Travel approval can often feel like an endless cycle. Employees spend hours creating itineraries that comply with corporate policies, budgets, and personal preferences, only to have their plans delayed by the back-and-forth approval process. After managers review and approve these itineraries, travelers often face the frustration of having to rebook due to changing prices. This inefficiency has long been a pain point for business travelers and enterprises alike.
According to the 2024 SAP Concur Global Business Travel Survey, 84% of business travelers are required by their organizations to seek pre-trip approvals, including detailed cost estimates for their trips. The survey also highlighted an increasing focus on stricter approval processes, as organizations aim to control travel costs and ensure compliance with company policies.
While the need for pre-trip approvals is essential for maintaining compliance and controlling costs, the traditional process remains time-consuming and inefficient. Employees spend too much time manually researching flights, hotels, and transportation options that meet corporate guidelines and budget constraints. Once submitted, these requests must be manually reviewed by managers and finance teams, causing delays and creating room for error.
SAP Concur sought to address these challenges with the introduction of Concur Request nearly a decade ago, streamlining approval workflows. However, the task of estimating travel costs still required manual input, often leading to inconsistencies and repeated revisions. Enter Request Assistant – an AI-powered tool designed to revolutionize the pre-trip approval process and address these inefficiencies once and for all.
How Request Assistant Transforms Travel Approval Workflows
Launched in March 2024, Request Assistant is a game-changing feature of Concur Request that leverages generative AI to accelerate the travel approval process. It simplifies and automates the cost estimation of business trips, eliminating the need for employees to manually calculate travel expenses. By using AI, Request Assistant combines user preferences with historical data and industry benchmarks to generate accurate cost estimates in real time – something that was not possible before.
The result? Both employees and managers spend less time on logistical tasks and more on their core responsibilities. Travel requests are approved faster, with greater accuracy, and less back-and-forth.
How Request Assistant in Concur Functions
Request Assistant optimizes travel approvals by generating cost estimates based on a wide range of factors, all of which account for potential price changes and fluctuations. Here’s what the tool takes into consideration:
- Trip duration and length
- Planned destination(s), including multi-city trips
- Additional services like hotel stays, rental cars, and more
- Individual preferences, such as travel class, hotel ratings, and the number of layovers
By automating travel expense calculations and reducing the chances of fluctuating prices, Request Assistant helps reduce the need for employees to resubmit the same requests multiple times. This allows managers to approve travel requests with confidence, knowing that the necessary regulations and guidelines have been met.
Seamless Integration with the SAP Concur Ecosystem
One of the most significant advantages of Request Assistant is its ability to integrate seamlessly with other SAP Concur solutions, creating a unified and streamlined travel management experience. For instance, when paired with Concur Travel, approved travel plans are automatically passed into the booking process, eliminating the need for employees to re-enter details. This integration reduces time spent on administrative tasks and accelerates the overall travel process.
According to the 2024 SAP Concur survey, 35% of business travelers would consider using AI to help them shop for flights, plan their itineraries, and book trips. An additional 35% would be open to using AI for ensuring compliance with travel policies. Request Assistant also enhances expense reporting by integrating with Concur Expense. The tool pre-fills expense reports with AI-generated cost estimates, and if the actual expenses align with these estimates, the system can automatically approve the report – reducing administrative workload and speeding up reimbursement times.
What Powers the Request Assistant?
The core of Request Assistant is a sophisticated AI system powered by large language models (LLMs), which tap into SAP Concur’s vast data sets. These models, trained on real-world travel data, enable Request Assistant to generate highly accurate and relevant cost estimates based on numerous variables.
Building an AI tool capable of handling travel cost estimation is complex, however. Unlike rule-based automation, generative AI is dynamic and constantly evolving. This requires ongoing adjustments to ensure the tool remains accurate and reliable. Additionally, LLMs are not naturally suited for numerical calculations, so SAP Concur’s development team created advanced prompts and logic to guide the AI in performing accurate cost estimates across a variety of travel scenarios.
Through rigorous testing and fine-tuning, SAP Concur has ensured that Request Assistant delivers cost projections that businesses can rely on, marking a significant advancement in business travel management.
The AI-Powered Future of Business Travel
With Request Assistant, SAP Concur is only scratching the surface of what is possible. Future updates will further enhance the tool’s capabilities, offering features such as:
- Personalized travel recommendations, including flight times, hotel options, and ground transportation tailored to individual preferences
- Smarter, more precise projections using advanced analytics and historical data
- Comprehensive trip planning assistance, helping users to plan every aspect of their trip with greater ease and accuracy
Security and Privacy at the Forefront
SAP Concur takes security and privacy seriously, especially given the sensitive nature of business travel data. Request Assistant operates under strict privacy protocols, ensuring that user data is never shared with external AI models. All personal and corporate data is kept secure, and SAP Concur adheres to the highest compliance standards to maintain user confidentiality.
Smart AI Adoption is the New Era of Business Travel
The traditional travel approval process can be time-consuming and inefficient, with employees and managers alike spending hours on administrative tasks. With Request Assistant, SAP Concur brings intelligent AI automation to the forefront, reducing that time to as little as five minutes. No longer will employees need to manually search for flights, hotels, and transportation that comply with company policies. Request Assistant handles the heavy lifting, making the approval and booking process faster and simpler.
For businesses, this translates to increased efficiency, quicker approvals, and significant cost savings. By automating travel cost estimation and expense reporting, Request Assistant minimizes delays and compliance risks. As AI technology continues to advance, SAP Concur’s tools will only become smarter, more personalized, and more capable, transforming the way businesses manage travel.
Does this excite you? Speak with our Concur experts at FinTrans Solutions today to discover how we can revolutionize your travel and expense management leveraging Request Assistant in your Concur implementation journey.