AI: The Catalyst for T&E Transformation

The corporate travel and expense (T&E) management landscape has transformed dramatically over the past decade, with artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront of these changes. Chris Juneau, Senior Vice President Product Marketing at SAP Concur, recently shared his insights into the accelerated innovation that AI is driving in the T&E industry. 

“AI is raising expectations both in terms of employee experience and the capabilities that technology should provide for organisations.” —Chris Juneau, SAP Concur

Enhancing Efficiency

With AI providing a platform for businesses to build greater employee experiences, the bar of expectation has been significantly raised. Improving the efficiency of teams across the business is one of those areas Chris Juneau pointed to. 

For starters, AI and machine learning are excellent at identifying patterns in large data sets, which significantly cuts down on human errors. By automating data analysis and providing accurate insights, these technologies can help employees make faster, more informed decisions.

SAP Concur has built upon this capability, creating solutions like ExpenseIt, a tool that allows employees to take a picture of their receipt and have it automatically fill out an expense claim for them.  

Further, AI offers firms the ability to achieve long-term financial efficiency by reducing the proportion of total revenue spent on expenses. By automating repetitive tasks such as invoice processing, AI streamlines organisational processes, reduces employees' manual workload, and creates more efficient teams. Alleviating employee workload and stress can improve overall morale in the organisation and lead to increased employee engagement and retention. As businesses continue to allocate more and more resources towards empowering their workforce, AI presents a solution to reduce these costs.

Additionally, AI contributes to cost reductions in supply chain management and resource allocation through predictive analytics. This technology enables organisations to develop more accurate forecasts and strategic plans, helping business leaders minimise waste and optimise resource utilisation.

Chris Juneau highlighted the “ubiquitous” nature of AI in SAP Concur solutions, with a focus on blending the technology seamlessly into business operations and enhancing efficiency across a multitude of areas, without adding complexity in the user experience. 

Improving Duty of Care 

Rather than being limited to HR managers, risk and compliance professionals, security teams, travel managers or finance leaders – it's up to an entire organisation to work together to provide quality duty of care. But now, with the rapid advances in its abilities, artificial intelligence can provide a significant helping hand in ensuring employees are protected from harm. But how? 

A significant aspect of duty of care is understanding and planning for unforeseen risks. AI can analyse vast amounts of data to predict potential risks, such as geopolitical events, health crises or natural disasters, and ultimately enable proactive measures to be taken. This is also particularly important in business travel, where knowing the location of employees and ensuring their safety is paramount. Chris Juneau stated that because of modern AI-driven risk assessment tools, “If there’s an incident near where your employees are, you can ensure they’re okay". Artificial intelligence facilitates this through monitoring global events in real-time, alerting employees to emerging threats and providing personalised safety recommendations to them based on their location and travel plan.  

Driving Compliance

Delivering an excellent user experience is vital for creating strong brand loyalty. But, Chris Juneau also highlighted a rising challenge: balancing user experience with compliance. Balancing the two requires innovative solutions that will meet regulatory standards, without compromising user satisfaction.  

AI has transformed this space by automating compliance approvals and eliminating cumbersome manual processes. With machine learning algorithms monitoring transactions for signs of fraud and identifying irregularities in large volumes of data, the speed and accuracy of compliance checks has rocketed.  

SAP Concur solutions leverage AI and machine learning to accurately read the receipt details against the details entered by the employees, which includes dates, amounts or expense type. Automated checks, using artificial intelligence, also consider the business’ expenditure against their T&E policy. With SAP Concur solutions, businesses can also identify grey areas in their policy, that need to be reviewed to remove discrepancies and potential risks. This creates a greater confidence among employees in their business’ policy and ultimately makes them more likely to embrace any changes in their compliance processes, that may come with further AI developments. 

The Timeline of AI at SAP Concur 

The journey of AI integration at SAP Concur began over a decade ago. Chris Juneau explains how, “we started using AI because we couldn’t hire auditors fast enough to review expense reports”. This led to a series of innovations aimed at automating and optimising various aspects of invoice, expense and travel management. 

One of the most significant milestones in this journey is the partnership with MasterCard. This collaboration allowed SAP Concur to tap into real-time authorisation data as employees receive immediate notifications about their expenses, when they use their MasterCard. By simplifying the categorisation and approval process, this partnership allowed for improvements in the accuracy of expenses and the overall user experience. 

Looking ahead, the future of AI in travel policy integration is considered the most exciting innovation, by Chris Juneau. Company policies regarding travel and expense vary significantly, and ensuring adherence to these policies can be complex. Concur Travel aims to simplify this process by automatically recognising and enforcing travel policies using artificial intelligence. 

"Most people don’t check travel policies before booking a trip. AI can ensure compliance right when the spend happens, not after the fact.” – Chris Juneau

AI technology is revolutionising the way organisations manage their invoices, expenses and travel by enhancing efficiency, improving duty of care, and ensuring compliance. As AI continues to evolve, companies like SAP Concur are at the forefront of this innovation, consistently setting higher standards for the industry.

Check out more about how SAP Concur plans to incorporate it AI further into our business operations in our whitepaper, 'Why You Should Be Excited about AI and Machine Learning'.