Newly appointed SAP Concur South East Asia (SEA) Managing Director Dr Carl Jones will be responsible for coordinating the efforts of a global, cross-functional SAP team that includes representatives from sales, pre-sales, customer success, and cloud channel partnerships.
Last May, Dr Carl Jones — who was then the Regional Vice President and Head of Strategy at SAP Concur Asia Pacific (APAC) and Greater China — has been selected as Vice Chair of the Global Business Travel Association’s (GBTA) Global Sustainability Committee to supervise the region’s interest in developing strategies and solutions for sustainability performance in business travel. Dr Jones has over two decades of experience in the travel and payments market and has served in senior positions in several APAC countries such as Singapore and Thailand. His GBTA appointment further strengthens SAP and SAP Concur’s roles as market leaders in supporting organizations in incorporating sustainability into their business travel.
In his new role as SAP Concur SEA MD, Dr Jones’ responsibilities will include managing multiple business units in the market and operational support networks to improve sales processes, product pricing policies, and value propositions. In addition to this, he will represent SAP Concur on strategic initiatives such as Climate 21, which is the German software giant’s corporate effort and well-known global sustainability program aimed at building analytical and transactional capabilities into foundational enterprise applications to assist customers in better understanding and reducing the impact of their carbon footprints.
Commenting on his latest appointment, Dr Jones said in a statement:
“It is an exciting time to be leading SAP Concur efforts in SEA to engage businesses in transforming corporate travel, spend management, and employee experience while striving to help our customers achieve their sustainability goals.”
Moreover, Dr Jones believes that the present time is crucial for the development of more sustainable business practices, as it marks a shift in emphasis from restricted concerns about corporate travel to those that affect the industry as a whole. His statement comes after a recent survey found that 81% of Malaysian companies take environmental impact into account when planning business trips.
“The research findings represent a significant departure from the pre-pandemic days where Malaysian organizations were more concerned about travel cost savings than the environmental impact of their actions,” he explained.
Leading the SAP Concur Team in South East Asia
From January 2018 until May 2021, Dr Jones served as SAP Concur’s Vice President and Head of Travel for APAC. In this role, he was responsible for the commercial development of the company’s product line and ecosystem for its corporate travel range, including gaining a better understanding of customer needs, integrating cutting-edge technologies, and collaborating with key suppliers across Asia and Greater China.
As previously mentioned, he also held the position of Regional Vice President and Head of Strategy at SAP Concur APAC and Greater China from May 2021 to August 2022. In this role, he oversaw the development and alignment of the company’s regional strategic projects in cooperation with all market units throughout Asia, from Korea and China to India and SEA and Australia, as well as within the SAP Cloud Services organization. Together with other major expenditure and financial partners (banks and financial technology providers, among others), he supervised the FSI Enterprise strategy for APAC and helped propel the region’s business growth.
Sharing his thoughts about Dr Jones’ appointment as the new SAP Concur SEA MD, Matt Goss, Senior Vice President and General Manager of SAP Concur for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) and Greater China, stated that Dr Jones’ leadership and established experience will enable the team to achieve great success. According to Goss, he has “full confidence” that the SAP Concur SEA business will continue to expand significantly in the region and become a trusted partner to clients as they search for new methods to increase efficiency, maximize visibility, and improve control.
