What the future of AP automation looks like

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Welcome to the Did You know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders and executives at amazing technology companies that can help your business save time and money, and grow. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business. 1.3s Hello, everyone. This is Victor with varisource. Welcome to another episode of the Digital Podcast. Today we have Omar, who is the CTO and co founder of a company called Payam with us today. Payam essentially, is a single platform connecting procurement and finance with automation. I love automation more than anybody, but obviously automation and procurement and finance is very difficult. So we're super happy to have you on there.

Thank you very much, Victor. It's a pleasure being here, and thank you for inviting me.

Yeah, a lot of times we have different executives on the show, but not often do we have CTO. So I'm sure you can also give us a lot of different angles and insights, but why don't you maybe give the audience a little background about yourself? And one of the things we love hearing from founders like yourself is why pay them? Like, what was the AHA moment? How did you go from your past experience to starting pay them to solve this problem for you? Why not? 1.4s Yeah, so I believe that's actually interesting story and how we got to starting Bam. Maybe I'll say a few words about myself and then I'll kind of deep dive into our story. So I'm Homer, 1.1s and I'm basically a software engineer by training and always been coding since an early age. Page I worked previously in a startup where I met my co founder, Itamar, which is the cofounder and CEO. And 1.3s I think mostly this is where Pam Raw idea started. So 1.1s in our previous startup, we've we kind of saw some, 1.3s let's just say issues with expense reimbursements. We actually worked with cutting edge technology at a time for expense reimbursement. There was a lot of friction within the organization and anything finance, we saw 1.2s that there's. 2s Let's just say a deficiency 2.4s in platforms to help startups operate. Startups want to operate quickly, they want to operate fast, but they still want to have controls and sometimes the controls are not very fit to the new age technology startup. And so the raw idea actually, I remember this, we were driving back from work in my car, Tamara and I, and we discussed this, like the very raw idea of creating a generic credit card for Reimbursement. That was kind of the first idea. And we believed in it, we really believed in it and we went through with it and we funded Pay Them. 1.1s And that was kind of the first MVP that we tried to achieve. We tried to achieve an MVP which has a credit card, physical credit card, for employees to actually automate Reimbursements, just to pay with the card, receive a receipt and basically send it to the, ERP the least friction for the employee as possible. And I think that theme has stuck with us. I know today 1.3s there's a term for this, or what I'm just referring to, is basically expense management, but that was our raw idea and that's where we started. 1.3s But the theme of helping the employee employee navigate the financial operations 1.5s within the company is still on our mind and we try to ease the employee as much as possible today as well. So this is kind of how we started 1.9s and I think. 1.6s Where we're at today is a whole different 1.2s angle of that. What we build today at Am is, as you said in the beginning, we're trying to connect procurement and finding schemes together. We are an all in one solution where you can actually start from the requisition process, which is the employee based typically submits a request. It goes through this specific approval flows, which we have very customizable tree of approval flows, which companies can utilize for their behalf through entire procurement flows to the payment method, to reconciliation of those transactions to the ERPs we support today. Of course, it started with physical virtual cards. We now have ACH wire, crossborder payments, and we are going to launch physical and electronic checks in the next week. 1.6s

So, yeah, that's what we're doing.

Yeah. When we first 1s talked to you in Edamar, obviously we saw a lot of companies, even with hundreds of employees, big finance teams, they were still doing a lot of things manually through spreadsheets. And what we saw is a lot of companies have spent analytics tools. They have corporate cards, they have API, they have so many tools, they were using it. And any time you have to use three or four different tools. 1.2s To manage one area, it becomes very challenging because you have to log into different tools and those tools don't talk to each other. And then we saw the challenge of that. So when we first approached you guys and saw how you solve the financial, the AP Automation side of things, the corporate card, we were really amazed. And then you showed us you are like incorporating five to six different tools and functions into one, which is amazing and at a fraction of the cost 1s that these companies 1s would have. Right? You can potentially replace a Brexit, you can potentially replace 1.5s a Concur, you can replace potentially a lot of different things. I want to kind of break it down one by one, 1.3s obviously 1.3s just from the AP Automation side. What are some of the main challenges that you see in the market with SMB and Mid market today when it comes to AP automation? Why is it still so much spreadsheets? 1.4s Our company just not familiar with these type of fintech technologies out there. 1.9s Why do you think they kind of a lot of companies still kind of use that spreadsheet method? And what are the challenges, what are the downside of doing that?

