‘Connect and Accelerate’ Client Events Celebrate SMBs
In the last few weeks, over 140 SAP Concur customers from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) attended our Connect and Accelerate events in London and Manchester.
The purpose of Connect and Accelerate is to enable finance leaders at SMBs to share experiences with peers, gather insights and build strategies to fuel business success. They learned about SAP Concur innovations and found out more about the value our solutions have to offer. They were also among the first to hear about our exciting new vision to support SMBs.
Why this focus on SMBs? Firstly, it’s because the numbers of SMBs is growing rapidly. According to the FSB, over 2.2 million SMBs have been founded since 2000 and 200,000 have been founded in the past two years alone.
Secondly, SMBs are leading the change when it comes to ways of working. Millennials have launched about twice as many SMBs as boomers. 22% of SMBs in the UK are female-led, contributing £75 billion to the economy. Only 11% of millennials report working from an office and 83% of SMBs have already deployed mobile apps to help improve employee productivity. This goes to show just how much the profile of an SMB has changed in the last decade.
We’re proud to be at the heart of this shift. Our SMB division is the fastest growing within SAP Concur. SMBs represent half of the spend and revenue at SAP Concur and we serve 25,000 small businesses worldwide.
Dafydd Llewellyn, Managing Director, SMB & Nationals – UK & France, said: “It’s such a privilege to be able to connect with so many of our small and medium-sized customers under one roof during events like Connect & Accelerate. It’s so important for SMBs to have their voice heard and forums like this provide the perfect opportunity for finance to ask questions, solve challenges, learn from other companies and get insights into best practices.”
Practical Workshops on Cashflow, Compliance, Growth and More
As well as celebrating the power of SMBs, the event also featured workshops aimed at helping SMBs to get the most out of what SAP Concur has to offer.
These workshops included a session on controlling spend and improving cashflow where attendees heard from an accountant on how to harness technology to help reduce overspend and spot opportunities to improve cashflow.
Another session showed how data, software and services can help SMBs master compliance and avoid unnecessary risk by ensuring internal adherence with company policies and external compliance with government regulations.
Growth was an important part of the day and a round table discussion looked at how businesses had used intelligent spend management to build their growth strategy and take their business to the next level.
There were also speed sessions where attendees could quiz experts one-to-one on topics including travel, budget, VAT & compliance, invoice, country expansions, services and account management.
Building an SMB Community
Christal Bemont, SVP & GM of Global SMB, presented at the London keynote and both she and Dafydd highlighted our mission to serve SMBs.
They spoke about the ultimate vision to make SMBs more financially viable, stay in business longer and anticipate and avoid risk by giving them the tools and the visibility they need to manage spend. We do this by accelerating time to value, building impactful business relationships, and developing top and bottom line growth.
She also shared our exciting vision for the future around building agile, connected SMB communities that can benefit from the buying power of their network to take advantage of offers, discounts and insights that enterprise companies enjoy.
Watch this space for more information. In the meantime, if you want to be part of this community and harness what SAP Concur is able to offer, contact us today.