SAN FRANCISCO — Concur CEO Steve Singh sees a world in which new “business networks” help connect businesses with a broader ecosystem of tools and services to help their customers.
And Singh — speaking today at the Concur Fusion conference in San Francisco — believes that his travel and entertainment expense management software company will be ideally positioned to capitalize on the trend now that Concur has been sold to enterprise software giant SAP.
“More and more, you’re going to see business networks being created,” Singh said during Wednesday’s keynote. “…It’s not good enough to just solve the problem within the four walls of your company, but you have to actually connect to the rest of the ecosystem, and make sure you serve your customer exceptionally well.”
Singh went on to say that SAP shares a similar vision when it comes to business networks, which is part of why the two companies joined forces. SAP’s $8.3 billion dollar acquisition of Concur is the “biggest single bet” that the enterprise software powerhouse has made to date, Singh said.
Now that Concur is a part of SAP’s ecosystem, Singh said his company can work with Ariba and Fieldglass – two other SAP-owned firms – to create a seamless experience for businesses to solve problems.
For example, he talked about a hypothetical business that could connect sensors to Ariba to order parts that need replacing as soon as they break, then use Fieldglass to request a repair team for installation, and finally book their travel through Concur.
“That’s where software needs to go,” Singh said. “It needs to solve your problems automatically.”
