SAP Concur has been on the trail of a more robust duty-of-care product since it launched Concur Locate and Risk Monitoring in 2018 and hooked in the health and crisis response capabilities of Healix International as an exclusive on-the-ground partner. Today, the travel and expense technology provider announced that it will sunset that product by September 2021 in favour of a new duty-of-care strategy that includes an enhanced application programming interface and multiple on-the-ground partners via the SAP Concur App Center.

Launch partners are currently writing to the new Concur API and getting certified; companies expect to be ready to migrate customers to the new solutions in the first quarter of 2021, according to SAP Concur chief product strategy officer Mike Koetting. Duty-of-care partners currently include Healix International, International SOS, higher education specialist Terra Dotta and WorldAware (formerly iJet). Unlike the Concur Locate and Risk Monitoring solution, which was offered to customers through their Concur relationship, the new configuration will push corporates to direct relationships with their chosen duty-of-care providers. Commercial agreements between a given duty-of-care company and SAP Concur are separate.

The enhanced API will deliver a rich data set to all participating duty-of-care partners, said Koetting. It includes global distribution system bookings, Concur Request for anticipated bookings, New Distribution Capability and non-GDS bookings, as well as TripLink itineraries "of all flavours." It will not, at this time, include card swipe data.

Asked why the company decided to pivot its strategy on Locate, Koetting pointed to the increasing complexity of the duty-of-care proposition, not only with the Covid-19 pandemic, but also with the unique needs of certain companies and certain travel footprints.

"Although we were proud of our product, we do continue to hear that clients are advocating for more selection in that solution," he said. "Our previous position of solely supporting a proprietary Locate left many clients still wishing for something else. Then, even for those clients using Locate, many of them still required additional services that were only available from one of those major suppliers. One example, in particular, being medical assistance. So although we tried to meet most of our client needs [with the single partner], we anticipate that this is an area that will continue to be so complex that it would benefit our clients to have enabled relationships directly with the companies who are specialising solely in these services."

Many SAP Concur clients already have direct relationships with duty-of-care providers, often enabled by travel management company data. Some corporates have branched out to capture off-channel booking data with products like Concur TripLink or Traxo with the idea of sending that additional data to the duty-of-care partner. In a bid to expand their data net, some TMCs have worked to capture off-channel booking data as well. FCM is notable in this regard. It began integrating data from travel shopping browser plug-in Shep into its TMC reporting in 2019 and in early 2020 took an equity stake in that company.

In the case of SAP Concur's off-channel booking TripLink product, whether that data could be passed along to duty-of-care providers outside of Healix International was a question. BTN?reported on one company that was an avid TripLink user that switched its duty-of-care relationship from ISOS to Healix international to take advantage of the TripLink data pass to that exclusive provider. The travel manager reported a significant enhancement in data quality after the switch.

Now that SAP Concur is offering a similar data set to multiple providers, current Concur users may look to switch the data enablement role from the TMC to the enhanced SAP Concur API offering. Asked whether that competitive position puts SAP Concur in the role of diminishing the TMC, Koetting posited simply that the Concur data set will be superior.

"We would argue that we offer a richer data set of traveller location by virtue of the fact that we capture travel intent if the client is using Request as well as the TripLink and non-GDS bookings," he said. "There's no doubt that there is and will continue to be some overlap [with TMCs] in our services. I can't forecast whether that will grow. I can say our strategy is unchanged and that we have no ambitions to be a TMC."

SAP Concur is reaching out to current Concur Locate and Risk Monitoring customers individually to inform them of the change. Any customers whose contracts expire prior to the sunset date, SAP Concur will renew so they have the full year to manage a migration. In addition, SAP Concur will help current Locate customers evaluate the options and refer them to one of the new partner providers.