Solve ‘efficiency’… then what? || Plus App News - Sponsored by Xledger

[00:00:00] Can't believe that we're already nearing the end of quarter one. Scary isn't it? Rumps away, time rumps away doesn't it? We're so close to being in the era of the one man unicorn because of AIs. The only limit is your imagination isn't it? FYI Docs launched 24-7 support. They've got an intelligent support bot ready to help with the app and it's designed to answer common questions, guide you to resources and suggest solutions so you can get that work to work faster.

[00:00:29] When we worked directly with accountants, he was used to saying they were motivated by one of four things. Understanding those four pillars is really important. That's your go-to-market strategy right there. He talks about a use case for using artificial intelligence to validate your pricing decisions. There's always a trigger point. There's always something where you go, okay, I've had enough now. I just need a final answer to this. It's too painful. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digi-Tools In Accrual podcast brought to you, of course, by the Digital Disruptors.

[00:00:56] And this episode is sponsored by Xledger, an advanced finance system that allows firms to gain greater efficiency, scalability and profitability. And we're also delighted to say that this series is being sponsored by ApprovalMax as well. And as we know, one of the most popular Xero apps in 2024 and not too surprising given what they do. So, Indy and Ryan are joining me as always. We're back together properly as a threesome. So, Indy, how the devil are you?

[00:01:26] Raring to go, John. Raring to go. We're full swing now. It's event season about to kick in. And yeah, I think that we're over the hump of the beginning of the year. Can't believe that we're already nearing the end of quarter one. Scary, isn't it? Rumps away. Time rumps away, doesn't it? It bloody well does. I wish I could just stop these wrinkles from coming a few more. But yeah, it bumps away. More collagen. More collagen required. Exactly. Are you enjoying the collagen now?

[00:01:56] I am indeed, yeah. Now that I've got stuff that I'm not allergic to, that's quite important. You are looking more vibrant for it, can I say. But speaking of wrinkles, shall we talk to Ryan? How are you doing, Ryan? I'm entirely smooth. I'm entirely smooth. There is no wrinkles here. I didn't talk about wrinkles on your face. I was just saying, speaking of a wrinkle, right? Oh, a wrinkle. He's a wrinkle in time. Is that now?

[00:02:25] That's something I need to add to my LinkedIn profile. A wrinkle in time. No, I'm great. Basically, this week is busy with events. So yeah, lots of things to do. Update, talk to people about. Not as much work getting done. And the balance is a challenge this week. So Joes have been self-employed, right?

[00:02:50] Yes, yes. Trying to make sure you're doing enough work to bring the money in whilst developing the business and pushing it forward. Yeah, it's all about networking. But the thing is, Ryan, we're so close to being in the era of the one-man unicorn because of AI. So I really have a lot of belief that the only value you can truly add is to make sure that you're physically out there as much as possible.

[00:03:15] And then making sure that the technology is backing you up in the background so that you are systematically capturing how you can then move people through your own workflow. So I have a lot of faith that the one-man unicorn is just sat here on this call.

[00:04:02] I've got a little something from Iris. So NetSuite have announced at Suite Connect in New York a couple of weeks ago that they are migrating the entire platform that they built NetSuite on across to what they've called the Oracle Autonomous Database. And the reason for doing this is that they want to take some advantage of enhanced security and reliability of this new platform. And they're also very comfortable that as a consequence of this, they're going to be able to integrate some AI functionality into this.

[00:04:29] So this is a massive announcement from Oracle NetSuite simply because, I mean, anyone that's gone through one of these migrations knows that it's a massive, massive thing. And minimizing the risk and the impact to customers in terms of doing this is going to be a real challenge for them. But it's going to be very exciting times as a consequence for anyone that is a NetSuite user. And I think they also said that their stats show that they are the most used ERP system in the world, which is probably perhaps not surprising.

[00:04:58] And, you know, as a consequence of delivering this, they're going to be able to apply AI to a whole bunch of things, in particular, like focus on workloads and workflows, and then being able to also scale up and scale out for businesses that are growing. Personally, I've not used NetSuite for a while, so I'm not sure what the scale challenges are that they're trying to resolve. But I guess if you're probably a really, really big organization possibly pushing at the limits of what they can do,

[00:05:23] this will be interesting for you and just enable you to do a whole bunch of additional things. We've got FYI Docs, who is a supporter of Digitals in a Core World and the Digital Disruptors, has recognized that you guys don't all work nine to five. So well done for recognizing that. I still haven't seen that recognized by my hairdresser, but they launched 24-7 support. And there are some additional ways that they're going to help support their customer base.

