In this episode, Sidetrade’s AVP of Cash Application, Kurtis Heister discusses some of the biggest challenges with the cash application process today, how technology has evolved from OCR to AI and collaborative intelligence, and a sneak preview into how Sidetrade is disrupting the cash application space.
In this episode, Sidetrade’s AVP of Cash Application, Kurtis Heister discusses some of the biggest challenges with the cash application process today, how technology has evolved from OCR to AI and collaborative intelligence, and a sneak preview into how Sidetrade is disrupting the cash application space.
Welcome to Finance to Futurist, a Sidetrade podcast series on how innovation data and AI are disrupting order-to- cash.
Natalie Silverman:Hi, this is Natalie Silverman for Sidetrade. Welcome to Finance to Futurist. On today's episode, we're discussing some of the biggest challenges with the cash application process today, how technology has evolved from OCR to AI and predictive analytics, and a sneak preview into how Sidetrade is disrupting the cash application space. Please welcome Sidetrade's AVP of cash application, Kurtis Heister. Good morning, Kurtis, and thanks for sitting down for Finance to Futurist.
Kurtis Heister:Good morning Natalie, thanks for having me.
Natalie Silverman:Hey, thanks for being here. And I'm sure some of our listeners will know that you and I have known each other quite a long time and this order-to-cash space. But for those of you that might not be as familiar with you, you mind giving us an intro of yourself and your background and how you got to Sidetrade?
Kurtis Heister:Sure, I'd love to. For those who don't know me, my name is Kurtis Heister. I am the AVP of product here at Sidetrade. And I focus on cash application. I have liked to say that I've kind of grown up in the cash app industry in the cash app space, spent the last 12 years interacting with cash teams, really in various roles started my time as a cash out consultant, working with multiple fortune 100 companies implementing and consulting on their overall cash app processes with a little bit of time in as a sales engineer trying to understand the industry, the challenges that companies have when they are looking to automate their cash and been lucky enough for the past five years to work on on cash app product teams helping to build cutting edge AI-driven cash app automation.
Natalie Silverman:All right, well, this is why we came to you because we wanted to talk today about cash application. And I thought, you know, let's talk about first, some of the biggest challenges with the cash application process today. And obviously, you've seen an evolution of cash application over the years. But you know, some of the same challenges might be coming up. But what are you currently seeing as really the major challenge in the process.
Kurtis Heister:So the main challenges that we're seeing in the cash out space today really are tied to a cash team being at the mercy of their buyers and their buyers, AP systems and processes. With the rise of these AP systems, it's really complicated the workflow from a cash app process with these new electronic payments. Yes, it's great that they are receiving payments faster in a more digital way. But it has resulted in an industry term that we call decoupled remittances. And really that remittance not traveling with the payment not being sent with it and being sent in another format, possibly by email, maybe requiring a cash team to go to a buyers portal and chase them down as they're needed to apply the cash along with that those AP systems have gotten really good at keeping their money as long as possible. And they do this by adding in deductions and disputes and requiring invoices to be formatted and presented perfectly before they pay. So that's really caused a challenge for cash teams. And we've seen a rise in deductions in disputes that have to be accounted for at the time of payment.
Natalie Silverman:Yeah, like you said, it's funny, coming back to the order-to-cash space and seeing, you know, some of the same challenges. But then there's others that have obviously evolved over time. And so now let's talk a little bit about technology. Because I think in a way, the technology certainly has evolved, right? I can remember when you and I worked together years ago and OCR was the big innovation in cash app. You can talk maybe a little bit about OCR for those of you listening that don't know what that is. But I'd love to talk more about again, what are some of the trends that you're seeing from a technology perspective? And maybe that's around AI or data or other technology disruptors as well?
