Objective
Our client decided to implement the Concur Expense Management system. They wanted to integrate the software to their Enterprise Management software. This meant that they wanted to automate the dynamic selection lists in Concur, as well as send the approved expense claims and corporate credit card reconciliations for payment into the ERP.
They engaged us to design and build the integration for them.
Solution Delivery
- The integration required both ingoing (from ERP into Concur) and outgoing (from Concur to ERP) data feeds.
- Our client wanted to keep the ingoing data feed simple. They didn’t want their Concur users to be overwhelmed with options. They decided that some options would only be maintained within Concur, such as expense codes.
- One of the critical integration points was the need to have current and accurate job data from the ERP available to Concur. This allowed our client to match their current process of costing all expenses to jobs. The feed was limited to two actions:
- sending newly opened job data from the ERP to Concur.
- when the job was closed and no longer able to be used in the ERP, a “delete” was sent to Concur
- The import of the Concur data into the ERP Accounts Payable was the most critical part of the implementation. Due to the timing required for the go live (by the vendor), not all scenarios could be tested prior to go live. So while 90% of the integration occurred pre go-live, some tweaking and scenario adjustments had to occur post go live.
- We interpreted the vendor data and mapping to the ERP, writing the integration software, and then testing and managing the different process scenarios.
- As part of the integration development, we had to also comply with and implement the security requirements for both products. This involved being able to encrypt and unencrypt the data streams, as required by Concur.
- Incompatibilities between tax management in the two systems caused some issues. A tax mapping mechanism was put in, to manage the need for one system to calculate tax at a total level and the other at the line level.
- The initial belief from the client was that the expense scenarios would be simple. However, they soon discovered there were many variants in the processes. A late addition to the project was the creation of an error management screen to handle Concur export/ERP import errors. This allowed staff to self-correct and then re-process the data.
Achievements
- It used take a key staff member three to four days a month to process all expense claims. The business had been going through an expansion cycle, so this timing was increasing. With implementation of the new systems, the process timing reduced to hours. There was some error management in the ERP, or within Concur, but this was minimal.
- After the initial post-go live tweaks to the import into the ERP, the integration was been stable and has needed no further adjustment.
- A junior staff member now handles the Expense processing. This has allowed the more skilled, senior resource to move onto more business-critical tasks.
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