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Concur kicked off its Fusion conference in San Francisco with updates to two of its business travel oriented services.

Concur’s TripLink service, which allows employees to directly connect purchases they make from travel vendors to their company, now integrates with Etihad Airways, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Wallypark. Etihad, the second-largest airline in the United Arab Emirates, is the first overseas airline partner for TripLink, which now has more than 3,500 customers. Those partners join a variety of other firms, including Airbnb, Marriott, and United Airlines.

Tim McDonald
Tim MacDonald

It’s a big shift from last year, when TripLink had fewer than 1,000 customers. TripLink helps address the growing trend of employees choosing to book outside corporate travel management systems. According to a report from IDC, 40-50 percent of hotel bookings and 28 percent of air bookings take place outside of a company’s travel management system, which can cause problems for travel spending.

Tim MacDonald, Concur’s executive vice president of platform and data services, told GeekWire in an interview that one clear reason for the shift is that people can get more information and access to a broader variety of products by booking directly through a vendor’s site.

“If you go to Delta.com, you’re going to see the pitch of the seat on the plane, you’re going to see if there’s a USB charger available in that seat, he said. “You’re going to be able to buy a premium seat, so if you want an up front window seat, you’ll be able to buy that in that same transaction.”

By using TripLink, customers get access to those features, while businesses can keep tabs on their employees’ travel spend like they would with a travel agent or other travel management product.

In addition to the TripLink news, the company’s App Center picked up 14 new apps for both consumers and businesses. Those apps, which include the CheckMate concierge service and Automatic’s connected car app, all integrate with the Concur platform.

As of today, the App Center contains more than 100 apps, which include offerings from Uber and Starbucks. MacDonald that the growth of its App Center is part of a broader shift at Concur from a product company to a platform company.

All of this comes almost four months after SAP closed its $8.3 billion acquisition of Concur. MacDonald said that integrating Concur and SAP has boosted Concur’s growth rate, because the firm is now able to tap into SAP’s field team to augment its existing efforts. That, in turn, has allowed the company to double down on developing its products and services.

“I’ve been through a few acquisitions, and I’ve never seen such an immediate realization of the synergies between two companies. To the point where we’re able to start investing more, based off of revenue acceleration, we’re able to start investing more right away.”

[This story has been updated to add Enterprise Rent-a-Car to the list of TripLink partners.]

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