/7 access to experts and insights, and be sure that isn’t all you get.

Every employee should have access to this expertise, so they can get what they need without filling your inbox. And if you want hands-on support for your finance team–helping them with configuration issues and working with them on long-term planning–you should get exactly what you need, whenever you need it.

Serenity in numbers

66 million unique users book their travel and process their expenses through SAP Concur solutions. And while bigger doesn’t necessarily equate to better, it does mean that 66 million people have invested in and committed to SAP experience, ecosystems, integrations, and support.

That demonstrates confidence in the solution–trust on a global scale, in fact–and if there’s anything that can chip away at the chaos of your current cloud solutions, it’s knowing that the rest of the world is comfortable with its cloud solution.

After all those numbers, you’re bound to have a couple questions. For more information, visit concur.com or contact your SAP Concur sales representative.