SAP Concur

We wanna grow as an organization, but how do you keep that from getting out of control and, and fragmenting the organization? You know, I, I think, um, if, if you draw the an- if you draw the analogy to being a product manager that might design a car, design a software application, the product manager has to understand the value that gets created by decisions that they make.

They have to think about, you know, I'm trying to build a expense management software application, so what is the, what are the things I need and what are the things that I don't need that, quite frankly, might be nice or cute, but, like, they're not really core to managing an expense processing in a application like Concur? So if you're a good product manager, you're gonna, you're gonna be thoughtful about, uh, the right outcome, the value ch- you know, things that you build in that product.

If you draw that to AI, if you have people that are not thinking like a product manager around the part of their business, they will just do things in AI because they can get some whiz bang thing.

They can get something that's, like, really cool and...

Hello and welcome to SAP Concur's Conversation Podcast.

Each episode, we sit down with industry experts, visionaries, and leaders as they share what it takes to build forward-thinking spend and travel programs.

Our goal is to get you thinking differently about how your organization spends money.

I'm your host, Jean Dyan.

I'm the Global Vice President of Customer Advisory here at SAP Concur.

My teams partner with our customers to bring out their best and using data-driven insights to fuel their intelligent growth and innovation.

Today, I'm very fortunate to be joined by Wadad Shawi, the Senior Vice President of Corporate and B2B Products at American Express.

So in this episode, we're going to explore why virtual cards have become one of the fastest-growing commercial payment methods, what's fueling that momentum from the rise of non-permanent workers to the shift towards digital-first, mobile-first spending.

The goal was simple, one process, one system, globally.

As part of this transformation, Fujitsu rolled out SAP S4 HANA, SAP Concur, and SAP SuccessFactors worldwide.

This helped to standardize processes and create a stronger digital foundation for the businesses.

Today, Fujitsu is taking the next step and moving into its AI transformation phase.

Because in 2026, building a resilient corporate travel program requires moving past manual booking routines to deploy automated expense tools, real-time duty of care tracking, and AI-driven personalization.

Joining us today is Kristen Rykoy, the Director of Channel Sales Executive at SAP Concur, bringing extensive travel industry leadership across major travel management companies.

Kristen joined SAP Concur in 2016 to drive strategic partnerships and innovation.

Today, she shares key insights from SAP Concur's 8th Annual Global Business Travel Survey, revealing how Canadian businesses can modernize their corporate travel strategies while balancing employee well-being and cost control.

Without further ado, let's jump into our conversation and welcome Kristen.

Kristen, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show again.

So please tell us what are the key trends? Like what are we seeing? And what are the concerns among Canadian business travelers?

Yeah, so I think with this year's survey, the key takeaways is while, like you say, business travel remains a strategic priority for company growth, Canadian employees are approaching travel with a little greater hesitation than ever before that we've seen.

I'll go in reverse order.

I've spent the last 26 years in software tech, enterprise tech specifically, a lot of big name companies, SAP, Microsoft, Concur, and then some smaller startup companies, Docker, Authentic ID.

So predominantly the engineering side and the IT side and the InfoSec side.

I've been in executive management the last 10 years of that career, reporting to the board, sitting in boards, sitting in executive team, making big decisions.

What took so long for this industry to grow up, right? Like, I mean, Navon has been around for a long time.

There's been Concur.

Why hasn't there been something easy where you as an event professional can book on a platform or you, you know, want to do something entertaining with a team? Like, why is it so fragmented?

Great question.

And if you start thinking about this, when we even came across the problem space and we asked ourselves the same question, like, why is this that no one's actually done this? And you start looking into travel, travel like companies like Concur, Navon, and all these other companies built on GDS.

So you have the Amadeuses of the world, the Sabres of the world, who've aggregated this with 30 or 40 years.

Now think about entertainment and where entertainment happens.

So it's not like a single layer for them to essentially say, hey, okay, yes, this is how I'll manage all my corporate relationships because the workflows sit across all three.

We are fortunate to be joined today by two great speakers.

With us are Mark Block, SAP Concur Delivery Lead, Genesis Consulting, and Tim Martino, Principal Cybersecurity Solutions Advisor, SAP Concur.

Before we get started, I have just a few housekeeping items.

Please note the slides will advance automatically throughout the presentation.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mark Block, and I'm with Genesis Consulting.

We are a consulting firm based in Western Virginia, and I lead our SAP Concur delivery practice.

And we work primarily in the public sector and regulated industries.

Technology is great.

SAP technology, SAP Concur technology, it works out of the box.

What we tend to find, though, the bigger challenges we find is it's people process and change management.

Those are the three key pillars in there.

What does a good transition actually look like so that it feels like relief and not negative disruption?

Let me just tell you a very small anecdote.

I'm VP of travel here at SAP Concur, and I get on into an aeroplane.

So I sit next to a member of the public.

of our depletions,

or in order to track bartender advocacy, we need to pull in a real-time feed of our Amex spending, whether or from Concur, let's say, other data sources to say, what are we spending? And as we pulled in these other data sources, we said, actually, you know what? We can enrich what we do even on the sampling side now Because beyond the cat herding and the people management and making sure that the right bodies show up in the right places at the right time, now we have all these new tools to evaluate performance and connect that back to volume.

And so I think the big light bulb for us was, yes, we could produce all these different apps in the app store, all these different individual solutions, but seeing the ways that they cross-pollinate it was really a big light bulb.

Another great example is The national account, I mentioned, and I can elaborate on it, but I mentioned we power national accounts.