HCSC, Bruce Lane
" Well let’s go back to before Concur. Before Concur, we were like many folks here. We were the spread sheets, the papers, sending and stapling and all the wonderful things that go with the paper environment. We had no transparency to what was going on, our traveler’s behaviors, policies. Again, a lot of things were really weak, were not being enforced the way they could be just because of those processes, which is not a good operational process. So we moved to Concur. We found it to be the best tool available at the time and it’s really allowed that transparency that we needed as well as a lot of other benefits across the board. "
" If you were to call up one of my employees and ask them about Concur, one of my employees would see the value of Concur. They would understand the analysis we’re doing, how much it’s enabled them to do their job, how much it’s helped them from an operational stand point. Again they’re allowing transparency, allowing for spend analysis, procurement opportunities, Concur has provided all those, all those things and more. "
"The single biggest benefit since implementing Concur would be, I would say again the transparency of our traveler’s behavior. Being able to get our hands around that spend, and I mean that’s really what it’s about in today’s environment. You can’t do negotiations without knowing the spend, knowing the behaviors and being able to again, once you understand the behaviors you get a good baseline going then you start dialing them in. You start really looking and analyzing your preferred vendors and so on and so you can really reduce your expenses in the long run. "
" One big thing is the itineraries. Now you have it, travel and expense, it’s one click, it moves over. Itineraries are a pain point in my company especially for the infrequent traveler. You have to go in. It’s always an inquiry to our administrator. It takes resources away from the focus they could be on. With the new tool, I can see the new tool providing that and slowing down our inquiries and so on. "
" It’s change management; managing your change so you have folks that are used to spread sheets. Their behavior’s out there. Policies are out there maybe loosely being enforced because you don’t have transparency to what’s really going on. So now you push out a tool that allows you transparency. Well the logical leap is, now we can enforce this. We can enforce this, we can enforce that. Well you have to do it in stages. First you roll out the tool. Get everybody transitioned over to the tool. Then you can really start pushing out your policies, maybe some policy changes, because now you are aware of something maybe you weren’t aware of that is costing the company you know significant amount of dollars and so on."
" Competitors in the market with Concur would really have trouble trying to compete with the flexibility of the new tool, with the relationship, the travel, the end-to-end, the vendor relationships along the way, the various travel agencies you can kind of plug in you know to that process and make it a seamless front end to your travelers. I don’t see many companies having that full, full menu of services that you can walk in the door and offer being Concur. "
" I feel the Concur partnership with our travel administrator is very important. And without that connect, without the efficiency gained there it wouldn’t be a smooth process. You really need that supply chain hooked together, front to back. And again the travel and expense tool with that relationship really helps facilitate travel. "
"Two or three things that Concur has done for us I would say transparency to spend, number one by far. Digitizing information. Allowing a vehicle for that transmission, just the capturing of information. It has certainly brought us light years ahead of where we were and being able to do audits, all the back end processes that we do Concur really facilitates that for us."
"Now with Concur we have that transparency. We have the buyer behavior, traveler behavior. Patterns that we can trend, we can pull together and we can do that analysis on that again, use it for negotiations, use it for many different reasons, expense reduction, getting our hands around the process and really what’s going on. "
"The benefits of the data and analysis of Concur and having that transparency largely is on our procurement side, being able to go out and negotiate better contracts, being able to again push out preferred suppliers, preferred vendors. Preferred places to stay and driving that traveler behavior into a preferred. You still give them choices you just have to give them flexibility but you can dial it into a cost effective number of choices and flexibility."
" I know there’s still organizations out there that believe in the paper. We have spreadsheets why do we need to invest in a tool? They don’t really see, as maybe some of us in my organization didn’t see, the actual end result of having that transparency, having those tools available. "
HCSC, Ellen Barker
"People were booking their own trips, there was no management and that’s what was needed was management so that we’d know where all of our employees are at all times be it a crisis or how frequent they’re traveling and that’s what we have moved forward to by getting Cliqbook you know, it was really nice."
"One of the main things that we really love about Cliqbook is that the way we can manage our vendors. It helps us to determine our hotel expenditure, car rental, our rates. It really helps with the negotiation. It keeps us under one umbrella of usage. We don’t have people going to the left or to the right of picking their own things. We have selected, preferred vendors. We prefer you use these and in Cliqbook it allows, it shows you everything you can use right there. It’s very easy. It’s user friendly. We love it, we love Cliqbook."
"Since we’ve begun to use Cliqbook, we’ve found that at least 95 percent of our employees have adapted to Cliqbook. Its very user friendly and with the usage of being able to book your air fare, car rental and hotel, it’s very convenient. Online, quick usage. It’s a done deal. It’s very nice. They love it. They do."
"this online automated expense reporting tool has been a great benefit to us, ok. It really has. Paper reduction so that’s with cost reduction ok, everything, the approval process is wonderful. We have a three level approval process and it just flows through so smoothly. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. You can really control what is being done on an expense report be it your audit rules or just putting out the policy, your expense types. It gives a customer a selection of what to choose. It’s very user friendly."
"Most companies are looking for cost reduction, efficiency; Concur brings about all that."