Japan’s High-Tech Reputation Spreads To B2B Sector

Japan has held a longtime reputation among the global market as one of the most progressive nations in digital technology and innovation. That reputation is reportedly spreading to the B2B industry, according to a new report released last Friday (April 24).

The ERP Market 2015 Japanese Expense Management Market Trends report, a survey launched by ITR Market Review, revealed that Japanese businesses are increasingly adapting Software-as-a-Service, cloud-based tools for expand management solutions as opposed to package model solutions.

In FY 2013, the report found that expense management software sales reached $18.3 million, representing a year-on-year growth of 66.7 percent. Experts said that this trend is expected to continue in 2014, and forecasts are projecting a 36.6 percent growth in expense SaaS sales.

SAP-owned expense management tool Concur was highlighted by researchers as the leader in Japan’s migration toward digital software tools in this arena. The report found that Concur held 54.5 percent of Japan’s expense management market in terms of sales revenue.

“Japanese companies are shifting to more profit-based structures and focusing on overhead cost management,” said Concur Japan CEO Masamune Mimura. “In particular, companies are working to improve travel and expense management with a view to raising working productivity of employees, implementing governance controls at a global level, and making expense expenditures more transparent.”

Mimura added that Concur Japan is in the midst of rolling out new services tailored to the needs of Japanese companies, including new links with traffic IC cards and route search tools for travel.

“Going forward, in the travel and expense management business we expect demand to transition from packages to SaaS cloud-based services,” the executive said.

Concur’s strengthen in Japan is not an isolated incident. The company is credited by industry experts as helping parent company SAP meet its quarterly goals. In its most recent earnings report, SAP revealed a 15 percent increase in profits in the first quarter of 2015, compared with the first three months of 2014. With Concur now on board, SAP said it expects an 86 percent growth rate of business subscription to cloud-based services.