Concur Runs Into Trouble on U.S. Govt. Contract

Uncle Sam is not happy with the Concur booking system, and he wants a refund.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has officially complained to Concur about glitches it has experienced in the rollout of Concur’s electronic booking system for federal travelers.

Concur is working with the General Services Administration to make urgent fixes.

System stability an issue
According to an Interior Department memo to employees quoted on Skift.com, Concur’s online system has been unstable. Department employees also have been encountering long wait times on Concur’s help desk.

The memo said the department was seeking “compensation for the costs we have incurred as a result of problems with the system.”

Meeting with Concur
An official with the U.S. Department of the Interior told Travel Market Report that the department had “issued a cure notice, in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulations, to ensure actionable steps would be taken to address and resolve the problems identified.”

A cure notice alerts government contractors when problems or failures to perform endanger a contract and specifies that the problems must be corrected within a specified amount of time.

In an email to Travel Market Report, the Interior Department official said the department is holding “regular meetings” with Concur’s management team “to make sure we understand the issues being encountered by the government.”

Additional resources
Concur has stepped up to the plate and already has “provided additional resources to help identify and resolve the problems DOI travelers are experiencing,” the official said.

Concur’s help desk “now has additional ‘help’ understanding the issues of our bureaus and offices,” the official said, and “we will continue working diligently with Concur to ensure its effective use.”

Concur: ‘working diligently’
A Concur spokesperson said the company’s “relationships with the GSA and the individual agencies remain strong and we are confident in our ETS2 efforts.” ETS2 is the second generation of the web-based travel management program that consolidates online bookings and expense management for the government.

As a first-time government contractor, Concur said it receives “continual feedback” on its performance and “takes any concerns they raise very seriously by dedicating ourselves to addressing them, as we would with any customer.”

Concur is “working diligently to ensure that agencies across the government will get a travel and expense system that not only satisfies contract requirements, but ultimately saves time, money, increases accountability and transparency, is easy to use and a delight to the Government traveler.”

$1.3 billion contract
Concur, which started out as a supplier of automated expense-reporting systems before branching into travel, was awarded a 15-year, $1.3 billion contract to manage travel for 70 government agencies, in 2012.

Previously, government travel was handled by Carlson Wagonlit, Northrop Grumman and EDS. Carlson filed suit and was awarded a piece of the contract in 2013.