NEW PRODUCTS
management systems have an important role to play in this.
GETTING CLOSER At business software solutions provider Concur, the coming year is all about even closer integration between travel and expenses. The company’s senior vice-president and general manager for the EMEA region, Isabel Montesdeoca, says more and more suppliers will be connected through the company’s Concur Connect platform. In March this year, it added ground transportation content from providers GroundSpan, GroundScope and
Limos.com.
Concur has also announced that its T&E platform will soon offer integration with the Salesforce customer relationship management system. “It is about showing how much more effective companies can be with the travel they are embarking on to win sales opportunities,” says Montesdeoca. Concur’s acquisition of Global Expense also means some of the latter’s services are now available to the whole Concur client base. One of these is a receipt handling service at Sittingbourne, which can scan all of an organisation’s receipts. Another company that believes in end-to-end travel and expense integration is HRG. In March, the travel management company confirmed its acquisition of the remaining shares it did not hold in expense management provider Spendvision, which will remain an autonomous operating entity under new CEO Shane Bruhns. Explaining the decision, Spendvision’s Andrew Whiting, head of product management, says: “Strategically, Spendvision and HRG are now better positioned to get the most from the talents, knowledge and technical capabilities that both organisations have to offer. Jointly we will be further integrating our technology to deliver a more comprehensive and seamless set of propositions to the corporate space.” Spendvision makes regular updates
to its platform throughout the year. Recent improvements include a suite
In association with
of tools to manage lodge transactions better, and more customisation options to allow customers to create their own look and feel, as well as additional payments capabilities. Spendvision also introduced a new
eMoney module designed for the corporate sector, driven by demand from Japan where the payment channel is already well established, particularly for business rail travel. “We’re seeing strong, solid growth of the module which we expect will escalate as banks and businesses across the world start to see the true benefits of this payment vehicle”, says Whiting.
MOBILE MOVES A lot of the hype this year is about mobile payments. MasterCard Europe’s head of large market commercial products Rene Stynen says consumers who cannot wait to get their hands on new technology will be the early adopters; from a corporate perspective, while there is certainly an interest, uptake will be much slower. “Security is going to be very important and implementation
“The Olympic Games will be the first time that the majority of visitors won’t need to use cash”
is likely to be much more time- consuming because thousands of your corporate cardholders would be affected,” he says. Meanwhile, AirPlus earlier this year
showed off a prototype smartphone application that would allow travellers to hold a virtual card on their phone. The app would collate location information from the in-built GPS to provide rich transaction data. Mobile is very much at the
forefront of Visa’s thinking, too. The card network’s head of government services team, David Harrison, says: “The smartphone is part of the fabric of business travel. Contactless cards are already out there and then it is just a transition to the smartphone.” The company says there are
now 19 million contactless cards in circulation in the UK and some 30m in Europe. There are 200,000 places
that can accept contactless cards in the region, including McDonald’s, Pret A Manger and Eat. WH Smith’s travel shops have been one of the highest profile locations announced in recent months.
Visa, as an official sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics, is also hoping the Games will bring contactless to wider public attention. “It is a massive showcase,” says Harrison. “The Games will be the first time that the majority of visitors won’t need to use cash. There will be contactless payment on buses and taxis with Visa livery in them.”
TRANSPARENCY Meanwhile, the UK coalition government’s agenda for transparency and encouraging the use of SMEs is behind MasterCard’s recently announced purchase-and-pay initiative. “When we set out to create this service, the aim was for it to be for both the public and private sector and not limited to the UK,” says MasterCard’s Stynen. “The UK government has given us an incentive to do it there first.” While process efficiency is
important, the provision of so-called level-three data – detailed information at the point-of-sale about a transaction – is critical, too, says Stynen. Purchase-and-pay will mean that SME suppliers will not only be able to get paid quicker but also have a system in place to provide level-three data, which traditionally has been very difficult for smaller companies. Stynen says: “We are lowering the
threshold to an absolute minimum to enable SMEs to participate in that trade, providing level-three data without the infrastructure costs or the need to have an acquiring relationship. It is a big step forward.” MasterCard has also recently
replaced its previous Smart Data Online management information tool with a new tool called, slightly confusingly, Smart Data. Existing users of the former are being migrated onto the latter, which Stynen says represents a “very significant improvement in terms of capabilities and futureproofing”. AirPlus is expanding its reach with the announcement of a strategic
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