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 Software has acquired Australian scan-and-capture provider InvoiceSmash, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen holds steady on rate increases, and China rolls out a scaled-back version of its cross-border payments system. Read on to find out more about these and all the other impactful news from around the accounts payable world.
Coupa Acquires InvoiceSmash to Drive B2B Commerce Transformation
Coupa Software announced recently that it had acquired InvoiceSmash, an Australian firm dedicated to automating data capture and workflows for accounts payable. Cloud-based InvoiceSmash also has some unique “learning” capabilities, where the solution recognizes similarities and differences in submitted invoices—sent to a unique email address—so that it can better extract relevant data and send it to the buyer’s accounting system. The InvoiceSmash solution extracts data directly from the text/PDF of the submitted invoice, rather than using OCR, and is designed to be integrated via API into the buyer’s accounting/ERP software. More to the point, the solution will automatically create profiles for new suppliers if it receives an invoice from a new company.
This is a very good acquisition for Coupa, which prides itself on eliminating the supplier enablement process from its solution. InvoiceSmash does this handily, in addition to the solution’s ability to completely automate invoice data extraction and create templates based on repetitive invoice submissions. Coupa plans to make InvoiceSmash’s capabilities available to select Coupa customers later this year as it works to integrate the Australian company’s functionality into its current invoicing software.
Coupa Continues Accelerated Growth In Europe
In more news about Coupa, the solution provider also last week announced it had opened a new European hub in Dublin. The office in the Irish capital is the fourth such Coupa location in Europe, behind locations in London, Frankfurt, and Paris. Coupa already employs 60 people—most of those in Dublin—across EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) with plans to employ 120 additional people at the Dublin location in the next three to five years.
Between the InvoiceSmash acquisition and the new Dublin office opening, Coupa looks clearly on a growth trajectory. The solution provider is adding capability and headcount left and right, as well as hanging its shingle on the fast-rising prominence of spend management technology and accounts payable automation. It will be interesting to see what move Coupa makes next.
Basware Releases Interim Earnings Report
Basware last week released its earnings report for the first half of 2015, reporting results from January 1 to June 30. The Finnish eInvoicing solution provider reported a 12.4% growth in net sales, from €62.85 million to €70.63 million and a 45.1% growth in net sales of network services. Net sales for the second quarter of 2015, April to June, rose 14.9% from €31.83 million to €36.59 million; network services net sales grew 51.9% in the second quarter alone.
These are overall heartening results for Basware, which also reported that the first customers have signed onto Basware Pay and Basware Discount—the solution provider’s new financing tools—and noted that negotiations with several new financial institutions about collaboration opportunities are ongoing. With a worldwide push around eInvoicing, including a recent Crown Commercial Service push to have UK government organizations ready to accept eInvoices, Basware looks to be on solid financial footing to compete.
China’s Payments System Scaled Back; Trade Deals Only – Sources
In an exclusive report, Reuters revealed that the Chinese government had scaled back its promised international payments system for cross-border yuan transactions. The weakened payments system will focus solely on international trade deals, which the Reuters report notes will hamstring billions of dollars of securities transactions and foreign direct investment in mainland China. The People’s Bank of China has pushed for the payments system, called China International Payments System (CIPS), since 2012; the technology is meant to replace the network of yuan clearinghouse banks spread throughout the world.
This is the second major setback for CIPS, which was delayed last year due to technical difficulties. The system is important if China wants to grow the international profile of the yuan, and make Shanghai—where CIPS would be based—into more of a hub for cross-border yuan transactions by 2020. Right now, CIPS will act as a complementary network to the Chinese clearing bank network rather than replace it wholesale when the system launches later this year. Only time will tell if China can get CIPS working the way it should.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen: Interest Rate Hike to Come ‘Later This Year’
CNBC reported last week that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen expects to raise interest rates later this year. The Fed leader was speaking to a gathering of the City Club of Cleveland, and left herself and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee wiggle room to raise rates before the close of 2015—assuming of course that the economy continues on its current positive trajectory. Yellen noted that job creation is up and unemployment is down, but she did not give any sort of hard expectation of when rates would increase.
The Federal Reserve’s interest rates have remained near zero for a decade, with the express aim to spur investment and make it easier for banks to lend. An increase in the federal interest rate would make it more expensive for banks to borrow money from the Fed, and would potentially trigger a rise in both interest rates offered on loans as well as the annual percentage yield on the cash in enterprise bank accounts. Loaned money would become more expensive, but attractive to banks, and cash in enterprise accounts may also start growing more. All this speculation is moot, however, if the Fed does not actually raise rates this year.
Bill.com Launches New Mobile App for Magically Simple Business Payments on the Go
Bill.com last week announced the launch of its new iOS app, designed to allow small businesses to manage and approve payments from their mobile device. The iOS app allows Bill.com customers to sort bills by due date, vendor name, amount, or time pending in the queue as well as make, schedule, and cancel payments at any time right from the user dashboard.
Mobile functionality is critical for a wide swath of enterprise applications, including those focused on the accounts payable workflow. The rollout of this mobile app helps Bill.com customers that are consistently on the go, which is typical of small business owners, to manage a critical part of their AP workflow without sitting at a desktop or laptop computer. In some cases, the time savings accrued from having payment-approval capability on your mobile phone can make a huge difference in business results.
Check out these related articles for more:
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