University of Massachusetts

Project Fast Lane:

• Uniting five campuses and the President’s Office under a single travel and expense system

Client Overview:

• Scale: Over 73,000 students, approximately 10,000 employees, and USD 813 million in annual research funding; the #1 public university in New England

• Industry: Higher Education

• Region: Massachusetts, United States

• Rollout Timeline: Approximately two years of policy and standards preparation ahead of implementation, followed by a phased system-wide rollout across all five campuses [confirm exact dates]

• SCP Role: Implementation partner alongside The Peloton Group, led by Shannon Nortier, Principal Consultant

Problem:

• Fragmented, Campus-by-Campus Administration: Each campus manually monitored and enforced its own business travel and expense policies and procedures, with no unified system of record

• Patchwork of Tools: T&E ran across a mix of disconnected tools and workflows rather than a single platform, limiting system-wide reporting and control

• Manual Process Burden: Paper-driven reimbursement and approval routines slowed approvals and consumed administrative time — including roughly 2,000 bank card reports processed every month

• Decentralized Culture and Governance: Five campuses with distinct cultures, workflows and approval hierarchies made standardization genuinely difficult, while full localization would have defeated the purpose

SCP Solution:

• Single Unified Concur Instance: Deployed one instance of SAP Concur across all five campuses and the President’s Office, serving close to 10,000 employees

• Travel, Expense and Pre-Travel Approval: Implemented SAP Concur Travel and Expense with Request, selected specifically for its pre-travel approval capability and proven higher-education track record

• System Integration: Integrated Concur with UMass systems, including HR-driven user and supervisor data feeding approval workflows

• Policy-Led Configuration: Configured the platform against UMass’s rewritten travel policy and administrative standards rather than lifting and shifting legacy processes

SCP Value Proposition:

• Policy Before Platform: Supported a “policy first” approach — UMass spent close to two years reworking policy and administrative standards line by line before configuration began, which SCP identified as the single biggest differentiator in the project’s success

• True Partnership Model: Worked as an embedded collaborator rather than a vendor; UMass stayed deeply involved and invested throughout instead of handing the project off, and collaboration operated as the delivery model rather than a project phase

• Balanced Standardization: Applied the guiding principle that insisting on total standardization or accommodating every local difference would each have caused failure — calibrating where to standardize and where to flex per campus

• Methodologies Used: Policy and standards review, process design, unified instance configuration, integration, phased campus rollout, and change management with training and user enablement

Resolution:

• Unified T&E Platform: One system-wide travel, expense and reimbursement process replacing manual, campus-specific enforcement

• Automated Policy Enforcement: Policy and administrative standards embedded directly into system workflows and approval chains

• Mobile Enablement: Concur mobile app deployed to travelers for real-time expense capture, proactive trip updates and on-the-road approvals

• Bank Card Program Redesign: Reworked card processes to increase card adoption while removing the monthly reporting burden attached to it

• Change Management: Campus-level enablement, training and ongoing user support to sustain adoption across a decentralized environment

Outcomes:

• Unified System-Wide Operation: All five campuses and the President’s Office now operate on a single T&E platform with streamlined processes and faster approval times

• Key Metrics:

  • Bank Card Reports: approximately 2,000 monthly reports eliminated

  • Bank Card Usage: increased over the same period

  • Approval Times: reduced across all campuses

  • Users Onboarded: close to 10,000 employees on one Concur instance

• Improved Traveler Experience: UMass’s Chief Procurement Officer, David Cho, described the mobile app as speeding up real-time management of travel and expense needs and keeping team approval workflows moving while on the road — a clear upgrade to the UMass T&E experience

• Repeatable Blueprint: The program is now positioned publicly by SAP Concur as a blueprint for system-wide T&E transformation in higher education and other complex, decentralized organizations