While SAP Acquires Concur for $8.3B, Gorilla Expense Builds a Closer Relationship with Microsoft Dynamics Customers
It has been a few weeks since SAP agreed to purchase Concur for $8.3B. Since the news, we have been asked by our customers and partners to comment on what this means to SAP, Concur, the Travel & Expense market and us. Here are our thoughts –
The SAP Concur Acquisition makes plenty of sense for SAP because of their increasing interest in the ‘enterprise + powered by cloud’ market and their desire to be the giant here. They have done well so far with the purchase of Ariba and SuccessFactors from a few years ago. With Concur now folded in, SAP will have access to a cloud based T&E solution that they can sell to their 200K + enterprise size customers. And SAP can redeem itself for being late to the cloud party.
It is obviously a fantastic move for the Concur shareholders and founders. With the transaction priced at greater than 12x multiples of revenue, the Singh brothers have done a great job in creating a high value company over a sustained period of time and providing great returns to their shareholders.
This move by SAP also validates a key point that many of us in the industry believe – T&E is a critical business element for enterprises of all sizes and investments by enterprises to manage this process efficiently will only continue to rise, especially as more companies embrace the cloud. This is a rapidly growing industry with plenty of room for innovation and adoption, both on travel and expense side.
While the marriage between Concur and SAP makes a lot of sense for both companies, what does it mean for Microsoft Dynamics customers? Would the SAP-Concur nexus consider their T&E requirements to be distractions? Perhaps too small to care about? Will SAP use Concur as a medium to push SAP’s ERP product over Dynamics? Or worse, will SAP have easy access to competitive intel about AX, GP, NAV & SL through Concur?
These are all big questions and unfortunately there are no clear answers at this time.
But one thing is guaranteed – Gorilla Expense will continue to service the needs of Microsoft Dynamics users with the same exceptional service and robust solution that our customers are used to. Our SMB market, ranging from 5 to 5000 users of our solution is our sweet spot. If anything, we are sure that the SAP + Concur transaction will leave a huge vacuum in this area and this belief has redoubled our efforts and renewed our long-term commitment to Dynamics customers.
And we are busy proving it. On the product side, we have released our new mobile solution, where users don’t have to get in front of a computer to submit expense reports anymore! We make credit card expenses and receipts-in-your-inbox conveniently available on the mobile device. We have advanced our ‘1-click’ integrations with Dynamics GP, NAV, AX and SL to make it more seamless for the end-user. We are also getting ready to release a new cloud based timesheet solution that will allow users to submit time and expense from one place. These are some of the areas we aggressively out-innovate the competition and stay ahead in the game.
We are definitely living in ‘interesting times’ and this is the beginning of a new day for us and our partners in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. Together, we are working not only with new customers but also current Concur customers exploring switchover options as they struggle to deal with this change. We would like to congratulate Steve Singh, the CEO of Concur for a job well done – Concur had a great run over the last decade. We will take it from here!
Signed,
The Gorilla Expense Team
info@gorillaexpense.com
About Gorilla Expense
Gorilla Expense is a leading global provider of T&E Expense Management Software for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. Our Expense Reporting, Mobile Apps, Integration Services & Analytics solutions give customers the edge they need to compete in the global marketplace. With our powerful solution, we are constantly proving that – Expense management doesn’t have to be so difficult! Learn more at www.gorillaexpense.com
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