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: Ariba launches its Total User Experience, Concur inks a new partnership to wrangle on-demand business travel, and Hubwoo announces its revenues for the second quarter of 2015. Read on to find out more about these and all the other impactful news from around the accounts payable world.
Ariba Launches Total User Experience
Ariba last week launched the Ariba Total User Experience™, a redesign to the company’s solutions that focuses on mobility and is designed to allow for users to switch from desktop to mobile device and back again without having to maintain multiple workspaces. The TUX, as Ariba terms it, draws consumer-style design into the business commerce workflow and allows end-users to requisition items through the Ariba Network the same way that they would shop for something on a consumer website. Ariba’s intention with this redesign, which was first announced at AribaLIVE 2015 in Las Vegas, is essentially to simplify business commerce through its network. The Total User Experience across the Ariba platform also includes ease-of-access to training and help documentation, as well as putting goal- and task-content in prominent positions on the dashboard.
Ariba’s aim to simplify business commerce is a laudable one, and the Total User Experience is yet another step in that direction. Including consumer-style shopping functionality was an interesting move, but not unexpected given that more and more professionals are clamoring for the same type of interfaces they can find on consumer-focused eCommerce portals. From that perspective, it makes perfect sense that Ariba would turn its online shopping design into something akin to an Amazon catalog. Overall, the Total User Experience is a solid move that shows how serious Ariba takes its simplification goal, and we will be watching to see where they go next.
Concur Partners with Lyft and HotelTonight to Meet Growing On-Demand Needs of Business Travelers
Concur announced this week it had inked two new partnerships—with Lyft and HotelTonight—as part of its drive to simplify business travel by making on-demand travel apps easy to use with its solution. This time last year, Concur brokered partnerships with Uber and Airbnb for the same reason, so there is a distinct trend for the company to integrate its solution with on-demand travel applications. Lyft is an Uber competitor in the ride-sharing marketplace, and HotelTonight is designed to offer last-minute deals on hotel rooms ranging from basic to deluxe rooms. Concur noted in the announcement that they had seen a 7x increase in Concur-user spending on Lyft; according to HotelTonight data, 40% of bookings are business-travel related.
Integrating with yet more on-demand travel solutions is practically a no-brainer for Concur. The travel and expense management provider has long advocated for what it calls “The Perfect Trip,” and integrating as many travel apps as possible makes that easier to achieve. The new deals with Lyft and HotelTonight will allow business travelers to leverage those apps and send the expenses directly into the Concur application without having to take further manual steps; this is intended to simplify the employee’s life and that of the corporate travel manager as well. It is likely that Concur will continue integrating more apps like this, and it is only a matter of time to see what the next one will be.
Tradeshift Platform Achieves Rapid Global Adoption and Expansion
Tradeshift last week announced that it had experienced monthly growth of 200% in transactions over the past several months, as well as 2.2 million app activations on its platform. The company credits its success to landing several major clients, including Air France and German auto software maker Eberspächer, as well as to its open supplier-collaboration methodology that allows its platform to function similar to an App Store with third-party programs that extend Tradeshift’s capabilities. The apps currently extant on the platform include Procurement, AP Automation, Supplier Management, and Working Capital functionality.
Tradeshift is something of an unusual player in the business network marketplace. As previously mentioned, the company manages its platform similar to an App Store, which allows third-party providers to use the Tradeshift API and offer their own applications on the platform. This means that Tradeshift can grow a variety of capabilities without needing to code their own software; such a setup has meant that the company can add new functions much quicker than a company where everything must be coded in-house. The growth Tradeshift has experienced is certainly impressive, and we will be watching to see where they go from here.
Hubwoo Announces Q2 2015 Revenues
Hubwoo this week announced its second quarter revenues for fiscal 2015, noting a decline of 10% over Q2 2014 to €6.2 million from €6.9 million. Revenues from Hubwoo’s SaaS business also declined 6%, from €5.6 million to €5.2 million, while Services revenue dropped 25% to €1.0 million from €1.3 million. The company said that Saas revenue has contracted quarter-over-quarter because of the end of customer contracts, which has been a consistent trend over the past eight quarters. Hubwoo’s stock has traded at either €0.18 or €0.19 since early June (it closed at €0.18 yesterday), when Perfect Commerce tendered an offer to acquire the Paris-based business network.
That tender offer closed on Wednesday, July 29, in accordance with the rules from the French investment authority, Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF). Another company has not stepped up to challenge Perfect Commerce, so this earnings could be one of the last that we see from Hubwoo (Perfect Commerce is a subsidiary of CorMine LLC and does not report its earnings publicly). Given that Hubwoo’s revenues over the past few quarters have shown significant struggle, acquisition by Perfect Commerce looks more and more like the best way for Hubwoo to survive and thrive.
U.S. Bank and Chrome River Strengthen Partnership, Add Benefits for Joint Customers
At the Global Business Travel Association show this week, U.S. Bank and Chrome River announced a strategic partnership that integrates U.S. Bank’s business travel payment tools with Chrome River’s expense reporting solution. As a result of this partnership, Chrome River will become the bank’s preferred expense management vendor and joint customers will be able to use a single sign-on for both solutions. This is intended to create a seamless experience for joint customers and further tighten the relationship between the two companies. U.S. Bank will continue to offer integration into any expense management solution their clients want, but Chrome River’s solution will be fully integrated into the U.S. Bank solution straight out of the box.
This type of integration between two complementary solutions is fairly common in the larger solution provider marketplace, so it is not too unusual to see U.S. Bank taking this step. This is practically a no-brainer for Chrome River as well, given that U.S. Bank is fairly sizeable player in the financial services sector; the sheer size of the market this opens to Chrome River can be a game-changer for practically any solution provider. This integration could perhaps also convince some U.S. Bank clients to look at Chrome River who maybe have not before. Either way, a good move for both solution providers.
American Express Global Business Travel Appoints Cindy Allen as Chief Marketing Officer
American Express Global Business Travel announced last week that it had appointed Cindy Allen as the chief marketing officer (CMO). Allen is going to oversee the brand positioning, marketing, product marketing and corporate communications, and industry relations functions for Global Business Travel around the entire world. She joins American Express from Concur, where she was the vice president of travel management company services, and had previously served as CEO and COO of GDSX prior to its acquisition by Concur. Allen will report to Steve Curts, Global Business Travel’s chief strategy officer.
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