Business trips can be fun, but expense reports are not. A new service by Concur aims to take the pain out of the business trip, especially for heavy travelers.

Last week, Concur unveiled Trip Maximizer for its Salesforce.com (News - Alert) travel and expense management solution, Concurforce. Trip Maximizer improves the business travel planning and booking process for those who need to visit with clients and prospects in the field.

Using Trip Maximizer, field agents can now start a business trip from within Salesforce by opening a record within Salesforce Sales Cloud and entering initial travel plans. They then will be shown recommendations for additional sales opportunities during the trip using their other contact within the system. These additional meeting opportunities can be added to the traveler’s calendar and itinerary with a few clicks, according to the company, eliminating the need for an e-mail back and forth and entering data into several applications.

Trip Maximizer also provides dining recommendations and automatically shares itinerary details with relevant colleagues through Salesforce Chatter, making travel plans that much easier for the road warrior.

“We're making life easier for field sales and client service functions - the real drivers of revenue and client satisfaction in today's social enterprises,” said Concur executive vice president Elena Donio, in a statement about Trip Maximizer. “Couple that with the ease of integration with the Salesforce Platform, now every Concurforce client has access to unprecedented capabilities for managing travel and expense, enhancing the business travel experience and driving additional value as companies make the transition to social and mobile cloud technologies within their business.”

Concurforce is a Salesforce app that simplifies travel for frequent business travelers. With Concurforce, travelers can collaborate on business trip details via Salesforce Chatter, turn travel reservations from any travel vendor into a single organized itinerary via TripIt, convert their travel plans automatically into an expense report, gain insight into costs associated with sales opportunities, eliminate paper receipts, and use their smartphone to manage travel expenses, among other features, according to the Concur website.

“Since implementing Concurforce we have increased visibility into our T&E spend, with a deeper understanding of the cost vs. opportunity for each account,” said James Mayfield, business analyst for Cascade Orthopedic Supply, a Concurforce user.

Best-in-class companies are nearly 46 percent more likely to integrate CRM with expense management systems such as Concurforce, according to recent research by Aberdeen. The Aberdeen (News - Alert) study also found that these companies experienced 56 percent lower expense-processing costs than those who did not link their expense management with CRM.

“Companies around the globe are transforming the way they connect with customers, partners and employees through social and mobile cloud solutions,” said Mike Rosenbaum, senior vice president AppExchange and Force.com Operations for Salesforce. “Partners such as Concur are leveraging the power of the Salesforce Platform to provide customers with the right tools to accelerate their success in the cloud.”

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