15 ms·

SAP agrees to buy expense software maker Concur for $7.3B

36 points by loganfrederick 12y ago

ccozan 12y ago
I wonder what will happen with TripIt. Can anyone comment on this?
struct 12y ago
I can see the email from HR right now: "To access Concur, go to the SAP Portal" Nnnnooooooo!
- linker3000 12y ago
  ...and type /SCNCCX I really believe corporates only put up with such a shitty UI because 'we spent soooo much money on it, we'd better use it'. /Hates every minute of working with our SAP system
msie 12y ago
I was trying to investigate what Concur was about and went to their website. They don't show any screenshots of the program (programs?). You have to give contact details to try out their program (so their sales team can contact you I guess). You have to give contact details to download any brochures about their products. Ugh.
- martijn_himself 12y ago
  'Enterprise' software is not designed to be accessible.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I think in many cases 'Enterprise' software simply isn't designed at all - it just sort coalesces out of the darkness and the screams of thousands of tormented users.
    - john_other_john 12y ago
      I prefer to think it congeals...
- gibeath 12y ago
  At its core, it's a handy suite for submitting expense reports. There's a nice mobile app that lets you capture receipts from your cell phone camera, and a team of (presumably offshore) auditors that will catch the most glaring errors on submissions. Generally, it's more pleasant than dealing with the typical AP department. I haven't really played with the TripIt integration or other bells AMD whistles.
  - hippich 12y ago
    My employer uses Concur for expenses reports, and I had to use it once... My experience with it was terrible. - UI - I could figure it out, but I bet many people will find it super confusing - Tickets were bought via mentioned TripIt, but they required me to find some kind of receipt to approve this expense, even so tickets were booked through them - Their support is very slow and very un-precise. And absence of support precision in such a horrible system is bad. But I guess they are just like SAP. They don't have to demo it or make it better. They already got name and can just push garbage down throat of other large enterprises.
- jfoster 12y ago
  Your frustrations are because you are not their target customer. They really don't care for individuals trying out their software the first time. They certainly don't anticipate selling it to you without you talking to their sales team.
- JunkDNA 12y ago
  This is entirely unsurprising if you've spent time around enterprise software. I once worked in a very large, global (non-IT) company that was interested in software made by a very well-known, large, global IT company. We wanted to see a demo of their product. They pushed back saying "we don't need to do a demo, we're XYZ company you know we can do it. A demo isn't worth our time. If you want a demo, we will have to charge you $XX,000 of professional services". My employer at the time paid it.
  - rokhayakebe 12y ago
    we don't need to do a demo, we're XYZ company you know we can do it I think this just made my day.
jacques_chester 12y ago
I use Concur as part of my job. It is stunningly, stupefyingly awful. However, it is popular with the kind of hyperglobocom companies that SAP deals with. I can submit expense reports (which take about as long as it would to scratch them into clay tablets) and I can book travel. That's about it. I imagine that -- for the anonymous finance dept folk who delight in taking weeks to examine my reports while I am legally on the hook for the credit card bill -- it is very featuresome and powerful. As an end user I hate it with the power of a thousand exploding suns. The mobile app for capturing receipts makes it slightly, slightly more tolerable. Slightly. But half the time it doesn't work. And I still have to go into Concur and manually line up about half of the receipts anyway. In conclusion, somebody please put these guys out of business with a post-1998 web app. You will be both billionaires and heroes.
- ddddarti 12y ago
  We use Nexonia. Web app is ok, mobile app is good. (I don't work for Nexonia, I work for a company that uses it)
- jfoster 12y ago
  I have horrible memories of needing to switch back-and-forth between the Concur mobile app and the desktop version to submit expenses. The mobile app was very convenient for uploading photos of receipts, but as you mentioned, half the time the upload just sat there. It wasn't feature-complete enough to submit the expense claims directly from mobile, so I'd go in and fix up fields on the desktop. The people who have to use this software the most (employees) would never willingly purchase it, but they are not the decision-makers for this purchase. A competitor might be able to gain traction by targeting small-but-growing companies that wish for a nicer future for their employees.
  - abakker 12y ago
    There are some companies doing this - Expensify, for one. I've no doubt that there are others. I know some outsourcers of HR services, like TriNet have some modern capabilities.
  - 12y ago
aunty_helen 12y ago
