On September 22, G2 released its quarterly fall reports, which contain several grids and reports highlighting the voice of real software users collected from authenticated, unedited, unbiased G2 reviews through August 30, 2022.

What are G2 quarterly reports?

G2 offers three main types of quarterly reports: Grid®, Index, and Momentum. Products included in the reports have received both a minimum of 10 reviews and 5 responses from users for each of the results-related questions featured in the review form. These ratings may change as the products are further developed, the sellers grow, and users share additional opinions. A new report will be issued for a category as significant data is collected.

Based on these reports, badges are also awarded to products for different metrics: Best Results (highest overall Results score), Best Estimated ROI (based on a combination of estimated time to ROI and time to go live), Users Most Likely to Recommend (highest likelihood to recommend score), and Highest Quality of Support (highest overall quality of support score).

Each report is explained in more detail below:

Grid®

The G2 Grid® reports compare products in a given category based on satisfaction and market presence scores. G2 rates products and sellers from each category algorithmically based on data sourced from product reviews shared by G2 users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks. A unique algorithm is then applied to this data to calculate the Satisfaction (x-axis) and Market Presence (y-axis) scores in real time.

Indexes

G2 offers four index reports that aggregate several data points collected from verified user reviews to provide a unique and focused score for evaluating a single factor in the software purchase process:

Implementation Index: This highlight some of the factors which contribute to a product's overall Implementation score, such as ease of setup and implementation time.

Relationship Index: This contains some of the factors which contribute to a product's overall Relationship score, such as ease of doing business with, quality of support, and likelihood to recommend data.

Results Index: This spotlights some of the factors which contribute to a product's overall Results score, such as estimated return on investment, meets requirements, user adoption, and likelihood to recommend.

Usability Index: This features some of the factors which contribute to a product's overall Usability score, such as ease of admin, ease of use, and meets requirements.

Momentum

Momentum reports show the growth trajectory that products have had in their respective spaces over the last year based on user satisfaction scores, employee growth, and digital presence.

Why expense management

In the last 12 months, the Expense Management category has become the 15th most visited software category on G2 (out of approximately 1600 software categories), putting it in the top 1% of all software categories for traffic. 

With 300 products and more to follow, the category is also very competitive, with 32 products fighting for position in the upper-right Leaders quadrant alone. With a total of 93 products on the entire grid, and an average of 277 expense management reviews per product, there is a wealth of information uncovering the buying habits of users, what they like, and maybe more importantly, what’s not working for them. 

With data from the G2 fall reports, we can reveal the most up-to-date trends in this category.

Where top vendors excel

The top five vendors in the Expense Management Grid® for fall 2022, based on their G2 score (the average of their satisfaction and market presence scores), are: SAP Concur, TripActions, Expensify, Airbase, and Brex. Four of these vendors were also in the top five from our summer 2022 reports. So what are these vendors doing better than the rest that keeps them at the top of the pile?

The biggest differentiating factor, which comes from our Results and Usability index scores, is the ability of a software to meet the requirements of the customer. This makes sense because when a customer has a need and/or a problem to solve, they want a solution that will cover all of their requirements, and then some, to not only solve their problem but improve on it. The average Meets Requirements score in the Fall 2022 report is 91%, while the top five vendors received an average score of 94%. Other notable ratings where these vendors excelled were Quality of Support (Relationship Index), Ease of Use (Usability index), and Likelihood to Recommend (Grid®).

Another common trait among the top 10 vendors in the reports is the fact half of them also have travel management and spend management features. This goes back to the meets requirements scores; expense management is necessary, but it is also complicated, tedious, and not fun. It also goes hand in hand with travel management because a lot of expenses are incurred while traveling (airfare, lodging, meals, etc.), so users want a single solution that can manage both of these functions effortlessly. And when managing employee-initiated expenses, why not manage company-wide spend as well, such as raw materials and components, or services such as marketing and subscriptions? 

Spend management can be seen as an extension of expense management, and therefore, more and more products can handle both types of spend, allowing companies to fulfill multiple requirements within one system.

The grid vs. momentum reports

Another important factor for buyers when considering buying or replacing their current platform is the growth trajectory, or momentum, that products have had in their respective spaces in the past year or so. These scores, a combination of satisfaction scores, employee growth, and digital presence, among others, are significant because purchasing new software can be an expensive, long-term investment. Users want to ensure that the product they select will continue to improve and fulfill their business needs in the future.

So, are the top vendors on the grid report the same as the top on the momentum report? The short answer is no. Only two (Airbase, Brex) of the top five products on the grid report are in the top five of the momentum report. One metric that sets these two vendors apart is the fact that they have an average momentum score of 86.5, while the remaining three have an average of 69. This data shows us that not only is product satisfaction important to a user, but the overall direction of a company plays a big part in a buyer's decision process.

The future of expense management

As the expense management category expands, so do the type of vendors that populate it. As mentioned earlier, one of the traits that the top vendors share is that they offer related features in one platform, giving the user a one-stop shop for spend-related needs. However, we’re now seeing vendors who were originally outside of the spend/expense management field creating platforms and integrations to satisfy these exact requirements, making buyers think differently when it comes to selecting spend management software.

One example is core HR and payroll software provider Rippling. They recently released a new product called Rippling Spend Management, which is designed to manage a company’s spend and expense management alongside Rippling’s current payroll software. Adding expense management to their ecosystem will not only allow customers to manage their HR/payroll/expense management in one ecosystem but also broadens Rippling’s potential customer base to new categories where they once had no presence.

New additions to the expense management category like this demonstrate that not only will the category continue to grow, but vendors will incorporate new and improved expense management features into their existing platforms. This will provide users with a more seamless experience when managing related workflows, such as travel, expense, spend, and HR management. As the fall reports suggest, to be competitive in this space, products must excel in meeting the requirements of the customer, be easy to use, and have good customer support.

Edited by Jigmee Bhutia