Concur Readying Car Booking, Virtual Card Features
SAP Concur in the coming months plans to release a new car rental booking tool and a virtual card option in Concur Invoice, the company announced at its annual Fusion conference on Wednesday.
Concur Travel’s new car rental booking experience will have a “restricted release” within the current quarter, first available to customers who are clients of travel management companies that connect to Concur via the Amadeus global distribution system. The revamp will include a new interface that is more consistent across desktop and mobile versions, better descriptions of ancillaries and sustainability-related features like average car emissions data and the ability to filter electric vehicles and, according to Concur.
The tool also will expand content availability, including more access to vendors at off-airport car rental locations, according to Concur.
The update is part of a full re-platforming of Concur Travel, which includes a new rail booking experience that has already been launched. A new hotel booking experience, which will include expanded options for sourcing and curating lodging content, will have a restricted release at the end of the second quarter, according to Concur. The company has planned to release the airline booking component in the summer, in time with the Global Business Travel Association Convention in Dallas.
The new virtual card option is a part of additional services within Concur Invoice planned for release by the end of the second quarter. The new service, Invoice Payment Manager, will include capabilities to make batch scheduling of payments as well as a manual payment release feature with which finance executives can require final approval before a payment.
Along with that update, Concur Invoice will enable virtual cards for payments in U.S. and Canadian currencies, in addition to the current options of checks and Automated Clearing House network payments, SAP Concur VP and head of spend products Tim Lebel said during Fusion. The virtual card product will be integrated into the Concur system, he said.
“You can identify the vendor that the card can be used for, a price or maximum that can be spent on that card and you can time-base it on how long it will be active,” Lebel said. “You won’t have to share corporate card data with vendors or pass them around.”
Concur also is working to add virtual card options to its Expense and Request features, he said.
“There are some activities with TMCs that must happen prior to making our first Air release available to customers, and we’re trying to accelerate those activities as much as we can. We have made significant progress on our development. We have basic air bookings going through to Sabre and much of the UI is done. However, we also are working with our industry partners to understand the best way to address recent industry announcements. We will have more information in our next roadmap update in early Q2.”
Michael B. Baker www.businesstravelnews.com