A few weeks ago, Corcentric announced that they were combining business operations with its parent company, AmeriQuest Business Services, under the Corcentric company name (read Ardent’s initial coverage of the announcement from our P2P Technology Round-Up here). This week I was able to connect with Corcentric’s VP of Marketing, Kate Freer, and other members of the Corcentric marketing team to discuss the brand unification announcement and the strategy behind it. Below is a recap of our conversation.
Company Background
AmeriQuest Business Services and AmeriQuest Transportation Services were originally founded in 1996 as a group purchasing solution provider, targeting trucking fleets to help deliver their goods to market. Two decades ago, AmeriQuest founder Doug Clark realized that to scale the company, they would need to provide invoice automation capabilities to better round out their solution. AmeriQuest was able to accomplish this when it started a partnership with financial process automation provider, Corcentric. The partnership, which began in 1998, helped AmeriQuest streamline the invoicing process, and as both businesses continued to grow, AmeriQuest ended up acquiring Corcentric in 2002.
Over the last decade and a half, Corcentric has expanded the breadth of its AP capabilities and in the last few years introduced its new cloud-based Cor360 AP automation platform. In 2016, Corcentric acquired eInvoicing provider, InfoAccess.net, to address the need for eInvociing capabilities and continue to round out its product offering. Corcentric has also partnered with payments provider, Corporate Spending Innovations (formerly CSI globalVCard), to complete its invoice-to-pay offering and provide customers with functionality across the entire procure-to-pay (P2P) process.
A Unifying Strategy
About a year ago, Corcentric, and its parent company AmeriQuest, embarked on a brand unification initiative in order to bring together the two business units, and to better reflect business users’ centralized P2P needs. The brand unification will help Corcentric position itself as a full P2P provider, to better help customers and prospects with all of their procurement and AP needs. The combined organization decided to go forward under the Corcentric brand, which was the logical choice as Corcentric has much better brand recognition in the P2P marketplace.
Final Thoughts
Ardent Partners has written for years that taking a holistic approach is a Best-in-Class strategy for practitioners in the P2P space. Leveraging technology to drive business value is an important organizational capability and most procurement and finance departments still have room for improvement in that regard. Utilizing full P2P systems and processes can be a huge differentiator for end user organizations, and an investment in P2P automation can pay large dividends. Corcentric recognized this approach, and by unifying all of its offerings under the Corcentric brand, have better positioned itself to help address customer needs and market requirements.
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