27 Concur Technologies Interview Questions & Answers

"The biggest hurdle that I foresee me having to overcome from the start, is learning who is who in all the different departments again. I have always found that once you have found at least one great reliable resource in each department that you work with regularly to support your projects, the more productive you can be. The same can be said for learning where everything is on SharePoint, so I can bookmark everything, such as WorkForce Management, Salesforce, Service Now, etc. Besides that, I am looking forward to working for Concur again and working with the different technology that you have."

"My goals for an initial consultation with a new or existing client would be where I first introduce myself, give a little background on myself and the rest of the project team working on their implementation will do the same and then I go to the client and have them introduce themselves and give a little information about themselves and their company and their role with our new technology that we are implementing.

Then I will go over the implementation process and how it works, the standard time, the different communications, training, testing, reporting, and most importantly a potential go-live date. Sometimes the client is good with the standard timeline, sometimes they want to be more aggressive and I do my best to accommodate if possible and some clients want the go-live pushed out more due to changes happening within their company.



I will then go over the different types of calls that I will be having with the client each week, so that they know what to expect from me and how to prepare before the calls. I also let the client know that I will provide them with 24 hours of our weekly calls our call notes/action items/due dates and agenda items for our next meeting. I will then conclude the 1st call with I would like to setup reoccurring weekly calls with the team now if possible please, since we have almost everyone on the phone, so if we can all quickly check our calendars that would be great or is this a good day and time each week for everyone to have our weekly calls and everyone says yes, great. Keep in mind that if one week this day and/or time does not work for the majority of us, we can always reschedule for another day during the same same week, in order to stay on target. Does anyone have any questions, if not it was a pleasure to get to know you and I look forward to working with you over the course of the next 2-3 months and please be on the lookout for our series of meeting invites emails, as well as the recap from today and talk to you all next week."

"My previous experience with user interface design has been primarily with graphics, content, and hyperlinks. When I was a Financial Systems PM, I managed the SharePoint site, where I had to add new graphics to the home page, content, assign monthly tasks to my direct reports, post-credit card reconciliation statements, contracts, manage permissions of everyone in the 8 companies that we ran, pictures with links to take the end-user to the piece of technology needed, Concur for Expense and Invoice, Sage Intacct for my Accounting team to name two different types of technology that I used heavily daily, as I was the Administrator for all technology for the 8 companies. This experience will translate well with this role because I have firsthand knowledge of how the UI works with Concur and how to edit the messaging on the home page to tailor the clients' needs and how to customize different pop-up messages as well, when an end-user log-in if that is the way a client wants to go about sharing a message with their employees."

"The way that I stay organized and on track when I work on multiple projects or duties at the same time is by utilizing my organizational, time management, planning, and prioritizing skills. The first thing I do is create a daily checklist in order of priority and what my role will be for the task on my checklist and a realistic deadline. I sometimes do a weekly checklist as well and follow the same steps. Making sure you have no outside distractions is key to staying on track and I do my best to step away from my desk for about 15 minutes to stretch and then get right back to my list. By doing this, it has always allowed me to manage multiple projects, as well as anything ad hoc that may get thrown into my day or week, that is not planned for, such as mandatory training, last-minute team meeting, client issue where we need to jump on an internal or external call immediately to mitigate risk."

"The top two interpersonal skills that I have found to be extremely successful when handling conflict with clients are communication and active listening. I once had a client who I implemented a year prior and they were trying to reach their Client Manager, but apparently, according to the client, the voicemail did not have anyone's name and they were leaving their Client Manager numerous voicemails and have not received a return call and they called me screaming and cursing about wanting to come back to me and how they never spoke to their CM, etc. and I listened to everything my client had to say, with no interruptions. I of course immediately wanted to help my old client, but before I did that I said to my client, that I want to help you immediately and after I do if it is ok with you, I just want to ensure that you have the right contact information for your Client Manager and they said that is fair enough. I helped the client with the minor issue that they had, they moved their headquarters, so I made that change for them and one of the Admins left too, so made that change as well. The client was now much happier,, so I knew it was ok to ask them to verify with me what phone number they had for their CM and that was when it all made sense, my client was calling my old work number from a year ago, they did not have the correct information for their CM that they were using from the emails I sent to them or that their CM sent to them, so instead of telling the client this, I simply provided them with the correct number, their name and email address over the phone, as well as emailed it to the client while we were on the phone and confirmed delivery of the information and the client apologized to me left and right and I told them, it was not a problem at all. They told me by answering their call, I saved them as a client because they were ready to cancel with us and it would have been their mistake he said."

"I am applying for the Implementation Consultant role and I should not need to answer this question, but if you have any suggestions, I am happy to see them. Thank you."

