There are few solution providers that offer a full end-to-end accounts payable automation solution that includes receiving and processing invoices as well as payment functionality. As a result, the ePayables (Ardent’s term for AP Automation) solution provider marketplace remains fragmented with providers that offer either invoice processing or payment functionality. It’s the rare provider that offers a complete ePayables suite which automates the full accounts payable process from beginning to end. And notably, the few that do tend to focus on the large enterprise market.
This is why the new partnership between Yooz and Nvoicepay (which was announced Friday, January 23), is so striking. Yooz and Nvoicepay are ePayables providers that offer cloud-based solutions and target the small and mid-size business (SMB) market. To find out more about the partnership, Nvoicepay CEO Karla Friede and Yooz North America CEO Matt Williams briefed us ahead of the announcement.
Yooz, Nvoicepay, and the North American Mid-Market
Yooz is a subsidiary of ITESOFT, a French company focused on intelligent document capture, that builds on its parent’s 30 years of experience with document capture. As a result, Yooz has become a sizable player in the marketplace for automating the invoice receipt and approval processes and counts more than 1,000 global customers. Williams leads Yooz’s operations in North America, and was hired to launch the company’s U.S. business. Williams says while his company has delivered solutions and efficiencies to Fortune 500 sized companies for the past 30 years, his team is focused on the U.S. mid-market due to its market size and sheer number of enterprises to work with. Williams believes that “the cloud has enabled technology to become affordable” and this creates an opportunity for Yooz to attack an under-served market.
Nvoicepay is an ePayables provider that offers strategic payment solutions and services designed to optimize an enterprise’s B2B payments operations with the goal of realizing 100% electronic payments. Friede, who co-founded Nvoicepay in 2009, launched the company to help enterprises optimize their payment infrastructure. The Portland, Oregon-based Nvoicepay boasts several payment options, including ACH and virtual cards, as well as offering supplier enablement and payment support services.
Yooz’s focus on the first two phase of the AP process makes its partnership with Nvoicepay, which has historically focused on payments, a solid match. Friede says that the two partners are a natural fit in how both drive value to customers’ bottom lines and thus make it easier to transition to a paperless AP environment.
Friede also says that, although the partners’ focus is on the midmarket, even large enterprises have been impressed at the simplicity of the end-to-end solution. According to Friede, this speaks to how under-served the market currently is, and makes it clear that the Yooz/Nvoicepay partnership could potentially be huge for both vendors.
How does the Partnership Work?
Williams tells us that the current plan for the partnership is to offer the joint solution which Yooz will begin selling immediately as a Yooz end-to-end solution with a payments component that has a “powered by Nvoicepay” label. Williams says the next step is for Nvoicepay to begin selling the joint solution.
The two CEOs noted that they’re actively partnering on sales opportunities and Williams says that Nvoicepay is included in every Yooz presentation and demo that’s focused on selling an end-to-end solution. “When there is a need to get the effort involved on either side,” Friede says, “we jump in to facilitate the sale or they jump in to facilitate the sale.”
As it stands right now, customers must sign two separate contracts–one with Yooz and one with Nvoicepay–to use the joint solution due to the unique nature of payments liability, but the executives both report that the solution is seamless for the end-users. As a validation point, the CEOs noted that they had already signed CDK Global, provider of integrated IT and digital marketing solutions for the automotive retail industry, as the first customer on the joint solution. It was subsequently announced that CDK Global would demo its solution at an industry trade show this week.
From a sales standpoint, Williams is focused on growing Yooz’s footprint in North America (the company has a strong European presence already); it helps that Nvoicepay already is strong in the U.S., where Friede says her company currently has about 1,000 customers. Friede tells us that currently Nvoicepay will refer Yooz into their current customer base and plans to white-label the Yooz solution via the Nvoicepay platform in the second half of 2015.
Final Thoughts
End-to-end AP automation is arguably the gold standard for many enterprises. The ability to manage invoice approval and issue payments through the same platform can provide powerful cost and process savings to small, mid-sized, and large enterprises alike. Ardent Partners research has shown that B2B payments over the past two years have become an increasingly important consideration for groups looking to transform their AP operations–this means that the timing of the partnership is ideal and that the potential for the partnership and solutions like it significant, particularly in the mid-market space. Both solution providers bring deep experience in their respective parts of AP automation, so the future of their joint end-to-end solution looks promising. Regardless of what happens though, we’ll be paying attention to the partners as they advance into 2015.
Check out these related articles for more on ePayments and AP automation:
How Cloud Infrastructure Simplifies AP Automation in SMBs
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