COVER STORY | Expenses Platform
Bemont: Part of the problem is all the hats finance directors are wearing. The core of it for finance is managing the spend and having options as to how you run your business. Do you want to take an early payment discount? Do you want to float and have someone help you pay from a pay provider perspective? SAP Concur really is a cash-flow optimisation tool
that corrects inefficiencies, which starts with getting rid of paper.
DoF: How does SAP Concur ease the burden for finance directors? Llewellyn: The role of the finance director is changing. Finance was seen as the transactional hub, making sure people are paid on time. The reality is that finance directors see themselves as playing a more strategic role in the business. These are highly trained people – do you really think they want to be approving expense reports?
Implementing technology like
SAP Concur allows them to play a more strategic role
in the business. In fact,
directors of finance are taking more senior relationship positions. Going forward, I would see artificial
intelligence as an opportunity for doing non-core tasks like helping organisations get the best deal, AI which makes sure that we get the best price on travel or a hotel booking.
DoF: What will the next generation of SAP Concur look like? Bemont: One of the big things is helping people to avoid the risks they can’t see coming. I see SAP Concur becoming more predictive analytics play. It’s things that you wouldn’t expect to find. It’s not just taking processes off but making them smarter about how they go about their job.
DoF: Tell me about your plans to turn SAP Concur into a small business champion. Bemont: “We talk about levelling the playing field, taking some things that we’re doing at SAP Concur and bring them all together for SMBs, allowing them to act and perform like big businesses. What if we took it one step further and harnessed their collective power through SAP’s connective tissue? With buying power, we can start to reduce costs in your organisation such as employee benefits, connecting buyers with suppliers in a two-sided marketplace. We want to help SMBs be as powerful as they can be. Bringing them together, we have the power to leverage them into one
16 DIRECTOR OF FINANCE
DOFONLINE.COM
of the most powerful buyers in the globe. We can give them the tools to make them
more powerful, removing the limitations that only bigger companies have. If you’re a Fortune 500 company, you’ve got a lot of buying power. Over time, this playing field is going to be level and the limitations on SMBs are going to be removed, giving them more power. SAP Concur doesn’t care what size business you are.
DoF: What services will SAP Concur be offering finance directors in the future? Llewellyn: As I said, one of the things which I’m most excited about is the expense report that writes itself. The expense report will become an on-the-go activity. Rather
than doing their job, staff are wasting time doing an expense report. From a finance perspective, digital expense reports drives compliance. The ability of being able to exaggerate expenses disappears. And from a finance perspective, it increases trust and saves you time checking. It helps both sides of the coin. Also, we want to give finance directors
more visibility about tax, giving them peace of mind about their tax position, allowing them to spend time growing their business. ■
Christal Bemont
A lot of SMEs think
technology like this, automating your back-office process, is only available to big companies
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