SAP Concur Invoice is a cloud-based solution for the digitalization and automation of supplier invoice processing, fully integrated into the SAP ecosystem. By combining OCR capture, digital approval workflows, and native integration with SAP ERPs, it enables Finance and Accounting teams to transform a Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process that is still often manual into a fully automated workflow.
During a recent webinar hosted by Arago, Pierre Le Floch (Project Manager at Arago) and our client Matthieu Beckers (Head of Finance at Bordier & Cie) shared their hands-on experience of a successful SAP Concur Invoice implementation with Arago, a Travel & Expense expert.
Our client Bordier & Cie is an international private bank based in Geneva, specializing in wealth management. The company employs around 200 people in Switzerland and nearly 300 worldwide, with operations in the United Kingdom, France, Singapore, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Uruguay.
As part of the modernization of its finance function, Bordier & Cie launched a digital transformation initiative for its invoice and expense management processes with Arago. The objectives were to improve operational efficiency, traceability, internal control, and user experience across all teams.
These figures (source: Arago project data) show that the issue is not purely technological : it is also organizational. This is precisely what the webinar highlighted.
An ideal Procure-to-Pay process follows a linear and automated flow:
purchase request → purchase order creation → receipt of goods or services → invoice receipt → OCR capture → approval workflow → posting to the ERP → payment.
SAP Concur Invoice fully supports this entire chain. However, to get the most value from the solution, it is essential to formally document this process within your organization before even starting the project.
At Bordier & Cie, the pre-migration situation was typical of many organizations: invoices received by post or email, handwritten approvals on physical documents, scanning for entry into SAP, no integrated workflow, and limited SAP access due to licensing constraints. The result was a time-consuming process with poor traceability and a high risk of error.
Before launching an SAP Concur Invoice project, Arago recommends building a comprehensive list of your initial challenges, including:
This analysis directly drives the definition of the project scope and the expected ROI.
One of the key takeaways from the webinar: projects fail when IT and business teams are not involved from the start.
At Bordier, two members of the accounting team were assigned to the project part-time throughout the entire implementation. They participated in all workshops, including those outside their direct scope, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the system. They then became internal referents for the rest of the organization.
Freeing up time for project team members is an investment, not a cost. Bordier temporarily reorganized daily workloads to allow these two employees to focus on the migration, an essential decision for ensuring deployment quality.
Change management is by far the most frequently cited challenge in P2P projects. And for good reason: the Accounts Payable process impacts all departments (Finance, Marketing, IT, and Operations), not just Accounting.
At Bordier, the challenge was twofold: convincing accountants with long-established practices, and onboarding approvers outside Finance who had never used such a tool before.
Several levers were activated:
One of the main technical complexities of an SAP Concur Invoice project lies in replicating the accounting structure from the ERP into the solution. Cost centers, internal orders, approval hierarchies, analytical accounts, each dimension must be accurately mirrored in Concur to enable a fully automated end-to-end flow.
At Bordier, this included:
The good news for SAP customers: the native SAP ICS (Integration for Concur Solutions) integration natively supports master data export and invoice posting to SAP ERP or S/4HANA.
Bordier chose not to switch everything overnight. The migration, which covered both Travel & Expense and invoices, took place during the annual closing period, making a phased rollout even more critical.
The chosen approach: a parallel run with progressive onboarding of teams, by department or user group, over several weeks.
Observed benefits:
Arago strongly recommends a phased rollout for this type of project, especially when the solution targets all employees. A big bang approach can work in very controlled environments, but the risk of adoption backlash is high.
The testing phase is often the key to a smooth go-live. At Bordier, this phase lasted between 6 and 8 weeks on a dedicated test environment.
Key scenarios to cover include:
After just three months of use, Bordier was already seeing clear improvements:
Arago supports companies of all sizes in their SAP Concur Invoice projects, from discovery through post-production support.
Would you like to learn more about SAP Concur Invoice?
For a project without the Purchase Order module, allow between 3 and 5 months, depending on the complexity (number of legal entities, countries involved, starting point). At Bordier, the full project (invoices + expense reports) took around 6 months, including a 2-month parallel run phase.
Yes. Bordier & Cie is a good example of this: 200 employees in Switzerland, around 3,000 invoices a year. SAP Concur is suitable for both small-scale operations and more complex organisations.
Yes, thanks to the native SAP ICS (Integration for Concur Solutions) integration, which covers invoice posting, synchronisation of supplier data and cost structures, without the need for custom coding.
Yes, and it is actually recommended if you want to get a consolidated view of your expenditure. Bordier opted for this approach, which now gives them a unified view of all their outgoing financial flows in a single tool.
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