With a solid strategy executed to date, and a pending acquisition of Gelco, it is time to explore the next step in this evolution. One obvious goal would be expansion of the customer base. Here I get more interested in strategic alliances and their potential benefits in accelerating this process. SM: What is your next
Much of the growth opportunity for Concur, in my opinion is in being able to effectively penetrate Small Medium Enterprise (SME) markets. Here, we discuss issues around market size and profitability of the sales channels. SM: Smaller deals, in the 1-20 range, you can probably close them all by phone and even in the mid
Steve says he does not segment his customer base by size. I push, because I think he should. SM: You do not have any bias one way or the other? SS: Not at all. Our distribution strategy is to reach customers of any size. We have no concentration of revenue, by customer or by market
A crucial advantage of any on-demand software model is the ability to reach into new customer bases. I press hard here to understand the demographics of the company further. SM: Help me understand your customer base a bit. Are you focused on Fortune 500, Global 2000 or are you focused on smaller companies? SS: Early
As a smaller company, Concur does have to compete in a very deliberate manner with industry stalwarts such as SAP and Oracle. In order to win, they must have a definite comparative advantage. Here I search to understand what Concur believes is their unique advantage. SM: When you compete with SAP, what is your competitive
SM: Most of the expense reporting is around travel. However, there are other expenses to be incurred, right? SS: That is exactly correct, there are expenses which occur outside of travel. The same solutions can be applied whether it is business travel or taking a client out for lunch. The core point is that as
Another beneficial attribute of the company was a very specific focus and area of expertise. Maintaining that focus has allowed them to develop into pureplay domain experts, and depth of expertise is always valued. SM: OK, so the focus has been on-demand expense management solutions. That has been the case from 2001 until now, right?
Dealing with and properly addressing change is a substantial aspect of the success or failure of companies. Shifting to the on-demand model without any other examples to follow was visionary, but if implemented incorrectly could have been devastating as well. SM: How did you change the channel at this point? You shifted to an on-demand