Most people know Concur as a leading provider of travel and expense management solutions. However, for some time now, they have been offering a solution that allows clients to manage inbound invoices and pay them. The offering includes eInvoicing capabilities, scan and capture services, a self-service supplier portal and payment processing and execution. Now, all of that is still available with the Concur Pro edition, however, yesterday Concur announced the launch of a new version of its invoice product that is tailored to the needs of small to mid-sized businesses (SMB’s), called Concur Invoice Management Standard Edition. To get more insight, I had the opportunity to see a demo of this new solution and speak with Jessica Staley, Principal Program Manager for Concur’s Invoice Management solution.
Much like the standard edition of its T&E product, this new invoice product will minimize the risk involved in adopting a new solution and offer a quick and simple set-up process, giving SMB’s an opportunity to benefit from a cloud-based invoice and payment management solution. Whether a large fortune 500 corporation or an SMB (which Concur defines as 500 or less employees) the challenges around managing paper-based AP processes are similar. There is a general lack of visibility and efficiency when processing paper invoices and payments making it difficult, especially for SMB’s, to have better control and flexibility in the management and visibility of cash outflows. SMB’s unlike their larger counterparts have little tolerance and resources to take on complex implementations which require sophisticated integration and configuration. The SMB market ideally wants a solution that is easy to set-up (at a minimal or no fee), does not require a large upfront investment, offers a simple method of integration to internal systems and is based on a usage model (i.e., pay for what you use).
So What Exactly is the Standard Edition?
Firstly and quite important to an SMB is that the standard edition of Concur Invoice has no set-up fees and customers can sign-up for a free 30 day trial run. Secondly, and equally as important is that the contract terms are flexible and can be as short as 90 days or up to 1 – 3 years, offering SMB’s an easy out if the solution is not for them.
Concur has taken a lot of what they learned from the standard edition of the T&E product (which was developed specifically for the SMB market) and applied it to the invoice product. According to Concur, implementation takes approximately 30 days and to assist there a various wizards and videos that walk a client through the process as well as coaching from a Concur representative. For example, one of the first few questions in the set-up wizard that determines the template for that particular client is what industry is your company in? Followed by what accounting software do you use? Customers have the ability to enter more specific information such as ‘expense type’ which categorizes different expense items by assigning GL codes (e.g., advertising, catering, building repair, financial services, etc). The wizard also allows users to easily set-up an approval workflow by offering a few simplified options.
No matter the method in which the invoice is received (eInvoicing, PDF, email, paper) the data is displayed within the solution for approval and payment. If invoices are submitted via paper or PDF Concur offers a centralized scan and capture service, which uses OCR to extract the data from the invoice and display the scanned image of the invoice on the user’s page. Businesses that established an approval workflow during set-up will give its users the ability to review and approve payment requests which are displayed on a dashboard in the solution and are also actionable via mobile devices. SMB’s will be able to accomplish some level of vendor management for example, merging multiple instances of the same vendor into one and using the workflow, users will be able to request new vendors to be added.
As mentioned earlier, the solution is an end-to-end offering, meaning that in addition to receiving and managing invoices SMB’s can manage and execute payments either by printed check or ACH transfers. Checks come at an additional cost due to printing and mailing, however, ACH payments are included in the overall cost. Lastly, the solution also includes a reporting dashboard that comes with standard reports that will help SMB’s keep track of key accounts payable related metrics and also allow for some level of spend analysis. For now, the solution does not allow for PO requisition or PO matching, although this may come in the future.
As for the pricing of this product, there is no monthly cost or a per user fee, it is based on the number of invoices. So much like buying a mobile phone plan with a certain number of minutes and a per minute charge if you go over, businesses can purchase an invoice plan. For example, 500 invoices per month or 1,000 invoices per month and as the volume goes up the economies of scale kick in, if you go over your purchased amount, there is a per invoice fee.
All in all, the standard edition of Concur Invoice Management seems well equipped to serve the SMB market, especially those that are already using the standard edition of the T&E product.
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