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

in.reuters.com

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

#41

Post by jacques_chester »

dangoor wrote: post #17
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.

Even with a company Amex and with the receipt app, it still regularly takes me hours to submit a report for even a short trip.

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

#42

Post by mathattack »

deedubaya wrote: post #38

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.

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.

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

#43

Post by eitally »

jfoster wrote: post #11
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 t…

The core problem I have is that you cannot start a new expense report linked to an existing approved trip using the mobile app. You HAVE to start it from the web, which is a horrifyingly bad experience ... then you can continue it on the mobile app. If you start the report on the mobile app, it is nearly impossible to link it to the correct trip (unless you leave it in limbo and then go into the web app, start a new one, then link the existing one you created on the mobile app to it). Ugh.

But yeah, it's a cost savings system and has nothing to do with enterprise IT. Finance are the ones who demand it.

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

#44

Post by mtbcoder »

eranation wrote: post #28

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 expense…

>There is a lot of money in enterprise software... I wish more YC startups would tackle that area...

Unfortunately in enterprise-land, it's a tough sell for startups. No one in middle management wants to be that person who doesn't stick to the Status Quo when it comes to software purchasing or choosing which technologies to implement. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" is the old saying I believe.

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

#45

Post by vosper »

joanatello wrote: post #25
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…

Try out Expensify - it's a post-2000 expense web and mobile app (already way above your expectations right?) Seriously though, Expensify is an expense reporting solution that simplifies the process for all users invoved - employees, submitters, administrators, finance departments, HR, and the companies themselves (tax reporting, etc). Our goal is to completely change the way people do expense reports (for how we work…

The company I work at used to use Expensify, and then we got acquired and now we've been switched to Concur, courtesy of our new corporate overlords.

As someone who expenses occasionally (some months I have nothing, others I've gone on a work trip and I have 30 receipts) I found Expensify a little confusing at first, but with zero training I figured out how it works.

Concur, as everyone here says, sucks. The web UI is bloated and confusing, and especially the flight booking system is awful (and stupid - it's more expensive than using Kayak, and is harder to use). The mobile app does make things a bit better, but I know everyone here would go back to Expensify if they could.

I have no affiliation with Expensify, just my 2c.

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

#46

Post by judgardner »

mtbcoder wrote: post #44
eranation wrote: post #28

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 expense…

>There is a lot of money in enterprise software... I wish more YC startups would tackle that area... Unfortunately in enterprise-land, it's a tough sell for startups. No one in middle management wants to be that person who doesn't stick to the Status Quo when it comes to software purchasing or choosing which technologies to implement. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" is the old saying I believe.

Enterprise is changing and people are getting fired for buying IBM.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/outsourcing/3275270/astr...

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

#47

Post by jfoster »

eitally wrote: post #43
jfoster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The core problem I have is that you cannot start a new expense report linked to an existing approved trip using the mobile app. You HAVE to start it from the web, which is a horrifyingly bad experience ... then you can continue it on the mobile app. If you start the report on the mobile app, it is nearly impossible to link it to the correct trip (unless you leave it in limbo and then go into the web app, start a new…

Now that you jogged my memory, I think that's the same horrible problem that I had. Start the report on desktop, switch to mobile to add receipt photos, go back to desktop to fix up all of the stuff the mobile app can't do, and repeat if any of the reports or photos got messed up somehow. You end up in this insane loop of switching back and forth between devices with a pile of receipts on your desk. Nightmarish.

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

#48

Post by john_other_john »

arethuza wrote: post #14
martijn_himself wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

I prefer to think it congeals...
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