American Express has taken a 13% position in SaaS Travel & Expense provider Concur in exchange for a $251 million cash investment and a seat on the board.

Concur has been on an acquisition spree, but cash had fallen to about $17M.  This new infusion should open up all sorts of additional possibilities given the place they occupy in the ecosystem.  Concur has already been a very partner centric business. 

I’ve chatted with Concur CEO Steve Singh from time and time and always come away impressed with the company.

While they have not yet reached the scale of Salesforce.com ($172M annual revenue versus $800+M), other key statistics such as their price to sales ratio (they trade at 9x revenue as I write this) and cash (nearly identical cash post this transaction) are suddenly the same. 

This may give Concur the fuel they need to close in to a solid #2 SaaS player position behind Salesforce.com.