[00:05:53] One is through Loom video guidance. So if there's a step-by-step guide that's needed, FYI can record personalized Loom videos to walk you through your specific query. They're quick visual tutorials, detailed and easy to follow. Second is that there's a support bot for instant answers. So they've got an intelligence support bot ready to help with the app.

[00:06:17] And it's designed to answer common questions, guide you to resources and suggest solutions so you can get back to work faster. And the third is an expanded knowledge base for those that prefer self-service like myself. The knowledge base has grown to include even more tutorials, FAQs and how-to guides. So that's readily available and hopefully puts them in a really good place to support their community and base of customers. Yeah, it's exciting times, isn't it?

[00:06:45] And I mean, we're seeing this model coming more and more, aren't we, from people in terms of wanting to provide 24-7 support to people. And yeah, this is just as great to hear from FYI as they continue their expansion. Yeah, I do think one of the things that's really important in the app tech community is that like, I don't know if I was alone in finding this, but when we worked on some of the app, working directly with accountants, it was used to saying they were motivated by one of four things.

[00:07:14] So one was either that the technology was always evolving so rapidly and quickly and they just wanted to play with new features. The second was that they were cost sensitive. So they wanted to know that there was definitely going to be a price decrease or some sort of like motivation to reduce your cost per client. The third was around support. So the fact that they should be able to be handheld or reach out to you at any given moment.

[00:07:41] And the fourth was like an aspirational thing, like more sort of startup and wanted to be part of the community and have like a profile for themselves. And actually one of those were the main four drivers for all marketing messages that used to exist when I was working directly in accounting at tech. And I think that it's really interesting that, you know, seeing this is it speaks exactly to that, which tells me a lot about the customer demographic profile of FYI.

[00:08:10] And I know it sounds super, what's the word, like maybe judgmental, but it was just that you knew the profile very quickly of the type of accounting customer that you had if they were motivated by support. So I think understanding those four pillars is really important. You know, that's how that's your go to market strategy right there. Right. So anyone that wants to know my playbook for that, you can also get in touch because it's no point sitting on a shelf getting dusty. It's been a few boys. I'm happy to share it.

[00:08:40] Awesome. Awesome. That sounds good. Right. I've got a little update from Caseware. They've announced a couple of little exciting things. One is an acquisition, which they completed just towards the tail end of January, which is the acquisition of extractly.ai. This is a document processing solution that was founded in 2021 in Australia and has picked up customers like BDO, Grant Thornton and PKF.

[00:09:08] And effectively, what they allow you to do is to do two things. It's basically a prepared by client list or request based system, allows you to go out to your client, request information. And as the information comes through, it'll do two things. It'll either validate the information is accurate, which is particularly relevant if maybe you're getting financial statements or sets of accounts off people so that you can go through and just check the accuracy, consistency, etc.

[00:09:32] And the other thing is their extractly plus functionality, which allows you to take data from things like PDF documents and speed up the searching or data entry of those in terms of being able to sort of analyze that. We're seeing this kind of functionality across the board in the audit marketplace.

[00:09:50] So this isn't really new per se, but we're also seeing quite a lot of acquisitive moves in this space as other products that are sort of adjacent from a product point of view are looking to pick up this prepared by client type technology. So very exciting. And it's noted as well in the article that this is Caseware's ninth acquisition since good old HG Capital acquired majority ownership back in 2020. So they're on the acquisition train.

[00:10:17] And then the second part of what they've been doing is, and maybe this is something that Sage and some of the others should be listening to, is that they have been working on what they call ADA, which is their AI functionality. It's their AI digital assistant in Caseware. And they have received a positive safety assurance valuation from Holistic AI, who basically have created an AI governance platform for enterprises.

[00:10:43] And so you can go and get your AI sort of tested and challenged just to make sure it stays compliant with various regulation. And the key one that they're looking at is looking at compliance for the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act and maintaining compliance with that as they roll out across the world with this product. So interesting times.

