Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

in.reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 48 posts

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

#11

Post by jfoster »

jacques_chester wrote: post #8

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…

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.

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

#12

Post by aunty_helen »

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').

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

#13

Post by martijn_himself »

jacques_chester wrote: post #8

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…

The problem is: these applications are not designed with the end user in mind. They are always designed to convince the CTO/ CFO/ whoever is in charge of spending the annual IT budget. The designer is rewarded to increase the complexity of the app and add meaningless features to justify spending the millions of dollars that are usually associated with these contracts.

SAP is not buying this because it is a wonderful piece of software engineering, it is buying it for the CTO/ CFO contacts it can now target to sell other SAP products to.

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

#14

Post by arethuza »

martijn_himself wrote: post #6
msie wrote: post #5

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.

'Enterprise' software is not designed to be accessible.

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.

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

#15

Post by JunkDNA »

msie wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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

#16

Post by mtmail »

aunty_helen wrote: post #12

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').

I would've loved to read a long comment with background on the current enterprise landscape. Even a rant or unpopular opinion. The "GRRRR!!" itself doesn't tell me much.

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

#17

Post by dangoor »

jacques_chester wrote: post #8

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…

I remember filling out Excel spreadsheets for expense reports and attaching a bunch of receipts and sending them in. Concur is better than that, at least.

My experience with Concur has actually been better than my previous experience with Shoeboxed because Concur is tied to my corporate AmEx card... there are actually very few expenses that I need to do much manual touchup on.

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

#18

Post by _pmf_ »

aunty_helen wrote: post #12

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').

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/)

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

#19

Post by hippich »

gibeath wrote: post #7
msie wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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.

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

#20

Post by Osmium »

_pmf_ wrote: post #18
aunty_helen wrote: post #12

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').

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/ )

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?
Post reply on HN