Ok so this is the third time I've drafted a comment about SAP and the enterprise landscape to try explain this and all I can now think of is GRRRRR!!! To avoid a the down votes, I should probably mention that you have to experience the enterprise landscape firsthand to be able to comprehend why it is. (That's it, 'why it is').
- _pmf_ 12y ago
  To give a brief impression, two things: - parts of the server side SAP components communicate via telnet - the user interface of SAP requires users to navigate between different dialogs/forms by manually entering a so-called transaction code (p.e. http://www.tcodesearch.com/ http://www.tcodesearch.com/)
  - Osmium 12y ago
    I really, really do not understand that website you linked to. I feel like enterprise software is so far out of the realm of my experience that it may as well be another planet. It makes me feel like I don't understand computers anymore or what they're meant to do. I don't understand why it's necessary?
    - mikegioia 12y ago
      I wouldn't necessarily equate SAP and "enterprise software" so much. My experience with SAP's systems is a summer internship for them and 2 years at an employer where I entered time-tracking and expense info into one of their programs. The entire system is basically a database engine developed a long time ago and impossible to re-engineer now so what you're seeing is an artifact of the past. That might be why SAP and their tcodes seem so bizarre. Enterprise software suffers from its own problems but not all enterprise software looks and feels like SAP.
  - omnibrain 12y ago
    Manually entering them is only the "shortcut" (at least nowadays). After logging in the user should see a User menu (tree form) filled with entries depending on his given role. If there are no entries then it's the administrator's/consutlant's/integrator's fault and not SAP's fault. Additionally you can add transaction to your Favorites by simply rightclicking the "Favorites" menu entry and clicking on Insert Transaction. You can even sort and rename your favorites.
smackfu 12y ago
Wonder how IBM feels about this development. From May: "IBM will cease operating Global Expense Reporting Solutions as a standalone product, effective March 31, 2016, and instead will refer customers to Concur." http://www.businesstravelnews.com/More-News/IBM-will-cease-operating-Global-Expense-Reporting-Solutions-as-a-standalone-product,-effective-March-31,-2016/?ib=Technology&a=mgmt http://www.businesstravelnews.com/More-News/IBM-will-cease-o...
abakker 12y ago
It is likely that SAP will bring Concur in as a SuccessFactors module, which means it will get integrated to the rest of the suite over their HANA Cloud Platform. In the long term, this is likely to result in much better integration to their cloud based systems than they would have had in their legacy/on-premises systems. It is also likely that it will take significant time for them to fully integrate it with their existing solutions, and to be able to sell it. Ultimately, this acquisition will bolster short-term cloud revenues, and help give its existing enterprise clients a reason to move toward HANA.
eranation 12y ago
I'm using it at work on a daily basis almost. Their expense + flight / hotel booking system is surprisingly OK relative to enterprise software, they also have a mobile app which is pretty great. It's quite a complex topic, lot's of corporate policies to enforce, and basically they had to develop all the tech facade that Kayak, Expedia etc have (flight and hotel booking) as well as a lot of financial logic for expenses. There is a lot of money in enterprise software... I wish more YC startups would tackle that area...
- brown_ghost 12y ago
  So I wonder why Concur Government edition is so awful. I mean really, really, unusable.
  - thearn4 12y ago
    Agreed. My agency just switched over, and it is 100% awful.
    - peapicker 12y ago
      Sounds like it will fit in fine with SAP.
  - jayseattle 12y ago
    I'm a ux designer at Concur, have not been there very long but there is an extensive/exhaustive re-design in the works which HN readers will appreciate. Just have a little more patience...
- hkarthik 12y ago
  > There is a lot of money in enterprise software... I wish more YC startups would tackle that area. Enterprise Software requires more much investment in Sales/Marketing so these companies often they invest a lot less in engineering. YC companies historically tend to be more engineering-focused. Many are now going up market so you start to see more YC job posts for marketing and sales positions now so this is probably changing.
- 12y ago
deedubaya 12y ago
Everyone here is complaining about Concur and how horrible it is... but it's all relative. If you think Concur is horrible, you should have seen the process before with in-house solutions which were both digital and analog. It might not be perfect, but dayum is it better than where things used to be.
- mathattack 12y ago
  I worked at a large consultancy (who creates custom expense systems amongst other things) and their internal system was beyond awful, so I understand that other alternatives are pretty bad. That said, my (small) company uses Excel, and the experience is much better than Concur. Perhaps it's a case of a large customer base on a high margin business being more important than a good product.