"I was a trainer to all the new hire Implementation Specialists and Early Engagement Consultants for their first 5 weeks and they remained their mentors. One thing that I always said when I was being trained when I joined the team was that there was some sort of guide to turn to on how to handle the different types of client implementations that we would be assigned and a mock call flow to follow or tweak as you wanted. Part of the training is to listen to all of the members on the team that you are assigned to, at least once so that you can hear their style with the client and see if that is how you want to run your calls or not and I found to be a good and bad thing, so I decided to create my wish list for all new hires, where it listed every single project that we could get, from tmc conversions, concur professional implementations, to concur standard and so many other implementations. The guide also included step by step instructions on what you would do once you are assigned the project, to when the project is handed off to client management, different call flow step by step instructions based on the implementation with how I run my calls and links to all the most used technology tools that we require daily, so that the new hire could bookmark them and have them readily available when they had their first client. I posted the guide to SharePoint for everyone to access and the most tenured Implementation Specialists and Early Engagement Consultants reached out to me and said they started to use it as a resource."

"To me, a project is not moved out of my portfolio until it is truly in a steady-state and the client is transacting. This is the best way to ensure that the program we designed for the client is truly working. Simply because we test the software with the client before go-live and have the training with the end-users and admins on the site, the client may not use the site right away, so to say that this is when the client is at a steady-state simply because everything worked great throughout the process thus far, would not be accurate. Once the end-users start using the software is not until we know if the project is truly finished and can be handed off to client management and even when handed off to client management, my clients always know that I am available for any questions or concerns if they ever need me."

"At _________, in a similar role to this one that I am applying for, I was asked by Senior Leadership to be part of a pilot group of 7 people from different parts of the organization, to create working documents that the rest of the organization will use when we implement our travel tools to our clients.

The 7 of us all brought different skill sets and personalities to the table, a few had strong communication skills, both verbal and written, as well as detail-oriented, and is extremely organized, so each of us had to adapt to the way the other shared information with the team on their ideas, then the team offered feedback to one another both positively and in a constructive way in order to produce the best quality documents back to leadership when it was time to present to them after everything was completed after the 8 weeks. During that time there were a lot of different opinions, personalities, but we came up with amazing documents. Senior Leadership loved the documents so much that on Week 9 a client was going to be piloted using the new documents and I was selected to be the guinea pig if you will and it was a success and from what I hear, still used to this day. I love working in teams and hearing how other people would handle a situation and I also love working independently as well in this role, you get to do both, so it is a win/win."

"As an example one of the software analysis and design tools that have worked well for me to make my projects run extremely smooth and efficiently has been using the static systems model, where I use a Gantt chart, which provides a static picture of an activity-time relationship. The static system model allows you to represent one pair of relationships and by using a Gantt chart it allows you to track the progress of the project by breaking it out by resource usage, task dependencies, milestones, task responsibilities, task distinction, and task completion status. I am always looking and open to new tools to use for process improvement."

"This does not apply."

"I use the phased approach, also known as the waterfall method. I ensure that each phase of my project is completed on time and with the best quality for my clients, before moving on to the next. The software development lifecycle is made up of 6 steps, planning, implementation, testing, documentation, deployment, and maintenance. Every step is crucial to providing the best quality product to my clients so that it can be maintained later for any changes that my client may have."

"In my last Global Implementation that I worked on, one of the countries that were included in my Phase 2 rollout was Russia. From the onset of speaking with the travel manager in Russia, there were some immediate issues that came up during our initial discovery calls, when it came to Form of Payment and the fee structure that was not discussed or discovered during the sales process based on there being nothing in the contract stating what Russia legal on the client-side advised me, the Project Manager and our Agency team of what was required to be signed by both parties(the client and my company) before we even continue to push forward with the Implementation. I now had to get my leader involved, as well as our legal counsel, to draft up an addendum with the verbiage that was required by Russian law to be able to do business with us and our Partner agency and when it comes to the FOP, they also wanted that included in the addendum, as well as the fee structure broken out for them. I managed this process, while still managing the other 7 markets and 15 countries in Phase 2, where I had to still conduct my weekly calls at the different time zones, based on my client's location, and get this addendum done quickly by staying on top of legal because they were so busy and I did not want this to fall to the waist side, as time was of the essence because I needed them back on track with the other Phase 2 markets. Thankfully, due to my problem solving, communication, both verbally and written, being detail-oriented, and critical thinking skills, I was able to get the addendum for Russia, have it docusigned asap and countersigned by our legal, so we could proceed with our Implementation. I doubled up on calls with the Russia travel manager and project team, so we can make our go-live date, to make up for any time missed."

