The SAP Concur 2020 Innovation Awards: Celebrating How Customers Run Their Best

Celebrating our customers is the highlight of our annual customer event, SAP Concur Fusion. We showcase their achievements through the SAP Concur Innovation Awards, which recognize customers who embody digital innovation and purpose-driven business practices.

2020 SAP Concur Innovation Awards winners  

Aerospace pioneer Airbus is working toward a safer and better-connected world. It sees a future in which flying is powered by electricity and produces zero-emissions. Airbus Americas turned to SAP Concur for a paperless T&E solution, with secure automation, that enforces legal and travel policy compliance. And they wanted a best-in-class user experience on mobile and desktop. They have saved $1 million in employee hours, over three years, and travel policy compliance shot up to 85 percent.

“Innovation in our market is key to leading the way,” explains Richard Masci, Head of Financial Systems at Airbus Americas. “SAP Concur is the cornerstone to enable innovation.” Learn more in the Airbus Americas customer story video.

Cisco Systems is a worldwide leader in IT, networking, and cybersecurity solutions that enable transformational benefits for customers. They also treat their employees as customers because they recognize that their people are at the core of their innovations.

“Culture and employees are our competitive advantage.” shares Alexandra Lopez, Chief Procurement Officer at Cisco Systems. “We’re really encouraging diverse thought and perspectives throughout the innovation and delivery of our products.”

Cisco was able to deploy the Concur Travel and Expense solutions in over 88 countries in less than a year bringing significant transformation and operational improvement opportunities to life. Prior to implementation, Cisco suffered from poor user satisfaction and data quality, and it left a larger carbon footprint due to paper receipts. The ease of use of SAP Concur solutions has resulted in a significant increase in employee satisfaction with the tool among Cisco employees – Cisco reported an increase in employee satisfaction from 48 percent to 77 percent since going live in 2018. The organization also lacked visibility into supplier-direct bookings and saw inaccurate reporting of travel spending, which Concur TripLink helped solve. Learn more in the Cisco Systems customer story video.

Amid global trends to diversify income from revenues, Globe sees itself as much more than a major provider of telecommunications services in the Philippines. “We are creators and enablers of the Filipino digital lifestyle,” shares Jessica Mari Zara, Manager at Globe. “We nurture businesses, empower individuals through quality products and services, and strengthen the country through strategic partnerships.”

Globe’s purpose-driven culture aims to help people and businesses flourish and prosper. It does this by maintaining its focus to create a “digital nation” and by proliferating its “Globe of Good” sustainability program throughout the country.

By utilizing SAP Concur solutions to solve its business challenges on travel and spend management, Globe can focus on the key pillars of its sustainability agenda: caring for people, the environment, and making a positive societal impact.

With SAP Concur solutions, Globe has visibility of the entire process of managing the organization’s expenses. This has greatly improved the experiences of its most important asset – its employees. Only four months after going live, Globe has achieved 100 percent adoption across the company.

Since SAP Concur solutions tie into partner platforms, it has opened opportunities for partnerships that further improve customer experiences. Also, by implementing SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass, Globe has an intelligent view of all spending across the organization. Learn more in the Globe customer story video.

PACCAR is a global leader in designing and manufacturing premium commercial vehicles – and in customer and financial services related to its principal business – delivered to more than 100 countries.

PACCAR employees frequently visit suppliers and manufacturing plants around the world. By deploying SAP Concur to enhance the employee T&E experience, the organization reduces costs, improves compliance, and mitigates risks so travelers can focus on moving the business forward. Prior to implementation, PACCAR had decentralized and inconsistent travel booking and expense reporting processes, which blocked visibility into spend data and frustrated employees. Today, with a single automated solution for travel bookings and expense management, PACCAR compares its T&E data with similar-size organizations to help inform its approach. They have identified $100K in potential annual savings, and reduced leakage of dollars. In addition, PACCAR created pop-up and inline messaging with SAP Concur tools that educate employees on travel policies, ensure compliance, and save money. “We have utilized the tool to promote our preferred suppliers and have been able to realize over $20,000 in savings with just one supplier,” explains Nari Narvani, Global Travel, Expense and Corporate Card manager at PACCAR. Learn more in the PACCAR customer story video.

A global leader in cloud infrastructure and digital workspace technology, VMware accelerates digital transformation for evolving IT environments. VMware helps organizations transform into digital businesses, deliver better experiences for both customers and employees, and unlock new possibilities that transform the world. In a world where products, operations and people impact the planet, VMware uses technology as a “force for good” through its sustainability, philanthropic, and diversity and inclusion programs. “Our mission is to deliver solutions to our business partners that transform, scale, or grow the business [through] process re-engineering and automation,” shares Reema Mukherjee, Director, Business Transformation and Automation. “SAP Concur helps us achieve our goals by allowing us to scale our organization and improve productivity as our employee population keeps growing. We are delivering quick, easy, and fully auditable T&E functionality to our employees.”

Prior to implementing SAP Concur solutions, VMware was using a competitor’s tool. The interface was challenging for end-users, and the entire process – from submission to payments – was cumbersome and error-prone. VMware finds SAP Concur solutions, on the other hand, intuitive and easy to use.

SAP Concur has had a huge impact on productivity, reducing the expense processing and payment workflow from up to 11 days to four or less. The company also had a 75 percent reduction in employee complaints, allowing its back office to redirect resources to more strategic initiatives. And like many global companies, VMware is constantly looking for additional efficiencies. They are using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to integrate with their SAP Concur solutions and reduce manual work even further. VMware also leverages both SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass solutions in the procure-to-pay space. “We are excited about the new Intelligent Spend Group, combining these cloud organizations and looking forward to the unified data platform,” says Mukherjee. “This visibility into spend, across the enterprise on a single platform, is very powerful.” Learn more in the VMware customer story video.

It is incredibly satisfying to see how SAP Concur solutions have helped these great organizations – Airbus Americas, Cisco, Globe Telecom, PACCAR, and VMware – bring their purposes to life. We are incredibly grateful for the record number of customer submissions we received for the 2020 SAP Concur Innovation Awards, and we look forward to continuing to showcase our customers’ stories throughout 2020 and beyond.

Learn more about our annual customer event, SAP Concur Fusion, and be sure to watch out for communications when we open up customer submissions for the 2021 SAP Concur Innovation Awards.