Concur took advantage of the convention GBTA organised this year in Denver to put the spotlight on its projects in the field of AI. With an ambitious promise, to say the least: "Reinventing business travel. To do this, however, the specialist in business travel solutions is basing itself on a credo that has been familiar to the ecosystem for many years: closing the gap with leisure tools in terms of user experience. Concur promises "new functionalities inspired by the general public", and "a future where business travel and expense management becomes fluid, intuitive... and largely automated". And since the subject has simply been unavoidable for months, it will of course be a question of exploiting the resources of artificial intelligence. With a star asset: Booking Agent. A tool expected in the fourth quarter, and even as early as August 2025 for customers in the Early Adopter programme.
Heralded as "a new AI-powered solution", Booking Agent faces the ever-ambitious challenge of reconciling simplified travel booking with compliance with travel policy. The conversational AI, equipped with a natural language interface, should enable the user to obtain personalised recommendations, compatible with both budgetary constraints and the traveller's profile. The project managers sum up: " SAP Concur takes intelligent business travel automation a step further with Booking Agent. This conversational agent, integrated into SAP's Joule Agents network, enables employees to book a trip in line with internal policy, without having to know every last detail".
Alongside the Booking Agent announcement, two other projects were detailed at the GBTA convention. Concur Request is strengthened by the ability to manage multi-trip planning. This means that several trips can be grouped together in a single request, either for a single employee or for an entire team.
SAP Concur is also emphasising the duty of care aspect. Concur Request integrates risk alerts linked to imponderables of varying severity - strikes, disasters, visas - and based on Riskline information.
As for the Trip ExtrasTo achieve this, it needs to extend the catalogue of partners offering third-party services, while making their offer compatible with the travel policy and other CSR commitments.
Charlie Sultan, President of Concur Travel at SAP Concur, comments: " We continue to enhance the new Concur Travel experience to better meet the needs of our customers. With SAP Business AI, we're transforming the way organisations manage business travel. ".
