Olympus’ SAP Concur journey: driving standardization, compliance, and employee satisfaction across Asia Pacific

At Olympus, our purpose has always been clear: to make people’s lives healthier, safer, and more fulfilling. Founded in the 1950s in Japan, we have since grown into a leading MedTech company with nearly 30,000 employees across five major regions (Asia Pacific, Japan, China, EMEA, and the Americas). Guided by values of patient focus, integrity, innovation, impact, and empathy, we deliver advanced solutions across gastrointestinal, surgical, respiratory, and urology care.

In Asia Pacific, with over ten offices, we faced a growing challenge: fragmented, manual processes for expense management that were time-consuming, inconsistent, and difficult to oversee. As a global team, we needed a unified platform that was standardized yet flexible enough to adapt to local regulations, intuitive for users across diverse backgrounds, and seamlessly integrated into our core SAP ERP. That’s when we began our SAP Concur journey.

Why SAP Concur?

The decision was driven by three priorities:

• Standardization: A consistent process across our many offices.
• Compliance and Flexibility: Built-in adaptation for local rules and policies.
• User Experience: A mobile-friendly, intuitive solution for employees with diverse needs.

SAP Concur delivered on these priorities, while also integrating effortlessly into SAP, our ERP platform. Over the past two to three years, we implemented Concur across multiple entities in Asia Pacific. Here are some highlights of that journey.

Key implementations and wins

Thailand: empowering field teams with mobile expense management

Previously, Thailand’s expense process was entirely manual. For our many sales and field officers, that meant spending time in the office dropping off receipts or liaising with admin teams after long days on the road. With Concur’s mobile app, employees can now submit claims on the go—simply by photographing receipts during travel. This shift not only eliminated paperwork but also boosted employee satisfaction by dramatically reducing time spent on expense management.

Hong Kong: streamlining business trip approvals and reporting

In Hong Kong, employees once had to file separate requests for business trip approvals and expense claims. With Concur, the pre-trip approval automatically converts into an expense report, making the process seamless. Managers benefit too, reviewing fewer duplicate claims. Additionally, we introduced customized reporting in Hong Kong, allowing teams to track spending patterns, travel activity, and costs with greater precision.

Singapore: ensuring compliance and tight integration

As our Asia Pacific headquarters, Singapore has strict governance and compliance requirements. Concur allowed us to embed audit rules and claim policies directly into the system. Claims that don’t meet policy are automatically flagged, reducing manual intervention and ensuring transparency. Integration with SAP further accelerated reimbursement cycles: once a claim is approved in Concur, it is posted instantly into SAP, removing the need for manual reconciliation and freeing valuable admin time.

Australia & New Zealand: simplifying corporate card reconciliation

Corporate card usage in ANZ is particularly high. Before Concur, reconciliation between card statements and SAP required significant manual effort and was prone to errors. With direct integration, reconciliation is now automatic, eliminating discrepancies and reducing rejected claims. Employees benefit from smoother reimbursement cycles, and finance teams gain confidence in data accuracy.

The impact

Across Asia Pacific, SAP Concur has automated and digitized what was once a highly manual process. The integration with SAP has been a true game-changer—reducing manual workloads, improving compliance, and enhancing employee satisfaction. From Thailand’s mobile-first approach, to Hong Kong’s streamlined trip management, to Singapore’s compliance governance, and ANZ’s corporate card reconciliation, each region has realized clear benefits.

For Olympus, Concur has done more than modernize expense management: it has created a consistent, transparent, and employee-friendly claims infrastructure that supports our mission of improving lives by improving how we work.