[00:11:03] It's good to see that we're starting to see some level of governance maybe around AI and the ability to kind of get these kind of things signed off, if you like, and get some certification around how businesses are implementing this. And I guess we'll maybe start to see more and more of this. And maybe we'll start to see accountancy firms or audit firms asking to see this kind of certification in the future as well. Who knows? I mean, there's a lot of directions this could go.

[00:11:32] I was still at the start of the journey. So, you know, no one's really owning the best practice on it yet. It was from Blake Oliver, who is the co-host of the accounting podcast and author of Building a Sustainable Accounting Firm. And he's also one of the most influential people named by the accounting today's top 100 most influential people. And he also has this wild smolder, which is just, you know, I'm not cracking onto him, I promise.

[00:12:01] But he does have a blog that occasionally we like to follow. And he posts on that blog some interesting tidbits that I think could be replicated or used certainly by UK accountants. So he talks about a use case for using artificial intelligence to validate your pricing decisions. And he says, go to Perplexity Pro, assuming that you're paying for Perplexity Pro,

[00:12:29] and upload the transcript from an initial call with a prospect. Ask it to list the scope of services. He then says, write down what your gut says, which I'm not really quite sure whether that means that you should write down what you think the scope of services is to, or the pricing that you think. But then it's, he then says, ask AI to give a range of possible prices, so that you can check yourself on what you would have priced for those scope of services.

[00:12:59] And, and then again, just just, yeah, get some course correction for yourself. So I think it's a really good use case. I like the way that he shared that. It's very open. And I think that we should probably all do the same and encourage each other to share more of like how we're using the different forms of AI that we spoke about, didn't we, John, on a recent digital digest in terms of how I use AI for like a lending use case,

[00:13:27] but also in general with like private credit. So I think we should encourage people to do the same. I'd love to share more of the use cases for how you could embed different prompts into your workflow or into how you're, you're trying to validate your thinking within a practice. I think it's like having a co-founder almost to spar against and have some great conversations with.

[00:13:56] And so, yeah, really like we love that. And well done to Blake. Yeah. I think Blake's got a really interesting use case there. And this is in the context, right? We, we talked on the previous part about, you know, updates to some of the pricing platforms to try and help automate these, these kinds of things, particularly where we're reacting to maybe software price increases and want to pass that on to, to our clients. But you, it doesn't have to be using something like autonomous or any of the other platforms.

[00:14:24] I mean, a lot of firms will be using say Microsoft Copilot now in their practices. And if that's plugged in and automatically recording on the back of a Teams call, you should be able to replicate this kind of workflow and do something very, very similar. And also if you've then got that looking at, say, the pricing or the, the, the, you know, the information that you're sending out to clients or customers, potential customers within your SharePoint environment, for example,

[00:14:52] you've then got access to seeing what the entire firm is doing on a regular basis for all of the price points and the services that you offer. So you could start to aggregate a whole bunch of information, not just from, from external sources, but from internal sources. So I think that's a really cool example. I think again, when we talk about where you can go with these things, the only limit is your imagination, isn't it? You know, this is the thing about what you could possibly do with these things. So really exciting.

[00:15:20] We're lucky enough to be joined by Alex Kisselman from Approval Max today to talk a little bit about what's going on in the environment regarding AP solutions, how are business feeling about them? And is there a general trend in how they are changing what they're looking at? I think there's a general understanding now that you need to automate, you need to use tech to automate, but it's about finding the right solutions for people. And I think for a while, for quite a while, we've had businesses go, okay, well, I've got this specific problem. I'm going to find that solution.

[00:15:50] But now I think there's a wider understanding. We need to think of it as a whole. So are you having businesses come to you and go, look, we've got all of these different issues, and we want to try and find a solution or solutions that can handle that. And their preference is focusing on one answer rather than spreading it. Are you seeing that? Because that's what I'm starting to experience. 100%. Actually, even if we'll take just the approval automation side of things, if we'll take a look on the market, we'll see that though everyone is saying about the automation,

[00:16:20] they're all talking about a bit different things. Some are talking mainly about the payment automation. Some are talking about mainly data extraction automation. Some are talking about the whole financial control piece. Everywhere. And first of all, for you as a business, you need to find out what are your current challenge? What exactly you're trying to achieve? What is it something within your business you want to work on at first? And then everything else comes on top of that. Yeah, I guess so.