There are a lot of companies that are using a lot of tools in that space and then the financial space, and each tool does something very well. That's why they use it. But I believe 1.6s the problem starts when those tools have to kind of talk to each other. And that's where I believe that's what Pam does best. Okay? So we can actually it's one platform, it communicates with one ERP, there are no disconnections between integrations and it's basically a seamless integration for the entire processes. 1.1s And that's, I believe, something that that's very strong and fame in general. 1.8s You were talking about the Apimation tool and what do I think about the market and why some companies still use just manual work? Correct. 1.2s Doesn't have tools at all, but it's. So I think the market now knows more about AP Automation tools. I think it's something that's more well known. 1.1s But I believe that some of the market is still just used to do it manually, like do it with the bank and just file the reports themselves. Sometimes you have to just do it. You just don't want to do a big change management. It kind of depends. 1.5s I don't believe it's 1.2s a non familiar market anymore. I think more companies are aware of that. But I believe there are tools that don't cover what the customer actually needs. And this is, I believe, what we're trying to do in Pam. So first of all, we have an A grade OCR service where you can pull out the invoices and going back to the point of payment connects basically all flows. That's what's great with pay and it covers the entire flow so you don't have to. For example, there's a big thing in AP automation called PO matching. So it's very easy for us to match the PO because our platform opened it, the procurement flow went through our platform. We integrated it into the ERP. So to do PO matching for us is very simple. We have the data, we just match it to the PO and then the flow still feels seamless. I think that's one of the great things that we do. And that's how I believe that even in a bit crowded space of AP automation we are standing our ground and getting some market share and kind of improving the product as the

areas. Yeah, 1.3s I think it's super smart. First of all, you guys are really seeing the whole supply chain of requisition all the way up to PO pain. And I think a lot of the AP automation or fintech like you said, tools, they don't cover the requisition part, right? You have companies that just focus on requisition. And so how did you guys come up with this? Is it because of customer feedback or was it just you guys say, you know what, we need to start at the beginning. We need to start AP. Helping the customer from the beginning requisition to be able to have that visibility and data connection. What made you guys think about adding that requisition piece? Because that is rare. Again, it's absolutely one of the differentiators and it makes so much sense. 1.1s Was it more of customer driven or was it you guys just seeing that supply chain issue? 2.2s

So I think this is something that I can actually say about us. And now we operate as a company 1.2s since the beginning 1.1s and 2.5s we fully believe that when we go up on calls with potential customers prospects or even customers themselves, we basically let the customer talk. And when I say that we just, like, ask questions, we don't give them a solution. I mean, of course your solution gives them value, some sort of value at that point. But we just we're trying to be like that fly on the wall and just listen. And 1s over time, it came up 1.1s repeatedly that 2.8s you cannot separate the flows. And that's a pain that the customers and Auspic kept saying. It always like, okay, how will it be attached to our requisition flow and our procurement flow? But you sold me this. But then I have to integrate your AP automation to my POS. I have to integrate your vendor bills from your credit cards to my POS into the request that the employee is getting. And where does it stay syncs? Where does it communicate with one another? And this is something that we try to do from the beginning, just like, listen to the customers. And yes, it came specifically from customers, from us just listening to customers saying and 1.4s we never tried to, like, push the solution that we think is right. Began to talk about the fact that we started as a pure expense management. We just let the customers lead us to the right direction because the customer is always the center. They have a lot of pains. And usually the pains that are most painful are the ones they'll talk about with whoever that may listen. And we wanted to be those listeners. We wanted to understand what the pains are and we wanted 1.3s to solve the entire solution. And we know that the vision is grand and there's a lot of work to do, but this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to do the all in one platform because of customers feedback. And this is what we believe is kind of the future of financial operation to tools

in general. Yes, it's one thing. I heard a terminology from a partner of ours called a future financial officer. 1.2s Instead of Chief Financial Officer. And the future Financial Officer is really looking again in the future of using technology like yours to really help optimize the entire finance flow. And I think it's amazing. So 1.1s obviously, you guys, 1.1s because a lot of the audience that we have are 1.3s executives, business owners from SMB, but all the way up to mid market procurement and finance management. So if you had to explain or give us the top three ROI, an ROI could be time savings. ROI could be financial savings. Can you give us, in your mind, as a co founder, what do you believe based on what you hear from customers, customers and see what are the top three ROI? Because in this economy, everybody's trying to understand, okay, if I'm going to buy something, what am I getting in return? Or the time, the money? What? Am I improving? What's the ROI? If you had to say the top three, what would those top three ROI bey? 1.6s

