When your caller gets acquired for $ 8.3 billion by a 43-year-old german multinational software headpin, a set can change to culture and serve .
But for Bellevue-based travel expense ship’s company Concur Technologies, it ’ second been business as common — for the most separate, at least .
Concur CEO Steve Singh and President Elena Donio spoke at the GeekWire Summit on Friday in Seattle about how the $ 8.3 billion learning by SAP that closed last year affected Concur ’ mho employees and how it now conducts business .
Reading: Here’s what changed — and what didn’t — at Concur after its $8.3 billion acquisition by SAP
Donio said that from a daily position, about 80 percentage of time is spent working on Concur-related problems and helping Concur customers — “ good, ” she described it .
“ The early 20 percentage is focused on tactics integration and things that possibly weren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate on our plate a year ago that may not be a a lot playfulness, ” Donio said. “ That ’ s a good proportion. ”
Donio besides said that the two companies are “ meet each early in the middle, ” with Concur “ infecting SAP with very cloud DNA ” and SAP providing investment to help Concur work on projects it otherwise couldn ’ t do ahead .
Singh, who helped start Concur more than two decades ago, admitted that he would have liked to run the company everlastingly. But more importantly, he said that given how Concur was a public ship’s company with shareholders, he and his executive team merely couldn ’ thyroxine turn down what SAP offered .
“ When person says, I ’ ll pay you 10.3 times of tax income [ that you generate ] next class, if you say no to that, it ’ randomness fair about you, ” Singh said, adding that he has not had one moment of regret since the acquisition .
When asked about those who criticize SAP for using and selling old bequest engineering, Singh said that “ legacies aren ’ metric ton constantly bad. ”
“ A huge majority of technical school companies with a market ceiling of more than $ 20 billion have been around for a long time — and there ’ s a reason why they are in that position, ” Singh said. “ They are very good at what they do. It ’ s fair hard to change when you do $ 20 billion in gross. ”
Donio noted that Concur, which plans to stay “ ace committed to the Seattle area, ” has been able to adapt some of SAP ’ s engineering “ that make us better. ”
“It’s not about the product; it’s about what you achieve together.”
“ There ’ s a wholly crowd of stuff that we ’ rhenium nowadays growing into that we get to gain from SAP, ” she said. “ It ’ sulfur about accepting that stuff and at the lapp time, pushing actually hard on our belief arrangement. ”
ampere far as the culture at Concur, which has been able to keep several long-time employees, it seems not much has changed from an environment described as “ transparent, truth distinguish, advanced, disruptive, and not being satisfied with the status quo. ”
“ It ’ s barely being yourself, ” Singh said. “ A party is nothing more than individuals. It ’ s the relationship between human beings that exists there — that ’ s it. Concur was about 5,000 people when SAP bought it. I can ’ t say I know all 5,000 people, but I knew a lot of them. And we knew enough about what was crucial to each person and why they were there.
“ You bond. You share not alone values, but you ’ ra very clear about where you want to go and how you measure success. It ’ s not about the product ; it ’ south about what you achieve in concert. ”
update : here ’ s the full video of the session .
