A nightmare of poor usability and lost productivity -- run away!
Updated January 28, 2020
A nightmare of poor usability and lost productivity -- run away!
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Professional
Overall Satisfaction with Concur Travel and Expense
Concur Travel and Expense has been deployed across my entire organization. It is used for self-service travel reservations, and for the employee to submit all expense reports for reimbursement.
Pros
- It is relatively easy to upload scans or camera images of paper receipts for expenses.
- Many hotel chains, car rental companies, and airlines exchange their receipts automatically with Concur -- so it is very simple for the user to indicate which of those electronic receipts should be "attached" to which expense report.
- If you install the Uber Business profile to your phone, all your Uber expenses are also electronically imported to Concur and easy to attach without scanning.
Cons
- Concur Travel and Expense is by far the worst expense reporting application I have used in 30 years. It is a nightmare of 1980s mainframe thinking built by people who have no clue what usability and simplicity mean.
- It takes way too long to book a trip using Concur, hours of lost employee productivity that the company has no idea they are losing. It is so bad, that I usually have to use a free web app to find the appropriate travel itinerary (Kayak, Skyscanner, Booking, etc.) and then fight to get that proper schedule into Concur.
- I have used a wide variety of travel reservation software apps and expense reporting apps at many Fortune 100 companies since 1985. It is amazing how horrible the design of Concur's user interface is -- I don't think most average programmers could make something this bad if they tried.
- Once the end user has suffered through the tortures of Concur's horrific user interface, it looks like the back end links are robust enough to aggregate the data and take them to payroll reliably.
- The real danger of this tool is that it is probably even more expensive to remove after you make the mistake of bringing it into your company. "Accountants check in, but end users can't check out."
- I am highly confident this software has had a negative impact on my company's productivity and profit margins. Unfortunately, it is all hidden where the executives will never see an accurate accounting of those costs.
I did not select this software -- and anyone who really had to use it would not have picked it over any competitor. My guess is that some marketing group sold it to our executives based on grand claims of enterprise-wide integration -- and no one every tested it against more nimble, efficient competitors.
I once worked for a large, multinational company that standardized all its travel reservations and expense reimbursements on American Express web tools. That software suite was smooth and intuitive, easily learned and easily operated in 2008 ! It is mind-boggling to think how far backwards Concur has moved from that kind of user experience design in the past 12 years.
I once worked for a large, multinational company that standardized all its travel reservations and expense reimbursements on American Express web tools. That software suite was smooth and intuitive, easily learned and easily operated in 2008 ! It is mind-boggling to think how far backwards Concur has moved from that kind of user experience design in the past 12 years.
It doesn't really matter. The main user interface is such a horror to operate that no user cares what is integrated on the back end.
Concur has had a strong, negative impact on my organization's ability to evolve, grow, and adapt.
Concur has had a strong, negative impact on employee experience in my organization.
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