SAP's second-quarter earnings report offered encouraging signs for the return of business travel, with the division that includes the company's Concur expense management platform reporting quarter-over-quarter revenue stability for the first time since the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic last year.
SAP's Intelligent Spend division—which houses Concur, along with the SAP Ariba procurement platform and the SAP Fieldglass workforce management system—in the second quarter earned €737 million in revenue on a constant-currency basis, up from €707 million during the first quarter and 7 percentage points higher than second quarter of 2020, SAP reported Wednesday.
SAP until the end of 2020 reported financial results for Concur as standalone segment. In Q4 2020—the final quarter for which Concur earnings were broken out separately—the segment saw a 15 per cent year-over-year decline.
The company characterised the recent quarter-over-quarter revenue increase as among "the first signs of recovery in travel and expense management," citing the easing of global travel restrictions as a key factor in the improved revenue numbers, while conceding that the Intelligent Spend division continued to be impacted by the Covid-19 crisis more significantly than its other Software as a Service and Platform as a Service business areas.