Yeah. So I think today actually paying fits more than it did when we founded it. So what we do as a company today is 1.4s we attack two kind of vectors. So, the first of all, we give efficiency for the finance and procurement team, which saves a lot, a lot of time, a lot of money. And the other one, it gives financial control over the spend, which is something that every company today faces. They're trying to figure out ways to reduce spend to make sure that they're ready for the future with the market status right now. And this is what we do best. We help companies catch spend before it even happens. This is due to our intake forms and our procurement processes. And because of the fact that it's so automated and so easy to use, it basically saves time. So it creates efficiency within the organization. 1.1s So I think those two vectors are the most important thing that we do in fame right now. This is how we help our customers. This is how we help companies stand their ground in this note. 1.5s Market of these

days. Yeah. No, I love that. So one of the unique features that you guys have that I saw that I think is very impactful. I want to ask you about it, which is kind of the insights. Right? Because 1.4s again, that's another automation meaning to me, the reason I love automation is because a lot of times customer feels like they buy a tool and then they spend more more time. Like they need to spend so much time to use the tool to get insights. Like you give them data, which is great, but they have to figure out what to do with the data. And I think this insights function, if you can talk through it, what is it and why is it impactful? Because that goes also into the savings side of things. Right. Automatically identifying potential savings or overcharges and things like that kind of walk us through that concept. And I think that's one of the biggest game changers that will continue to evolve longer term. Right. The more data you have, the more machine learning and all those things, you guys get better at it. But what is it? What's the overall value for that right now? 1.9s Yeah. So our Insights product is something that we're very, very proud of. What we've done there is because we have a lot of data, both transactional data that is coming from our 1.3s ACH and wires and crossborder payments and our cards. What we've done is we said, okay, we have so much data, let's just let the customers have and useful insights over that data. And what we've done there is to give the customer better visibility on their spend in general. And I'll talk a little bit more about how it actually helps the efficiency of the teams in a second. But we give the data back so they know how much they spend per vendor. They know how much they spend per subsidiary, per department. They know basically any data and any trend of spend per segment that they would like to see. On top of that, what we're doing is that we're pushing more insights on duplicate spend. For example, we're pushing insights on increase of spend due to XYZ. That the platform being that, for example, I don't know, your contract value for specific vendor increased this month by 40. 1.4s Maybe you need to check that, maybe it's a user based vendor, or just look at the spend, just make sure that nothing is wrong there and you're overspending. We try to reduce, of course, duplicate vendor payments and we actually show how much spend the payment in platform declined as a behalf of the customer and kind of reduced overspend for vendors that this is mostly in credit cards where you give your card to a specific vendor and then they charge you whatever they want. So with our controls over that platform, we can actually show the specific vendors where they try to overcharge and block that. On top of that, on top of those insights that we're pushing is 1.5s what we love about the insights tool. It doesn't only give them span insights. We believe we are a day to day operational tool. And due to that fact, we want to give insights not only about spend, but how quickly the procurement team is operating, how fast do they approve requests, how much money did they approve this month? And you can actually segment it and cut it in any way that you may want, including reimbursement and expand efficiency of positions, et cetera, et cetera, which is something that I believe all CFOs would love

to see, and actually track it ourselves, just to see that the organization doesn't get stuck 1.4s in requisition and we can move quickly as a starter.

Yeah, again, I loved that end to end, honestly, from the requisition down to the AP automation and PO process. 1s Obviously we've seen you guys succeed with whether it's SMB, mid market or enterprise. And so it's really for everyone. And we're excited to partner with you guys as we wrap up the conversation here tomorrow. One of the last questions I always love asking the guest is, you've seen a lot, you build different companies. If you have to give one personal or business advice that you're really passionate about to the audience, what we're that advice be that you care about it's. 2.4s

So maybe I'll give two, if you don't mind. So the first one I think I have already said in a different question, but when you're starting a business, when you're building a product, listen to the customer, listen to the prospect, give them the stage to talk. Usually the product you will eventually be selling is is what they're saying right now. Don't try to push a specific solution. Just you are the problem solver. They will tell you the problems and you're there to solve and help them succeed and make sure your product fits their needs. So I believe this is something that every startup 1.9s should do. 1.5s The second one is something that I'm specifically very passionate about. 1.8s I believe that 1.7s managing a business or founding a startup, depends how you want to call it is something that is very. 2.3s I don't know hard personally and I keep remembering the people that help me or mentoring me and I believe that 1s I myself should do the same to our fellow founders and this is something that I'm very passionate about and 1.6s just build a community, help each other. 1.3s

Yeah, I mean, if you think about startups, obviously the Airbnb, the Google and all of these companies started out as startups in a garage somewhere and now they're impacting and changing the world through technology. And I think that's what's amazing about founders and startups especially. It's hard to change the world, it's hard to create a technology that really makes an impact. 1.1s And again, that's why I really appreciate having partners like you guys that really think on behalf of the customer, really listen, really develop your product based on what customer needs. And again, just your entire flow. Again, not only helping customer in one area, but you're helping customer in five, six, seven and continuously growing different areas in one. Not just super excited and honored to partner with you guys. So I appreciate you on the show and look forward to setting up that webinar with you guys. 1.3s

Thanks Victor, thanks for having me. 1.6s

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