Skift Take
SAP's gain is the travel industry's loss as it will likely lose a strong advocate for travel startup innovation. Concur was unique among travel operators in bankrolling innovation among travel startups, whether it had a direct tie-in to business travel or not.
Concur Technologies, the travel and expense and business travel technology company, was a jewel of the travel industry.
But, with the announcement that the enterprise software and cloud-computing giant SAP plans on acquiring Concur for $8.3 billion, it is somewhat appropriate to look at Concur and its innovation mojo in the past tense.
What is clear is that Concur's championing of the Perfect Trip, and innovation across a broad swath of travel startups with investments engineered through its $150 million Perfect Trip Fund, will be a victim of broader priorities, and the acquisition itself as Concur gets absorbed into the SAP HANA analytics and application platform.
Sure, the acquisition will be an efficient way for Concur to scale its business outside the U.S. and to sell its business travel solutions to the couple hundred thousand SAP customers across the globe that don't already use Concur.
But it's also apparent that SAP will be making it a priority to sell its business enterprise solutions to Concur customers, as well.
The Germany-based SAP is known for being a lethargic, cumbersome bureaucracy with a conserva
