Buying Concur From SAP To See The Trend Of Business Travel

The auction is over. The German based enterprise software giant SAP has become the winner of Concur, a commercial technology giant.

The takeover price of the deal was $8 billion 300 million, more than three times that of Priceline's acquisition of OpenTable earlier this year.

Most people know about SAP mostly in an enterprise software supplier, but SAP has expanded its business to other fields.

First, there is obvious synergy between Concur and SAP.

Tourism has straddled every vertical field, and Concur is obviously a very suitable target.

It is worth mentioning that SAP is no stranger to the tourism industry. The company started cooperation with Amadeus as early as 1999.

This year, the cooperation relationship between the two has been re established.

Fifteen years ago, cooperation between them was limited to managing the backstage interface.

Amadeus control front end, SAP control rear end.

By 2014, the focus of cooperation has shifted to corporate capital management and how to make efficient use of cash.

This reflects the essential changes of corporate travel in the second ten years of twenty-first Century.

Over the years, business travel has been seen as the main source of business for travel agents and GDS companies.

The travel management company and GDS company share common values and agree with the market. The two are symbiotic relations.

But all this is changing.

New vision

This year, the global business travel association conference held in Losangeles showed subtle changes in the industry, namely, the sharing of economic concerns with Uber and Lyft.

However, this is not the only sign of changes in the industry.

Last year, the change in ownership of American Express was another example.

The reasons for this change are mainly as follows:

Business travelers have changed, and their habits and personalities have changed (think of the millennials).

In addition, a notable factor is the evolution of traditional travel management itself, especially in the case of changes in its customers.

Once stringent corporate travel policy has gradually disappeared, instead of budget driven management tools, such as Concur's open booking platform.

Of course, this is not new. The general reduction of corporate tourism is changing over time.

We should not ignore the bloody war after the 2008 global economic crisis.

The merger of the US aviation industry has led to a boycott of the travelers, because the high fares after the merger have affected the budget of the enterprises and their travel.

The serious boycott came from the travel agencies led by CFO, the Department responsible for paying the bills.

Why Concur?

Concur's detailed cost management platform has been seen as a partner in this process.

These influences quietly change the whole industry.

Even good news can not bring too much hope.

There have been reports of growth in the GDS sector, but this does not match the growth trend of us air traffic.

The same is true.

Whether intentional or unintentional, Concur has found an accurate positioning and provides enterprise travel management tools under the new market order of the US market.

Can TMC and GDS get the same value? The answer may be from the price of SAP's acquisition of Concur, which is almost the same as that of Travelport's upcoming IPO valuation.

Data

Global acquisitions and customers

There is a clear trend in utilization, that is, all data are useful, but accurate data are powerful data.

The data of the enterprise is not yet visible, and its value is difficult to make use of.

The level of personal data and the company's general privacy of employee data are the main reasons.

As Oracle proves, collecting, collation and using personal information is very important for understanding and influencing customer behavior, even anonymous information.

In fact, the use of existing tools can better accomplish the above work and bring greater impact than traditional and policy driven tools.

Oracle also proves that owning customer data is critical to taking advantage of the data driven business environment.

SAP understands that Oracle is capable of mining pure data and metadata far from itself, and these data can be extracted from pactions.

It is also found that the value of customer data can be used in other areas. If Concur and its affiliates can make use of the current business expansion in tourism, these data can also be used in the consumer market.

Data has always been useful.

Now there are too many businesses that can use data, and data has become an extremely valuable commodity.

As the starting point of enterprise business, Concur has extremely important value in the food chain.

Having the key paction detailed data means holding great value.