ccozan 12y ago

I wonder what will happen with TripIt. Can anyone comment on this?

struct 12y ago

I can see the email from HR right now: "To access Concur, go to the SAP Portal" Nnnnooooooo!

linker3000 12y ago
...and type /SCNCCX I really believe corporates only put up with such a shitty UI because 'we spent soooo much money on it, we'd better use it'. /Hates every minute of working with our SAP system

msie 12y ago

I was trying to investigate what Concur was about and went to their website. They don't show any screenshots of the program (programs?). You have to give contact details to try out their program (so their sales team can contact you I guess). You have to give contact details to download any brochures about their products. Ugh.

martijn_himself 12y ago
'Enterprise' software is not designed to be accessible.
- arethuza 12y ago
  I think in many cases 'Enterprise' software simply isn't designed at all - it just sort coalesces out of the darkness and the screams of thousands of tormented users.
  - john_other_john 12y ago
    I prefer to think it congeals...
gibeath 12y ago
At its core, it's a handy suite for submitting expense reports. There's a nice mobile app that lets you capture receipts from your cell phone camera, and a team of (presumably offshore) auditors that will catch the most glaring errors on submissions. Generally, it's more pleasant than dealing with the typical AP department. I haven't really played with the TripIt integration or other bells AMD whistles.
- hippich 12y ago
  My employer uses Concur for expenses reports, and I had to use it once... My experience with it was terrible. - UI - I could figure it out, but I bet many people will find it super confusing - Tickets were bought via mentioned TripIt, but they required me to find some kind of receipt to approve this expense, even so tickets were booked through them - Their support is very slow and very un-precise. And absence of support precision in such a horrible system is bad. But I guess they are just like SAP. They don't have to demo it or make it better. They already got name and can just push garbage down throat of other large enterprises.
jfoster 12y ago
Your frustrations are because you are not their target customer. They really don't care for individuals trying out their software the first time. They certainly don't anticipate selling it to you without you talking to their sales team.
JunkDNA 12y ago
This is entirely unsurprising if you've spent time around enterprise software. I once worked in a very large, global (non-IT) company that was interested in software made by a very well-known, large, global IT company. We wanted to see a demo of their product. They pushed back saying "we don't need to do a demo, we're XYZ company you know we can do it. A demo isn't worth our time. If you want a demo, we will have to charge you $XX,000 of professional services". My employer at the time paid it.
- rokhayakebe 12y ago
  we don't need to do a demo, we're XYZ company you know we can do it I think this just made my day.

jacques_chester 12y ago

I use Concur as part of my job. It is stunningly, stupefyingly awful. However, it is popular with the kind of hyperglobocom companies that SAP deals with. I can submit expense reports (which take about as long as it would to scratch them into clay tablets) and I can book travel. That's about it. I imagine that -- for the anonymous finance dept folk who delight in taking weeks to examine my reports while I am legally on the hook for the credit card bill -- it is very featuresome and powerful. As an end user I hate it with the power of a thousand exploding suns. The mobile app for capturing receipts makes it slightly, slightly more tolerable. Slightly. But half the time it doesn't work. And I still have to go into Concur and manually line up about half of the receipts anyway. In conclusion, somebody please put these guys out of business with a post-1998 web app. You will be both billionaires and heroes.

ddddarti 12y ago
We use Nexonia. Web app is ok, mobile app is good. (I don't work for Nexonia, I work for a company that uses it)
jfoster 12y ago
I have horrible memories of needing to switch back-and-forth between the Concur mobile app and the desktop version to submit expenses. The mobile app was very convenient for uploading photos of receipts, but as you mentioned, half the time the upload just sat there. It wasn't feature-complete enough to submit the expense claims directly from mobile, so I'd go in and fix up fields on the desktop. The people who have to use this software the most (employees) would never willingly purchase it, but they are not the decision-makers for this purchase. A competitor might be able to gain traction by targeting small-but-growing companies that wish for a nicer future for their employees.
- abakker 12y ago
  There are some companies doing this - Expensify, for one. I've no doubt that there are others. I know some outsourcers of HR services, like TriNet have some modern capabilities.
- 12y ago

aunty_helen 12y ago

Ok so this is the third time I've drafted a comment about SAP and the enterprise landscape to try explain this and all I can now think of is GRRRRR!!! To avoid a the down votes, I should probably mention that you have to experience the enterprise landscape firsthand to be able to comprehend why it is. (That's it, 'why it is').

