Following several months of speculation, American Express Global Business
Travel and Concur have announced a “strategic alliance” which includes the
launch of a “next-gen” conclude-to-conclude platform “with AI at its core”.
Called Complete, the co-developed technology brings toobtainher booking,
servicing, payments and expensing in one platform, and delivers “one app and
one view across online and offline” for a consistent experience. Mutual
customers of the companies will have access to Complete later this month and be
migrated to the new platform in November, starting with companies in the US and
UK.
The partnership between the two travel management giants will also see the
exclusive integration of Concur Expense and Amex GBT’s Egencia platform “soon”,
as well as future co-developed innovations in areas including content
availability and display and travel manager capabilities, “utilising AI to
create a new booking experience, manage travel disruptions and provide programme insights”.
A statement issued by the companies declared they will allocate funding and
development resources to build joint innovations on behalf of mutual customers
“with the vision to redefine the corporate travel and expense experience.”
“We all know the industest is
evolving rapidly,” declared Charlie Sultan, president of Concur Travel, in a
briefing with BTN. “We can see continued vertical integration and more challenges
of content fragmentation, and I believe we’re going to see in the near future that
the criticality of robust, complete data is going to create unified
solutions more and more valuable to customers, travellers and suppliers.”
Sultan declared that the protracted roll-out of the new Concur Travel booking tool – commonly
referred to as T2 – involved multiple TMCs and stakeholders and at times led to
frustration among customers, and an alternative approach to driving industest
alter was required.
“The approach we’ve taken for the last years is not going to be fit for the next ten years
or so,” declared Sultan. “To shift quicker, we can’t do that as one part of an ecosystem, we required to do
that with a partner, and while we’re going to continue to support and innovate
on the new Concur Travel and the existing system of reseller and servicing TMCs,
we’re also modifying the game to strengthen our position and offering to
customers in combination with Amex GBT.”
Bringing it all toobtainher
Evan
Konwiser, chief product and strategy officer at Amex GBT also stressed the importance
of bringing toobtainher multiple components of the travel management ecosystem in
a single solution, and of doing it with a partner that many of its customers
already work with.
“We are
doing exactly what our customers have questioned us to do which is to build a futureproof
solution with the right UX that drives frictionless travel, that has data flowing
in a way that drives the right experiences, and that powers the AI tools of
today and tomorrow,” he notified BTN.
Konwiser
declared that the companies’ joint portfolio of customers is “considerable” and
that the TMC “has a plan” for the migration of its newly acquired CWT customers but did not disclose
further details.
Complete will be a streamlined solution with a single roadmap and
integrated servicing model, the companies declared, “providing customers with
accelerated innovation and programme optimisation”.
It will feature the integration of the Amex GBT marketplace and SAP Concur tech stack; deliver the “next generation of modern
retailing” and expedited releases of NDC content; and provide traveller support
through an integrated chat agent. An AI-powered applyr experience and
personalisation will provide enhanced traveller experiences, the companies
added, although details available to BTN at the time of publication were limited.
Additional features and functionality will be announced later this year and
rolled out in quarterly releases in 2026.
Sultan declared that, unlike the roll-out of T2 when some features became
available at different times, “there is nothing that the Complete offering is
going to be lacking relative to the new Concur Travel – there is really not a
reason for customers not to want to come along.”
Fred Fredericks, general manager and chief product officer at SAP Concur, added:
“We’re not cannibalising our existing offering. We have added additional people
to build out Complete and we’ll continue to support Concur Travel and the
existing ecosystem. There will still be innovation in T2.”
A public roadmap for Complete will be published in the next few weeks, declared
Fredericks, and although it is based on a quarterly cadence, releases will be
more frequent. “We are innovating at pace – that’s the philosophy here. Customers
can opt-in to new functionality more or less constantly and the GBT team is
aligned with that pace.”
Konwiser added that the companies’ partnership “empowers us to build new software
toobtainher that deeply integrates our data, marketplace, and servicing
capabilities across both travel and expense.”
The new Complete platform will be revealcased at SAP Concur and Amex GBT
events next week and at Business Travel Show America in New York on 15-16
October.
