Update on Early Adopter Projects for ByDesign/Concur Integration

Updated May 9, 2019
Please refer to this blog post as well.

Hi,

I receive frequent questions on the status of our Early Adopter Program for the SAP Business  ByDesign / Concur Expense (Professional Edition) integration.

Here is what you need to know.

What happened so far?

End of 2017 we started engaging with customers that volunteered as early adopters (EAs). We had a list of EA applicants in the lower double-digit range. Out of this, we created a short list with 10 customers which we considered a best fit. Eventually we kicked-off the first EA projects in December 2017.

The collaboration with our first EA clients is both very productive and fruitful. We have already received valuable feedback how to enhance our integration solution to provide our clients with more flexibility in the exchange of master data.

Please note: The flexibility features in the area of master data exchange are currently in evaluation by our development colleagues. Thus, currently,  we cannot guarantee that early adopters will be able to use the integration in their productive Concur tenant. Making the integration run in the early adopter system – a  tenant copy of the early adopters’ productive Concur tenant – still needs a case by case assessment of the individual situation.

What are the next steps?

We are close to kicking off the next EA projects.

Furthermore, we would like to especially encourage those of you being live with SAP Business ByDesign and in the midst of their first Concur implementation project  to reach out to us at SAPConcurIntegration@sap.com, should you be interested in being an early adopter. For functionality and boundary conditions, please watch this video on our Youtube channel.

Why this new call to action? While we were taking applications for the EA phase it was interesting to see that mostly existing Concur and ByDesign clients were interested in this EA program. SAP Business ByDesign customers going for a new Concur implementation, however, were not. Still, for us it is essential to gather experience for both types of implementations.
Especially, since considering the integration in an early stage of the Concur integration project helps to streamline the configuration in Concur. This reduces the time to go-live with the ByDesign/Concur native integration.

Best regards
Otfried