_pmf_ 12y ago
To give a brief impression, two things: - parts of the server side SAP components communicate via telnet - the user interface of SAP requires users to navigate between different dialogs/forms by manually entering a so-called transaction code (p.e. http://www.tcodesearch.com/ http://www.tcodesearch.com/)
- Osmium 12y ago
  I really, really do not understand that website you linked to. I feel like enterprise software is so far out of the realm of my experience that it may as well be another planet. It makes me feel like I don't understand computers anymore or what they're meant to do. I don't understand why it's necessary?
  - mikegioia 12y ago
    I wouldn't necessarily equate SAP and "enterprise software" so much. My experience with SAP's systems is a summer internship for them and 2 years at an employer where I entered time-tracking and expense info into one of their programs. The entire system is basically a database engine developed a long time ago and impossible to re-engineer now so what you're seeing is an artifact of the past. That might be why SAP and their tcodes seem so bizarre. Enterprise software suffers from its own problems but not all enterprise software looks and feels like SAP.
- omnibrain 12y ago
  Manually entering them is only the "shortcut" (at least nowadays). After logging in the user should see a User menu (tree form) filled with entries depending on his given role. If there are no entries then it's the administrator's/consutlant's/integrator's fault and not SAP's fault. Additionally you can add transaction to your Favorites by simply rightclicking the "Favorites" menu entry and clicking on Insert Transaction. You can even sort and rename your favorites.

smackfu 12y ago

Wonder how IBM feels about this development. From May: "IBM will cease operating Global Expense Reporting Solutions as a standalone product, effective March 31, 2016, and instead will refer customers to Concur." http://www.businesstravelnews.com/More-News/IBM-will-cease-operating-Global-Expense-Reporting-Solutions-as-a-standalone-product,-effective-March-31,-2016/?ib=Technology&a=mgmt http://www.businesstravelnews.com/More-News/IBM-will-cease-o...

abakker 12y ago

It is likely that SAP will bring Concur in as a SuccessFactors module, which means it will get integrated to the rest of the suite over their HANA Cloud Platform. In the long term, this is likely to result in much better integration to their cloud based systems than they would have had in their legacy/on-premises systems. It is also likely that it will take significant time for them to fully integrate it with their existing solutions, and to be able to sell it. Ultimately, this acquisition will bolster short-term cloud revenues, and help give its existing enterprise clients a reason to move toward HANA.

eranation 12y ago

I'm using it at work on a daily basis almost. Their expense + flight / hotel booking system is surprisingly OK relative to enterprise software, they also have a mobile app which is pretty great. It's quite a complex topic, lot's of corporate policies to enforce, and basically they had to develop all the tech facade that Kayak, Expedia etc have (flight and hotel booking) as well as a lot of financial logic for expenses. There is a lot of money in enterprise software... I wish more YC startups would tackle that area...

brown_ghost 12y ago
So I wonder why Concur Government edition is so awful. I mean really, really, unusable.
- thearn4 12y ago
  Agreed. My agency just switched over, and it is 100% awful.
  - peapicker 12y ago
    Sounds like it will fit in fine with SAP.
- jayseattle 12y ago
  I'm a ux designer at Concur, have not been there very long but there is an extensive/exhaustive re-design in the works which HN readers will appreciate. Just have a little more patience...
hkarthik 12y ago
> There is a lot of money in enterprise software... I wish more YC startups would tackle that area. Enterprise Software requires more much investment in Sales/Marketing so these companies often they invest a lot less in engineering. YC companies historically tend to be more engineering-focused. Many are now going up market so you start to see more YC job posts for marketing and sales positions now so this is probably changing.
12y ago

deedubaya 12y ago

Everyone here is complaining about Concur and how horrible it is... but it's all relative. If you think Concur is horrible, you should have seen the process before with in-house solutions which were both digital and analog. It might not be perfect, but dayum is it better than where things used to be.

mathattack 12y ago
I worked at a large consultancy (who creates custom expense systems amongst other things) and their internal system was beyond awful, so I understand that other alternatives are pretty bad. That said, my (small) company uses Excel, and the experience is much better than Concur. Perhaps it's a case of a large customer base on a high margin business being more important than a good product.