[00:16:50] There's always a trigger point. There's always something where you go, okay, I've had enough now. I just need to find an answer to this. It's too painful. But that can force businesses to leap into making a gut call without thinking what the wider implication might be. And I think you made a very good point earlier where you said that, yeah, we want one single area that our staff can go in where they can handle approvals for purchases, handle approvals for orders, handle approvals for sales. Because, you know, they've got one touch point.

[00:17:19] They don't need to know which app they need to go in for each individual thing they're doing. But if they need to trigger something, they have to create a document, they have to create a purchase order. That's always something that's been in ApprovalMax. But I guess you've now built in other tools. You've got the capture. You've got pay. So your client's going, I want to be doing a little bit more in your system. Correct. If we'll take just like a regular customer for ApprovalMax, they're initially looking to solve one single thing.

[00:17:48] That would be the financial control piece. Because that's actually the most complex thing if you'll take the whole automation part of the whole process. Because you need to have these multiple layers of approvals. You need to have multiple users involved in the process. That's the piece where we can really excel on our platform, both on the accounts payable side and the account receivable side. But having all of these customers and having this experience throughout the years,

[00:18:13] we see people are still having this zoo of different apps. They're asking like, hey guys, we fixed that problem. We already have a solution for that problem. Now we want to fix these smaller things on the different polars of the spectrum. So on the data extraction side and on the payment side. Maybe you can provide us a solution because we are really tired of having multiple apps and they have these communication issues in some of the other way. We want to have one place where we can zoo.

[00:18:42] Data extraction, the whole financial control piece. And once it's all done, make a payment. So it will be the end of the story. Yeah. And you've always niched. ApprovalMax historically has niched. We're excellent approvals. That's what we do. 100% we have approvals. And now you kind of broadened it out into a larger expense management platform, which I guess if you look at it, they're more expensive. Generally in this space, when you go from capital or free through to pay, they're more expensive tools.

[00:19:11] But I think the thing for you guys is you're trying to focus around the approvals is the core thing. And then you're bolting on either end. So people looking at your, or approaching you in a different way. They're coming to you not going, we want end-to-end expense management, but we've got a pain point. And now can you, as you say, can you expand around that? Exactly that. Because, well, if we'll take a look on pretty much any business,

[00:19:39] they typically have single challenge with like one specific thing they want to fix. They do not think about the, hey, everything is broken in our business because otherwise it probably won't survive. There's typically one thing they want to fix first and then other things comes afterwards. And that's why our main niche for the past nine years was only about the approval automation, only about the workflows and the financial control side of things. But also, of course, after that, other things comes in place as well. Okay.

[00:20:09] And I'm going to ask a pertinent question then. So are you finding that your existing client base are expanding and using the new talks capture and pay? It's just like, if it's there, we might as well use it, even if they've got other solutions. So you find that actually that one-stop shop is driving people to it, to use your add-ons or, you know, other elements of your system. Or you find that it's using it to trigger new leads or is it both? Where's the, I guess,

[00:20:39] where's the biggest source of new income generation for you at the moment? To be honest, it's both actually. Because from one side, when we're coming, when we're talking about the lead side, the lead generation, people are just trying to introduce themselves to ApprovalMax, just trying to understand what is ApprovalMax all about. They see that it's an end-to-end solution. It's already appealing to them because, all right, it's in one-stop shop. We know about the approval automation, about the workflows, but they also have ApprovalMax pay, ApprovalMax capture.

[00:21:08] So we are in good hands. We have end-to-end thing. But for those who've been with us for many years already, those who've been using Approval workflows for both accounts, payable for both accounts, receivable, now having these two additional add-ons, it really, for them, it's no brainer. It's actually a game changer for them now because they've been using that for ages and now we're just giving them additional tools to make the whole process even easier. And if there was one thing, I guess, that you would say is the differentiator

[00:21:38] for why they should use a tool like ApprovalMax over another one in your space, because I think this, you know, this always gives a real insight into how you see the business. What do you think it is? What's that hook that you go, well, end-to-end expense management, ApprovalMax is the one? Yeah. So I'd say if we're looking at the core product, the whole workflow side, the whole workflow piece, we'll see that for the growing business, especially from smaller to mid-size

