{"id":39563,"date":"2014-12-12T14:22:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T13:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/interview-rajeev-singh-president-de-concur-20141212.html"},"modified":"2016-02-10T10:25:32","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T09:25:32","slug":"interview-with-rajeev-singh-chairman-of-concur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.voyages-d-affaires.com\/en\/interview-with-rajeev-singh-chairman-of-concur","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Rajeev Singh, Chairman of Concur"},"content":{"rendered":"

What can we expect from SAP's acquisition of Concur?<\/h2>\n

Rajeev Singh -\u00a0<\/strong>It's about taking advantage of the incredible infrastructures that SAP has, to offer better services, develop our resources and acquire more customers. Of course, this is an important event. But ultimately we see very little difference in the way we support our customers. All the employees who worked with Concur before this acquisition will continue to work with us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What are Concur's priorities for the coming months?\u00a0<\/h2>\n

R. S. -<\/strong> We will continue to be innovative in our solutions, promoting the concepts of Perfect Trip and open platform. Nobody else in the industry is investing so much money to innovate in these areas. We've done it as an independent company, with our own resources, and we're going to continue to do it as part of the SAP group, by investing more. Our intention is to form a business unit within SAP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The announcement of this acquisition drew some criticism, particularly from KDS*...\u00a0<\/h2>\n

R. S. -\u00a0<\/strong>I've been in the software industry for 21 years, and I've never met a customer who appreciates suppliers publicly criticising each other in this way. It's tasteless, it's immature. We're really focused on our mission. Maybe our competitors are also focused on what we do... So we're just going to carry on doing our job, and taking care of our customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do you see as the major trends driving the development of the business travel market?<\/h2>\n

R. S. -\u00a0<\/strong>Collaboration and transparency are key priorities. Hence the creation of an open platform, which is the only one of its kind in the business travel sector today, with the support of various partners. Users don't necessarily have to limit themselves to a single interface; their companies may well opt for two door-to-door service providers, one with very good content in North America, while the other will be more consistent for business travel in Asia, for example. No one player can provide exhaustive content on a global scale. It's just not possible. That's why we're stepping up our partnerships, integrating new tools such as Uber and Airbnb, for example, which generate content that Travel Managers weren't confronted with before. We're developing our ecosystem. We don't want to lock users into the straitjacket of a closed system. We prefer to provide them with a platform where they have a choice. This is the rationale behind the main investments we have made this year. Our second priority is to continue investing in mobile applications. Over the next two years, we will be offering new solutions dedicated to problematic aspects of the business travel process. We are going to invest in improving existing functionalities and developing new ones for TMCs, to enable them to work with us on initiatives such as TripLink and others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Concur is the first heavyweight in the business travel sector to join forces with Airbnb. Is this symptomatic of Concur's philosophy?<\/h2>\n

R. S. -\u00a0<\/strong>Our customers tell us clearly in which direction they are heading. Sometimes with a simple phone call. But more often than not, it's as simple as looking at their travel expenditure. And when we see that Airbnb is becoming increasingly important, we have to take this trend on board. And we have to make sure that we offer the best possible experience to our users. If they're going to use Airbnb, they might as well do so smoothly, so that the company can benefit from simplified management of this data, and so that Airbnb can estimate more accurately the proportion of this business clientele and adapt its offer accordingly. If it's good for the user, we're very happy to be the first to offer it, even if it's sometimes unpopular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Perhaps because this type of approach focuses more on the traveller than on the company?<\/h2>\n

R. S. -\u00a0<\/strong>It's a misinterpretation... We need to focus on the traveller, but also on the travel manager, of course. It's the company that pays. We just want to make the business travel experience more fluid. So we're looking to add value for both sides. It's the product we're building, the future we're shaping. TripLink's idea is to capture content that has so far escaped the system. This gives Travel Managers better visibility of travel expenditure, and therefore better control, with greater transparency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How do you see business travel in the future?<\/h2>\n

R. S. -\u00a0<\/strong>We need to do away with paper, both for environmental reasons and for the comfort of the traveller. But this will take time, because we need to involve every country, every government... I also think it's necessary to eliminate the need to switch systematically from one system to another to manage business travel. It's this kind of connectivity that I aspire to in the world of travel. We need to make it easier for different platforms to communicate, using the technologies that make it possible. That's how we generate added value.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are you optimistic about the future of business travel, and therefore of Concur?<\/h2>\n

R. S. -\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, because this market needs to evolve. And this evolution, if carried out in the right way, will be very positive for business travellers, their travel managers, but also for TMCs, and for the entire ecosystem. The key for Concur will be to manage these changes. So we need to stay very focused on our core business.<\/p>\n

*Dean Forbes, CEO of KDS, quipped at the time: \"When two elephants mate, you don't get a racehorse\" in an article published on 1 October.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Rajeev Singh at the GBTA Europe convention last November (DR)<\/span><\/p>\n