Originally published Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 12:00 AM
Northwest 100 Top Five
Number 4 | Concur Technologies has ambitious financial goals
Concur expects to grow its top-line revenue by at least 25 percent each of the next three years, and it wants to use economies of scale and cost controls to improve its operating margin by at least one percentage point each year.
Founded: 1994
Headquarters: Redmond
Operations: Washington, California, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia; Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, the U.K.
CEO: Steve Singh
Employees: 575
Major products/services: Software that employees use to book business travel and report expenses
Special sauce: Concur's rapid shift from selling software on discs to selling it as an online subscription service; almost 90 percent of its 2007 revenue came from subscriptions.
Fourteen years after his brother co-founded Concur Technologies, and 12 years after taking on the chief executive's job, Steve Singh can look back with a sense of accomplishment. Some 7,000 companies around the world use Concur's expense-reporting or travel-booking software; 900 were added in the first half of fiscal 2008.
Except Singh is looking forward, not back. The goal now, he said, is "How do you get from 7,000 to 50,000 as quickly as possible?"
One step toward that goal came last year, when Concur bought the parent of Gelco Information Network. The Gelco deal, Singh said, was "largely a consolidation of the market — we bought one of our competitors. But they did have some technology that was additive."
That technology, software that automatically pays employees for their reimbursable expenses, now is called Concur Pay, a product launched earlier this year. It joins the company's flagship travel and expense-reporting products.
A combined travel-expense package, in the works since last year, has been "successful beyond what we expected," Singh said. In the fiscal second quarter, which ended March 31, 40 percent of new customers bought the combined product, Singh said; 35 to 40 percent of existing customers have upgraded to it.
Singh has ambitious financial goals as well. Concur not only expects to grow its top-line revenue by at least 25 percent each of the next three years, it wants to use economies of scale and cost controls to improve its operating margin by at least 1 percentage point each year.
"Our view is, you shouldn't just focus on top-line growth," he said.
As the U.S. economy slows, you might expect companies to cut back on technology spending, imperiling some of Singh's goals. But so far, he said, that's not been the case.
The question more companies are asking, he said, is: "In a tougher economy, how do you take those manual processes [for booking travel or filling out expense forms] and drive down costs?"
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
Nintendo re-enlists Mario, savior of video-game industry
Verizon-Frontier deal stirs concern among consumers
Brier Dudley: 'Guitar Hero' founder excited about future
Gaps for consumers in Democrat health care bills
Hutch gets $10M from Bezos family for immunotherapy research

PNW Magazine | Easy As Pie
A little friendly competition between professional pie-baker Kate McDermott and The Seatttle Times' Kathleen Triesch Saul is handled with great taste.
nwautos
Local riders say they've seen a surge in scooter interest in recent years, mostly from people wanting another commuting option. Seattle now ranks as o...
Post a comment
nwjobs
Post a comment
Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
Do you suffer from "sitting disease"?
Post a comment
- 'The Road' takes Viggo Mortensen to Mount St. Helens and Astoria, Ore.
- Tugboat sinks at Seattle waterfront pier
- Illegal workers quietly let go
- Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
- Vikings easily beat the Seahawks
- Craigslist adoption ad: A plea by young mother-to-be? A scam?
- Chase shrugs off loss of CD investors
- Woman stabbed by stranger in North Seattle
- Snow piles up on Cascade slopes
- Denny Triangle gains skyline, but tenants slow to come
- Illegal workers quietly let go
396 - Climate change speeds up since 1997 Kyoto accord
213 - Metro won't cut bus service after all
160 - New Husky recruit: Enes Kanter
102 - Tattoos at Mill Creek Church pierce skin, soul
85 - Middleton says Huskies "plan on scoring at least 50 points'' Saturday
84 - Jerry Brewer: Seahawks can't lean on the Hutch Crutch now
75 - Bellevue residents blast new bikini espresso stand
71 - Seattle woman charged with knife attack on boyfriend's ex
71 - UW, WSU once again meet to see who's worse
68
- Sprouts, raw fish on attorney's 'do not eat' list
- Tattoos at Mill Creek church pierce skin, soul
- Food-safety lawyer's wish: Put me out of business
- Illegal workers quietly let go
- Architects, chefs find 'kid' within to build Gingerbread Village
- Rediscovering Moab, 'the most beautiful place on Earth'
- It's possible to recover a life lost to hoarding
- Child-support error costs nearly $21,000
- 'The Road' takes Viggo Mortensen to Mount St. Helens and Astoria, Ore.
- Taste | The Great Pie Bake-off pits friends and fruit





