Ardent’s FinTech Influencer Series highlights innovative voices in the world of Accounts Payable (“AP”) automation. This series is the go-to spot for progressive thoughts on how technology, transformational thinking, and revolutionary ideas are changing how AP work gets done. We continue our FinTech Influencer Series today with Chen Amit, Co-Founder and CEO at Tipalti.
Ardent Partners: Good afternoon, Chen, and welcome. Let’s get started. Please tell us a little bit about your background, your company, and how you ended up in this industry?
Chen Amit: Before Tipalti, I was CEO of Atrica. We built carrier Ethernet technology for Telco’s and were acquired by Nokia-Siemens. Before Atrica, I co-founded, and was CEO of Verix which designed business intelligence (BI) software. I’m an engineer & product person by trade.
Tipalti is my first foray into FinTech and payables. I honestly knew very little about the space, which in many ways was an advantage. I could deconstruct the problem and disrupt payables processes without the baggage of how processes used to be. Instead, it was about finding inefficiencies as an engineer and redesigning them with a digital-first mentality. The result is a very unique and scalable approach to the ePayables problem, particularly for global payments. If you wanted a system to print paper checks, that’s been done. If you want to be able to ensure a wire transfer or SEPA payment lands in Bulgaria from Brooklyn, while also making 500 payments to 189 other countries, no one was doing that at scale.
Ardent: What is your perspective on the ePayables market today?
CA: ePayables is the last mile for finance. Accounts Payable is the most antiquated of all processes that has yet to be modernized. There are still people paying vendors and suppliers with paper checks and expense management schemes. But an effective ePayables strategy can put AP on the mountaintop with financial planning & analysis (FP&A), finance operations, procurement, and risk management. Accounts Payable, after all, is the last point of control in corporate spending. And in a more digitally-based economy, where vendor payments need to happen reliably, globally, and efficiently, only AP can save itself. They need to fight for access to greater technologies.
Ardent: What should we be paying attention to now and in the future? (Technologies, trends, etc.)
CA: We recently spoke with a customer who said they view payables automation as a recruiting tool. When they’re hiring people for finance and accounting, they stress to candidates that they won’t have to deal with the hassle of onboarding vendors, keying in invoices, converting currency, logging into bank portals, triaging supplier inquiries, and manually reconciling payments.
There is a shift happening in the market where hiring to do this kind of work is not only economically senseless but will become harder because there will be no one available to do the job. Maybe for larger companies, it might make sense to hire dozens of AP clerks, but for nimble, growth-oriented unicorns, they can’t afford to waste their headcount.
So, just as automation has transformed the manufacturing sector, finance needs to understand that they can’t fall back into manual processes when technology is readily available to streamline the operation. Future finance and accounting candidates won’t stand for it.
Ardent: How has the market/industry changed in the past five years and what do you think it will look like five years from now?
CA: When we started out, AP automation was all about invoices – capturing them with OCR and storing them as documents. That was “automation.” Today, there is greater maturity and an increased understanding that AP is a complex process between the payer, the banks, and the payees. The process includes collecting data to make someone payable (invoices, bank details, tax compliance, contact information), establishing approval workflows, executing digital payments via remittance methods, communicating to the payee, and then, as quickly as possible, reconciling that data back into the ERP or accounting platform. Being able to do all this in a single stream eliminates critical process gaps that impede automation.
I really believe that in 5 years, the last person will be born who will ever have a job in “accounts payable,” if they haven’t already been born.
Ardent: As an executive at FinTech solution provider, what keeps you up at night?
CA: I sleep really well actually. We are a unique solution in the market. Our uniqueness manifests itself in 1% annual customer churn, a high growth rate, and high win rates. At this point, it’s really about maintaining a high quality of execution, growing our business, and continuing our excellent customer satisfaction rates.
Ardent: On a personal note, what is your favorite book or movie and why do you like it?
CA: When I was younger, I loved the Rocky Horror Picture Show. In my adult life, my favorite would be Pulp Fiction. Both are independent features that have layers of intricacies and are innovative in their storytelling. They’re also definitely not your standard fare, yet highly successful and had major cultural impact. I like challenges to the status quo.
Ardent: Thank you Chen for your time and sharing your insight on the market.
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