One of the more important jobs of the accounts payable professional is keeping up with what is happening in the industry at large. This is critical for a few reasons, including skills development and the hunt for new technologies, but is sometimes difficult to do. That is why, each week, the team at Payables Place collects news stories and announcements on the people, companies, and events that can have the biggest impact on the accounts payable team; this cuts down on the amount of time that the AP professional needs to spend keeping up to date and makes it easier to get back to the task at hand—driving strategic value for the organization.
This week in payables news includes a few developments: Coupa makes its second acquisition in as many weeks, Airbnb launches a new dashboard for business travel, and Karmic Labs is working on issuing corporate cards to everyone. Read on to find out more about these and all the other impactful news from around the accounts payable world.
Coupa Brings Full Consumer Experience to Business Travel & Expense Management With Acquisition of TripScanner
This week, Coupa announced it had acquired TripScanner—a New York-based travel and expense management solution provider—in order to expand its expense management solution set. TripScanner’s solution focuses on what is called “open booking” or “open travel,” a set of policies that allows employees to book their own travel on any website they want without going through a corporate travel agency. TripScanner’s solution then maks it easy to submit that information to corporate travel managers so they can track travel expenses and focus on policy compliance without forcing employees to book through a defined portal. This way, employees can use the sites they already prefer and travel managers can easily manage compliance.
The TripScanner acquisition marks Coupa’s second in the past two weeks; they acquired InvoiceSmash, a data capture solution provider, to extend the capabilities of their eInvoicing solution in early July. The addition of TripScanner puts Coupa in a unique position to address some of the unmanaged travel currently extant in the marketplace, while also adding new travel categories to Coupa’s homegrown expense management solution. Overall, Coupa seems to be making some great calls lately in extending its solution’s capabilities through key acquisitions. It will be interesting to see where they go from here.
Airbnb Launches Global Product Suite for Businesses
Continuing in business travel news, Airbnb this week announced the launch of its new business travel-focused product suite. The new product—a travel dashboard—comes on the heels of explosive growth in the use of Airbnb for business travel; the site in 2014 announced a specialized business travel program that integrated with Concur’s TripLink, and since that time more than 200 companies have signed on to use Airbnb as part of their business travel program. The new travel dashboard allows employees booking through Airbnb to send itineraries directly back to the business, while also providing reporting and payments solutions for corporate travel managers as well as the ability to view employee activity.
The launch of this new travel dashboard makes it clear that Airbnb is trying to capture more of the business travel marketplace, which comes as no surprise—business travel is a $1.25 trillion industry, and capturing even a small portion of that pie is huge. This travel dashboard should go a long way toward making more corporate managers amenable to employees booking rooms through Airbnb, particularly small and mid-sized businesses that may not have a travel manager.
Lexmark Launches Kofax View+ for Microsoft Outlook
Lexmark announced this week the launch of Kofax View+, a document management solution that directly integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook for Office 365. View+ is designed to be a document viewing and editing toolset that includes PDF creation directly from the Outlook interface. The new solution, built on Kofax Web Capture, is a free application offered in the Microsoft Office Store for use with all versions of Outlook. It is designed to allow PDF creation with a single click and to simplify collaboration from the Outlook interface.
The solution is a good extension of Kofax’s product line since the Lexmark acquisition closed in late May. Kofax has always had solid scan and capture solutions, and extending the Web Capture functionality into an easy-to-use—and free—Outlook add-on is a strong move to get Kofax’s capabilities “front of mind” for more potential customers.
Taulia Names Eric Frankovic as Head of Global Sales
In executive leadership news, financial supply chain solution provider Taulia announced late last week that they had named Eric Frankovic as the new head of global sales. Frankovic joins the solution provider from American Express, where he was most recently the vice president/general manager for large market companies in the Global Corporate Payments Group. Frankovic, an 18-year veteran of American Express, was tapped to lead the sales organization at Taulia as a replacement for Cedric Bru, who was named Taulia’s new CEO in March.
Lavante Expands Product While Achieving Record H1 2015 Growth
Lavante announced last week an expansion of its supplier information management product offering, adding support for all major European languages and many Asian ones as well. Product updates also include improving collaboration between buyers/suppliers and enhanced fraud prevention. The new fraud prevention capabilities include checking against common terrorist watch lists and the ability for suppliers to promote their credit worthiness to buyers. The updates come in the wake of Lavante’s supplier information management solution experiencing 82% revenue growth in 2015 versus the first half of 2014.
Lavante’s dual focus in supplier information management and profit recovery make for an interesting solution provider in the marketplace. The updates to the supplier information management product are especially worthwhile in the current business environment, as more and more enterprises expand into Asia and throughout Europe. Double-digit revenue growth also signifies good things for Lavante ahead, but what those are remains to be seen.
Karmic Labs Gets $5M to Give Every Employee a Company Card
VentureBeat reported recently that startup Karmic Labs raised $5 million to go toward its goal of giving every employee a company card. Karmic’s expense management product, Dash, offers clients an unlimited number of Mastercard debit cards with access to company accounts that managers can request through the app. The cards are free so long as they are actually used; Karmic charges $5 a year for every card that sits idle. The cards offer limit controls as well as the ability to link to multiple bank accounts, and have the benefit of controlling spending through a mobile-enabled platform. The main crux here is that Dash’s debit cards make it so employees never have to dip into their personal funds and then wait for reimbursement.
The Karmic Labs product presents an interesting perspective on how to manage corporate expenses using what are, in essence, prepaid cards. On its face, it seems like this type of initiative would be more interesting to small and mid-sized businesses that do not have huge accounts payable teams—the program cuts out reimbursement entirely—and perhaps large enterprises that want to simplify the way low-value, everyday purchases are made. Regardless, it will interesting to see how Karmic makes this idea work in the long term.
Check out these related articles for more:
Payables News Weekly: Coupa Acquires InvoiceSmash; China Falls Short on Cross-Border Payments
Payables News Weekly: China Cuts Interest Rates; Nvoicepay Launches First Event
Payables News Weekly: Basware Names New Customer Care Head; Federal Reserve Keeps Rates Low
Payables News Weekly: AvidXchange Inks a New Partnership; Russia Gets Homegrown Chip-and-Pin
Payables News Weekly: AvidXchange Acquires Strongroom Solutions; Banks Approve Same-Day Payments
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