SAP Concur adds event management powered by Groupize to centralize and simplify the meeting and event planning process with an all-in-one solution.
SAP Concur has long been a staple platform for managing corporate expense and business travel. Now it has expanded its partnership with event management platform Groupize to power a new SAP Concur solution extension called Concur® Event Management by Groupize. Groupize previously had offered apps in in Concur’s app center.
The platform is designed to manage one of the largest areas of unmanaged spend for businesses — internal and external meetings. Pre-pandemic, meetings accounted for 43% of business travel spending in the U.S., and yet less than half of respondents to a Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) survey in 2018 said they had a handle on managing their meetings spend — especially for the smaller meetings that constitute about half of corporate meetings globally.
While Groupize initially focused on these small, simple meetings, over the course of the pandemic the company broadened its offerings to include an all-in-one meetings solution for all events, regardless of size or type. The new platform digitalizes everything from day meetings, roadshows and staff travel to trainings, guest air, workshops, conferences and multi-travelers use cases.
“This launch could not have come at a better time as more and more organizations look to technology-enabled transformations for automating processes, mitigating risk and controlling unmanaged spend,” said Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO of Groupize. “As travel and meetings converge, companies are consolidating their tech stacks and investing in event modernization to drive engagement and measure ROI. With over 800 new event technology brands emerging over the last year and a half, the SAP Concur partnership further validates our vision of delivering easy-to-use online-booking tools to centralize and simplify meetings and events.”
In an editorial on The Company Dime, she pointed out that the pandemic has further complicated corporate travel and meetings spend management by adding a third component due to the “work from anywhere” trend that picked up steam over the COVID-era shutdowns. While Zoom and other videoconferencing tools can help keep remote workers connected, there’s a need now for technology that can support in-person and hybrid meetings; recruiting, training and internal meetings for a distributed workforce; and a way to track and manage the uptick in internal meeting spend, she posited. “All members and departments within an organization will need unparalleled access to a centralized hub that provides the tools needed to manage sourcing, registration, travel, duty of care, workflows and spend.”
The integrated extension of Concur’s travel and expense solutions into the meetings and events planning arena is designed to enable companies to enforce policies through duty-of-care rules and approvals workflows, create branded event websites to simplify the attendee registration process, and use spending data to make more informed budgeting decisions. It’s also designed to be a self-service solution everyone can use, whether they’re event planning pros or admins tasked with occasional meeting planning responsibilities.
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