[00:22:08] and from mid-size even to larger businesses, they want to have both the budget tools, they want to have built-up PR matching tools, they want to have a single platform for all of these different operations and they want to have it in a clear view that everyone will have access to that, that you can segregate the duties between what each and every person can or cannot do. That's where ApprovalMax really excels. You have a single platform that you can learn in just one single day. You can create these very complex workflows in a single day and now

[00:22:36] your financial control piece is done. Your, you know, the brain headache is over. You can now just focus on your main work, not thinking about the approval automation. Makes sense. Thanks, Alex, for coming in and talking to us about this. I think it's made it a lot clearer in my mind at least. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ryan. Thank you for having me here. Has anyone watched Paradise yet on Disney Plus? I know. It's very, very interesting. I don't have Disney Plus,

[00:23:06] but why? What's interesting about it? Um, so, okay, how do I reveal anything without any sponsors? Sponsors. Spoilers. Sponsors? Excellent. So, essentially, there's a community that are, um, in a, well, kind of inside a mountain. There's lots of reasons why that's happened. I won't just, I won't go into that because in case someone wants to pick it up and watch it. Um, but essentially, they're all, the entire environment

[00:23:35] has been replicated. So, there's a replicant sun. You've got a giant screen that goes all the way over the top that is replicating sky and you can see kind of clouds and stuff moving. Everyone wears these watches that they pay for everything and it kind of, um, monitors you with. So, it's got a really interesting tech angle. That's not the premise of the show, but that's the nerd in me. The tech nerd in me, again. Sounds pretty good. Well, I think we should do it. People should give another watch back to Westworld if no one's watched it

[00:24:05] in a while. Yes. It only came out a few years back, but watch series one of Westworld again with this new lens of AI. It is fascinating to hear. how AI finds sentience not by going upwards in some sort of pyramid structure, but instead that there is a maze that it goes around to get to sentience. Really fascinating. And I think watching it the second time around,

[00:24:35] I've just appreciated so much more about AI is like a tool as its own thing, its own thing. And, you know, I think that when I watched it the first time around, I thought we were decades away from that. Actually, we're really not. We're like probably a few years away from this being a reality, like going somewhere and experiencing the humanoid version of AI and then being able to interact with it in that way.

[00:25:05] super interesting. Anyway, although there was another release recently which had a robot that was kind of tried to replicate human muscles and that was freaky as hell. We're miles off on that. So, we might have the brain but the body is still quite a way off. Human, replicating human muscles. Is that like a delicacy? Is that like... No, no. In a body, not like as a meal. Worse.

[00:25:34] I mean, talking about things that we thought were millions, you know, decades away, right? It's like, did you see the Microsoft announcement the other day about this whole new infrastructure they've built for quantum computing? I mean, that is mind-blowing. You know, you see that. Unproven though. They had to put that in the article. Unproven. It actually does what they say it's supposed to be doing. Very true, yeah. But I mean, we've seen a whole bunch. I mean, there was some research done, wasn't there? Oh God, I think it was at

[00:26:04] one of the London universities. I could be getting that wrong but fairly recently said that they've managed to improve the way that a lot of the quantum computing technologies work as well. So, that is coming. That's coming down the track and also we've got the whole development of chips using light instead of electrons to transfer data. And that's going to be, you know, that's available now launching, you know, commercially very, very soon. So, we're seeing these like huge technological advances happening at the moment which are going to be,

[00:26:34] you know, sitting alongside this AI revolution that we're also in the midst of. It's going to be really, you know, challenging and exciting for businesses, I think. All we need now is a leap forward in fusion power and you've closed the loop, essentially. Well, there you go. That wraps up another episode of the Digitours and Accrual podcast brought to you, of course, by the Digital Disruptors and sponsored this episode by the delightful, wonderful guys at Xledger and a quick reminder, of course, Approval Max are our series sponsor as well.

[00:27:04] So, we're always interested in listening to your thoughts, your comments, your ideas, anything that you think that we've done well or not, give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. If there's anything in this episode that you want to share, please feel free to do so. You'll find us on LinkedIn, on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera, and all the major podcast platforms. And, you know, we'll make sure that we're sharing the news and stuff with you on the newsletter and various other things. So, make sure to come to the website, sign up, get involved and we will be with you again next week with another episode.

[00:27:34] Catch you on the next one, guys. Bye.