Concur CEO Steve Singh (Part 13)
Check other articles in the series...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 step now that you have acquired Gelco? SS: We have a lot on the plate right now. We have to integrate Gelco. However, if we look at the broad perspective, our job is to take the travel and expense supply chain and fundamentally re-engineer it to make it more efficient. That is what we are focused on.
If we can make it more efficient, we can get great customer adoption and our business will continue to grow progressively. After the acquisition of Gelco we will be at 6,200 customers. We need to get from 6,200 to 50,000 over the next decade. That is what we are going to focus on. Obviously if there are additional services we believe we can get to our customers, we are going to tackle that. We are spending a fair bit developing new services, and you are going to see that over the course of the next year or so.
SM: What about partnerships. Are you working with SalesForce.com? SS: Mark and I certainly know each other, and I think there is an interesting opportunity to partner on the SME market.
SM: SalesForce.com’s customer base is directly in your sweet spot. People who have to travel a lot and have to deal with a lot of expense reports. It seems like perfect synergy to me. SS: I think you have good insight.
SM: I also sense a little bit of reservation. SS: No, not at all. None at all. You have great insights. We have announced so much in the last couple of weeks, we should focus on that. We do not have a formal relationship with SalesForce yet. I could not agree with you more that there is an amazing opportunity there. Mark and I will both agree that it is a great opportunity.
SM: Anything else you would like to share? SS: I think you have done a very good job of covering this. You have an insight into our business which I think is pretty unique. You are absolutely right, especially about SME customers and the profitability increase. Also it opens a whole new market segment traditional software companies could not tap into.
SM: I think it is an exciting opportunity for you and it will all depend on execution. SS: As it always does.
SM: Good luck to you, thanks for taking the time. SS: Thank you for your time as well, I appreciate it.
This segment is part 13 in a 13 part series
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