Business Travel

On Monday, we published the first article in this brief, two part series exploring the value proposition of travel and expense management. Click here to check it out. To recap, we discussed that: The travel and expense management processes have been on a strategic upswing over the past few years. Specific technology offerings are paving the way for the continued [...]

We’re getting into the final weeks of 2014, with only 15 days left before the start of the new year and nine days until Christmas. This doesn’t mean the news is slowing down though. The global financial situation took some interesting turns since this time a week ago: France unveiled some new reforms to kick-start the [...]

It was sometime in mid-2009 that I first heard the following phrase: “We’re looking at travel and expense as being more strategic here internally.” It was uttered by a CFO at a mid-market telecommunications company in one of my frequent conversations with the finance/procurement/travel community. Up until that point, the travel / expense management function was largely [...]

Editor’s Note: Today’s article was developed from an interview that resident Ardent Partners business travel / expense management, Christopher J. Dwyer, conducted with the team at MarketWatch. Listen to a recording of the MarketWatch interview at http://podcast.mktw.net/audio/20141009/mnb101014/mnb101014.mp3. Some business professionals view travel as a necessary part of their role, helping to spark business development, grow [...]

The past week has seen much in terms of news interesting to accounts payable and financial operations professionals. Today, for example, we find out that Japan has sunk back into a recession. On top of that, we’ve got Mastercard (NYSE: MA) and Visa (NYSE: V) planning to eradicate static passwords, Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) floating the [...]

Today is Veterans Day in the U.S., Remembrance Day in the U.K and Canada, and Armistice Day in France and other nations—the day when we honor the signing of the Treaty of Versailles as well as all the veterans who died in combat. Did you know, however, that today only marks the ending of hostilities [...]

Editor’s Note: Today’s article was developed from an interview with resident Ardent Partners business travel / expense management, Christopher J. Dwyer, with the team at MarketWatch. Listen to a recording of the MarketWatch interview at http://podcast.mktw.net/audio/20141009/mnb101014/mnb101014.mp3. Complex spend management has become one of the top priorities on the Chief Procurement Officer’s agenda. Complex spend categories, [...]

It’s been previously stated here at Payables Place that the business travel category has been on both a budgetary and strategic rise over the past half-decade; as more and more enterprises rely on business travel to foster customer relationships, spark new business development, and maintain core supplier unions, it becomes critical for the average enterprise to [...]

The world of business travel is evolving at a rapid clip, as more and more enterprises experience higher travel budgets, more complex processes within the expense management framework, and new, myriad booking options for business travelers. As organizations begin to think more strategically about this complex spend category, it becomes imperative to drive superior visibility [...]

Thursday afternoon, global software provider SAP AG (NYSE – SAP) announced its intent to purchase Seattle-based travel, expense and invoice management solution provider Concur (Nasdaq – CNQR) for approximately $8.3 billion (based upon the announced acquisition price of $129 per share). The agreement signals another major shockwave in the global enterprise solutions industry that follows on the heels of SAP’s 2012 [...]