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With business travel thriving, companies are pushing for tighter control over their expenses. At a time when there is a need for transformation in the travel and expense (T&E) sector, SAP Concur is positioning itself at the heart of the next wave of AI-driven transformation.
Christopher Juneau, Senior Vice President and Head of SAP Concur Product Marketing, envisions a profound shift in corporate travel. According to him, this is a shift that replaces slow manual processes with intelligent, automated flows that can be beneficial for companies as well as employees.
In a conversation with the IndianExpress.com, Juneau shared that India remains one of SAP Concur’s fastest-growing markets, and it has been driven by organisations looking to eliminate manual inefficiencies. “In the last five years, we’ve seen the appetite for leveraging cloud solutions accelerate within the India market,” he said.
“Companies want greater efficiencies and stronger control and compliance, and they’re willing to replace manual processing so they can reinvest in growth.”
Juneau shared that a major part of that strategy revolves around Concur’s new platform named ‘Complete’ that has been built in partnership with American Express Business Travel. It aims to unify the traditionally fragmented process of travel requests, bookings, payments, and expense management into one smart flow.
“With ‘Complete’, we now have an opportunity to integrate not only booking and payments but also TMC (travel management company) services,” Juneau explained. “We can remove the silos that impact the traveller experience and enable travel managers and finance leaders to better manage T&E spend.”
The tie-up also brings to the fore richer datasets. “Together, we’ll continue to infuse our platform with AI and agentic AI,” he said. “We’ll be able to incorporate even more data from American Express’ TMC services. That allows us to move travel from a cost centre to a value-creation function where organisations can truly measure ROI.”
When asked how AI is reshaping corporate travel, Juneau shared that SAP Concur has been quietly using AI for nearly a decade. He noted that it began with expense audition automation. “We couldn’t hire people fast enough to do the auditing,” he said. “So we had to start using AI to automate our own processes.”
As of today, AI footprint spans across their travel-and-expense lifecycle that includes pre-travel budgeting and approvals; policy-guided travel booking recommendations; receipt scanning, categorisation, and missing-data estimation; automated expense creation, auditing, and submission; and conversational support through SAP’s Joule AI assistant.
“Shortly, users will be able to use Joule to book their travel without even going into Concur Travel,” Juneau added. “We believe AI and agentic AI will let us break the dependency where more control means a degraded traveller experience. Instead, we’ll deliver personalisation, control and efficiency simultaneously.”
Striking a balance between compliance and convenience has been a long-standing hurdle in corporate travel, and AI seems to be helping ease this tension for organisations.
“We know traveller preferences based on their past bookings,” Juneau said. “But we also know the company’s policies. So we give choices that match personal preferences yet stay compliant.”
Moreover, Concur’s Verify tool audits expenses automatically, even during the trip. “As the person is travelling, we’re telling them they have missing information or out-of-policy items. They’re informed in real time.” This essentially shifts travel from a paperwork-heavy burden into a proactive, monitored process.
SAP Concur has one of the world’s largest T&E datasets, which is increasingly coming in handy for predictive analytics. “Even before travel is taken, organisations can accrue the cost and understand where they are,” Juneau said. “They can choose to reduce travel or change policy based on accurate forecasting.” Juneau said that this ability is particularly valuable in volatile economic conditions.
With AI adoption, privacy concerns persist. When asked about his views, Juneau asserted that data protection underpins every model SAP Concur builds. “Data privacy is our number one priority,” he said. “Our promise is never to expose information externally to a large language model. We’re completely self-contained and responsible.”
Juneau added that SAP also enforces strict rules ensuring models do not produce biases and that personal information is never misused.
When asked about detecting AI-generated fraud, Juneau informed us that expense fraud is evolving, but so are the tools to detect it. “Fraud is as old as expense reporting itself. Now you see people using generative AI to create fake receipts. With Concur Verify, we can accurately detect AI-generated receipts.”
“What’s interesting is that, despite the rise of generative AI, we haven’t seen an increase in fraud. Our analysis found that just over 1 per cent of the receipts we reviewed were generated by GenAI, and that number hasn’t been rising.”
When asked about how he sees India’s travel ecosystem evolve, Juneau revealed that India’s corporate travel behaviour mirrors global trends. However, he added that trust in automation is growing faster than ever.
“India has always been a pre-travel approval market,” he said. “But now companies trust AI to automate processes. One of our customers operates with zero manual approvals.”
CFO priorities have also shifted dramatically. “In 2024, only 3 per cent prioritised eliminating manual processes. By 2025, over 30 per cent did. They want AI to remove inefficiencies and help reinvest savings into growth.”
In a similar vein, Juneau shared that the next five years will fundamentally transform travel management. “It’s going to be less of an approval process and more of an exception process,” he said. “AI will work on behalf of the traveller, the travel manager, and the finance leader. Humans will intervene only when exceptions arise.”
When asked for his advice for Indian organisations beginning their AI journey, Juneau concluded, saying, “Keep learning, partner with trusted tech providers, and most importantly, recognise AI as accelerated innovation.”
