“Japan Public Transport” is a function that helps to input transportation routes that are used for commuting and business trips when using Concur Expense for business expense reimbursement. The main functions are route search, IC card transaction history import, and commuter pass information import. In our previous article, we introduced four innovations in this functionality. Now, as a localization of SAP Concur, we have made further improvements on the functionality.

This improvement went through a pre-release trial from 12 customers, and after receiving many high evaluations, we released the functionality in early May 2022. After the release, we received 20 upgrade requests from existing customers within a week, and the feature has been receiving a lot of attention from customers.

From here, I will introduce three improvements for the “Japan Public Transportation” function.

Improved UI

For busy businesspeople, daily expense reimbursement may be one of the most time-consuming and tedious tasks. It is important for a business software to be visually easy to understand and intuitive in order for users to find the correct route they used from a large number of routes and submit report for reimbursement. In conjunction with the Concur Expense UI upgrade, we have improved the UI of the route search function.

Previous UI

In the previous UI, the input field was short and small, making it difficult to enter station names. In addition, the route search was only date-specific, so that it was necessary to search through a list of search results to find a route that matched a specific time.

New UI

The route search function in the New UI has larger, easier-to-read input fields. In addition, the ability to specify the time has improved the effectiveness of the search function for Japanese transportation systems, where routes can change depending on the time of the ride.

Route Details

By clicking on the arrow button to the right of the route selection button, you can see the details of the route.

Add to Favorite

A sales representative may have frequent visits to regular customers and searching for the same route each time can be time-consuming. By registering frequently used routes as your favorites, you can quickly select them for your next expense reimbursement. Registering a favorite route can be done simply by clicking on the star mark (☆).

Previous UI Expense Entry

In the previous UI, you could register multiple routes in a single expense entry. However, this meant that it was necessary to distinguish each route by eye (in the figure above, two routes were registered, one for Tokyo to Shiodome and the other for Ginza to Yokohama). Also, the details of the route search (fast, cheap, one-way, round-trip, etc.) were displayed as icons, and you had to hold the mouse over the icons to see the details.

Route Details in Expense Entry

The new UI displays details of the routes used in the expense entry, so you can see at a glance what kind of routes were used.

Search for Bus Routes

Japanese commuters and business travelers often use buses as well as trains, and a 2021 study found that there are 10,195 bus stops in Japan, which when added to the 9,900 train stations, further complicate commuting and customer visitation routes. Previously, Japan public transportation function did not have bus route for search, but with this innovation, bus routes can now be searched and added to expenses in the same way as train routes.

Bus routes

If the name of any station or bus stop is changed, it will be reflected in Concur Expense in near-real time, so there will be no inconvenience when searching.

Bus Route Details

As you can see above, bus and train combined routes are also easy to understand, with icons and details clearly displayed.

Japan Public Transport on Android

The Japan public transportation feature was only available on iPhone, but now it is also available on Android mobile devices. As you can see, it is simple and easy to use, and offers the same search capabilities as a browser.

Android App UI

Conclusion

In this post, I introduced three new innovations we have made for Japan Public Transport function.

1. UI has been improved and better visibility and usability
2. Bus rout search is enabled, which reduces manual input and helps users to submit expense report more efficiently
3. Users can use route search on Android mobile devices, which increases the range of users

Please consider migrating the NextGen UI early and try using improved Japan Public Transport function.

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For additional details:

Japan Public Transport Localization: JPT Setup Guide
SAP Globalization Services: Overview
SAP Concur Support: FAQs
SAP Concur Developer Center: API Reference
SAP Concur Developer Support: Support Options