Welcome to an all-new Ardent Partners feature, the ePayables Influencer Series, which will highlight innovative voices in the world of Accounts Payable (“AP”) automation. This exciting new series will be a go-to spot for progressive thoughts on how technology, transformational thinking, and revolutionary ideas are changing how AP work gets done.
Our first influencer, Matthew Wright, is an executive leader with over 25 years of experience in accounts payable, product management, solution consulting, and client services. He is now President of Symbeo, a leading provider of accounts payable services in North America. The following is a transcript of an interview I conducted with Matthew. Some of the answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Ardent Partners: What is your perspective on the AP market today?
Matthew Wright: Over the past five years, I have found more and more organizations interested in in-house solutions that provide much more control of their AP operations. This is very different from five to ten years ago, when many organizations were thinking about tackling AP automation with solutions from BPOs that offered full Finance & Accounting outsourcing. The idea of outsourcing as much of the AP process as possible was an intriguing concept for many enterprises. Leveraging technology to reduce staffing levels and having someone else run the operations was an interesting proposition. More recently, we’ve seen the pendulum swing the other way and now it’s about more than just having control.
Today, we see a rise in P2P transformation projects – and they play a key role in this shift. Organizations have recognized this as an effective approach to automation that delivers more control and oversight over the level of automation they need. By eliminating all of the manual transactions starting day one, companies can allow their people to become more strategic, keeping focus on those transformative P2P solutions. Beyond AP automation, we’re also seeing organizations look at the benefits of leveraging payment solutions. The payment space has evolved greatly over the past few years and solution providers like Nvoicepay, with which we recently announced a partnership, have a pretty cool approach to automating the whole payment side. By combining AP and payments automation, we are able to address the vendors who are laggards of manual transactions and help create a much more efficient process for AP automation within a finance organization.
Ardent: Why is getting rid of paper so important?
MW: Paper processes are very hard to get right. They’re big, expensive, and inefficient distractions in the enterprise that cause significant downstream problems when inconsistencies and inaccuracies aren’t caught. For a large and enterprise companies trying to automate the AP operation, it is very important to invest in solutions with the technology, tools, and resources to automate manual transactions in a highly accurate and straight-through process.
Ardent: What should we be paying attention to now and in the future?
MW: Organizations really need a solution that they can be confident will deliver the value that they expect, and most importantly – just not get it wrong. The second driver is tackling the integration barriers across all of the different financial systems that exist in most large corporations. We are going to be seeing more organizations continue the ongoing migration from on premise financial solutions to cloud-based solutions. Once they’ve migrated to the cloud, the integration rails inherent in those multi-tenant platforms will lend themselves to further integration with third-party providers like Symbeo. So we’re keen to take advantage of the kind of cloud-to-cloud communication that’s really powerful when these organizations move their systems into the cloud. We can overcome some of these integration barriers that have forced many companies in the enterprise space to do nothing as a status quo. They used to look at the level of effort to integrate all of these financial systems and thought, “Gosh that’s a big project, we’re just going to stick with what we’ve been doing.” So we’re keen to flatten those barriers, make integration as easy as possible, and then deliver the high rates of automation for manual transactions that finance organizations really need to succeed.
Ardent: As an executive for a FinTech provider, what keeps you up at night?
MW: Well, I sleep pretty well as a general rule. I really don’t focus on my concerns as much as I get excited about opportunities before me. For example, in the AP automation-as-a-service space, there are many solutions providers that cover only a specific region, like North America or Europe. There are not many organizations that address AP’s needs globally. So for us, the opportunity that keeps me up at night is: How do I serve that market need? Companies are now looking for a single, holistic platform that everything can migrate to. We are taking advantage of that trend by advancing our global AP solution with new technology and strategic partners to better serve that growing market.
Ardent: On a personal note, what’s your favorite book?
MW: The book that comes to mind is The Boys in the Boat. It’s a great story about perseverance and teamwork. The major theme I refer to, when speaking within our organization, is the power of rowing together. A boat will move fine if everybody’s rowing, but if everybody starts to row at the perfect rhythm and in perfect harmony, the boat just kind of rises up a little bit and it goes a little bit faster. It goes faster not because we added another rower or because we’ve got bigger muscles, it’s because everybody is working together in unity. I think that really applies to business, as well, and it’s a metaphor I use as a source of inspiration with my team. I’m always working with them to make sure that we’re rowing together, we’re not just plunking our oars into the water at any opportune moment.
Ardent: Thank you, Matt. Great insight on the book and the market in general.
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