"In a previous job that I had I was working with a large group on a new product that we were about to launch for our clients. Everyone on the team was extremely upbeat and had positive things to say about the product and shared similar views, with the exception of one colleague. For some reason no matter how we delivered the views during our initial meeting, this individual did not want to listen to anyone else's point of view. I knew without the help of this colleague that our team will not be able to be productive, so I called them up immediately following our meeting, telling them how important their opinion was to myself and the group. I also shared that it is hard when working with large groups all the different points of view that we will have to listen to and accept and adapt to them, even if they are not 100% what we would have chosen completely. Thankfully after this conversation, this colleague not only accepted the team's point of view, they brought so much value to the rollout of the new product."

"I have always been a goal-oriented person both professionally and personally. A recent goal that I set for myself at my current employer is that I was working on a Global Implementation and they had a total of 5 Phases to their Implementation plan they really wanted to be live before Thanksgiving, but our actual go-live date was not until 06/Dec/21. I made sure not to make any promises to my client on the go-live date and advised them that it was dependent on some last-minute deliverables from them in order for my back office at the partner agency to complete the setup by the time the client wanted. I outlined every item that was needed by the client and with an extremely aggressive timeline and when I needed it back by. The client must have really wanted to be live early because all deliverables were received earlier than expected, I reached out to all the necessary departments and had a few internal calls and we were able to get the client's site configured, testing done, and the site reviewed by the client, all before Thanksgiving, goal accomplished and one very happy client.

I find by setting goals for myself, both short and long term, keeps me focused, driven, gives me the drive to work even harder to ensure my goals are met. Being a person who sets goals for myself, I feel that my excellent time management, planning, and organizational skills are what allow me to be so focused and driven to meet my goals.



As my manager, if I am lucky enough to be hired back with Concur, you can definitely help me achieve my goals by setting short and long term goals with me. This will then hold me accountable not only by myself, but with you, my manager as well. As my manager, you can hopefully advise me what different learning courses that are available at Concur, to make me even better at my job then I am now and whenever there are any opportunities to volunteer to help out on the team, please count me in, I love participating in special projects or whatever the need may be."

"The way that I measure a successful data integration project is by doing my due diligence and planning upfront. I then create my Project Scope document to define what is expected of us by the client and have it signed off on by the key stakeholders and/or decision-makers, and this will have a project timeline that we are expected to meet on both sides. I also add any potential risks to the project to my risk document, that may come up during implementation and post and a mitigation game for those risks. Then I review all the different systems that are involved with the data, such as extraction, any system that receives the final data, and the consolidated input. You need to know if the process is manual or not, data security must be used for data integration. Then you are ready to do your design framework for the integration. You must have a good idea if the data is structured or not, its sources, the frequency of delivery, what format will the information be delivered, excel, etc. You need to know how will the data be processed and lastly testing must be done first, using sample input data to ensure mapping is done correctly before we map the live full file in a live environment, implement with live file to client. As you can see planning is crucial for the success of really any project."

"The best example to share with you of how I have used universal design practice as a UX designer is when creating my company's SharePoint site. A UX Designers main goal is the user and ensuring that the user knows how to actually use the tools available to them on the SP site because just because I made it look good aesthetically to the eye with bright and bold colors when I was acting as the UI designer for the site, you have to make things simple and user-friendly as a UX designer or your hard work can be all for nothing, as the end-user audience you are working on a specific project are unable to comprehend the information that you shared, if it is too busy, etc.

In today's world, it is extremely important to think of accessibility and usability for products that we design so that we do not single out any target audience. The more marketable our products are due to universal design practice, the more successful as an organization we will be at Concur."

"I have always found monkey testing most effective when I was doing a site review with the client of their new program that we just implemented and now we are showing the client all the different rules that have been put in place before they roll it out to their end-users. So what I tell the client is this call is to try and "break the system, sort of speak" and get any bugs out, if any before we go live in a week, and then get your end-users trained. The way I do this is by trying to break all the rules that the client put in place. An example would be to choose the most expensive airfare, pick a larger car size than what the company preferred size is and for hotel choose a 5 star and then see what happens at the end and see if we get any errors or if we are able to book the trip successfully. If we are Implementing an Invoice for example we want to show the client that the copy downs are working properly, from the header to the line item, if that is what was put in place, the vendor details are being captured correctly and any custom fields that we added on the header of the invoice are correct and the same for the line item, check that the expense codes all loaded properly for use and last but not least the approval workflow, we want to make sure that it is working properly before we roll this out because we do not want an Invoice approved automatically based on a dollar amount in error if there was another rule that we put into effect and then it extracts overnight and if the client uses a connector, it will feed into their ERP system and create more work than needed for the client."

"The unique values that I bring to Concur for my user experience design skills are my ability to utilize my effective listening skills and my discussion capabilities to learn what the clients' requirements are to create unanimity. I also suggest product enhancements, improvement ideas, and my recommendations to the client when I see fit. I proactively ask that we have decision-makers invited to these calls, to avoid multiple calls reviewing the same content if possible, creating a positive and seamless customer experience."