Kurtis Heister:Yeah, great question. Just as OCR was a was a game changer in the industry 10 plus years ago, which really allowed for the automation of cash application, there's been some technologies recently released that have that I believe are having just as big of an impact. And for those of you who don't know what OCR is, it stands for optical character recognition. And when it comes down to it, it's the process of reading a document and extracting data off of the page, understanding that this letter on the pages in a extracting it and turning it into data for a computer system to do something with it. And so as these remittances were coming in, and optical character recognition, could read the data, Cash App systems were able to take that data and begin matching off of it, but it was really missing a key piece and this has really been the game changer in the industry as of late has been the addition of what's called IDP technology or intelligent document processing. And in short, really what that is, is as adding in AI, adding it to the OCR process to truly understand what that data is on the page. So a remittance has many different data points. It has invoice numbers, PO numbers, customer names, and OCR was really just extracting the data. IDP is intelligently making sense of what that data is. And so it can really help simplify the matching process. Because we know and have a good understanding of what the data is, before we try to match. Along with that, it's really opened the door to extracting data and understanding what I'll call is an unstructured remittance. So a perfect example of this Natalie has a lot of cash application now is done between an AP buyer and a Cash App. And they're sending emails back and forth that are done in natural text. So it's very unstructured, and we need to pick out invoice numbers from the body of emails are kind of randomly on documents. IDPs helping us do that, right, no longer has to be a structured form where invoice is always in column A and B really anywhere within the document, we're going to be able to identify it, extract it and do better things with it. Because of that new technology. The other game changer that I can say. And this is really tied to those rise of those AP systems as well, is the addition of RPA processes and true integration with those AP systems. Again, I mentioned earlier, it's kind of cost challenges for the Cash App systems, that was decoupled remittances, and all of that there's now technology out there that it can integrate with those systems automatically get the data needed directly from them, that really helps us with the matching process on the back end. And so those are really the two technologies that not only what we're leveraging here at Sidetrade, but are really kind of helping the industry progress in general.
Natalie Silverman:I think that's a great segue, because Sidetrade is going to disrupt the Cash App space, and you're the guy that's going to do it. So talk to us about how that's
Kurtis Heister:Oh, absolutely. This is what what wakes me up in gonna happen. the morning gets me excited. And all of that is the things that we're doing here at Sidetrade and some of the unique capabilities that we're going to leverage in order to truly change the game. And so when I joined Sidetrade, I wanted to point the teams to a North Star, right, something that really is going to be our major theme that's in the back of our minds as we develop every feature, every screen that we have within our Cash App tool, and that North Star is collaboration or collaborative. And this is again, it's our guiding principle. And it's really starting to manifest itself in the automation that we provide for our customers. And there's really three specific examples, Natalie, that I'd like to give around how collaboration, having collaboration in the back of our minds, and everything that we do and build is providing value to our customers. So that first thing that I wanted to mention is around collaborative intelligence. When it comes down to it, our digital assistant, Aimie reviews how a buyer interacts with every vendor on the side trade network. And then she applies that to an individual Cash App system. A great example of this is if your buyer is sending in a remittance to another Sidetrade vendor, but not sending one to you, she's gonna let you know. And this is really key, because if you do get that remittance, you're getting instructions on how to apply. And it'll really help automate your process. She's also going to let you know the common way that it's been sent in, right is it sent in via email, or other vendors going to portal to get this remittance. And so she's learning these things from other vendors from other customers, and giving you intelligent insights and how to automate or best set yourself up for automation within the Cash App tool. And so, Aimie, and using this collaborative intelligence, tapping into the Sidetrade Data Lake that we've been working on for years, is really going to kind of disrupt the industry, and let cash analysts be proactive in their work, and use those insights to help really create the best experience with the buyer. The second piece of collaboration that I'd like to mention is collaborating with our entire value chain. So as many people are aware Cash App is a very complex process where there's many things that have to happen successfully in order to automate. So a couple examples of this, a Cash App solution needs to have email processing, have emails come in the automatically assigned and read and then we get into a bit of that IDP that I just mentioned, where data capture needs to happen within the Cash App process. Along with that there's invoice matching. There's analytics, integration with ERPs. So as you can imagine, there's many different pieces in the process that have to be automated. We are taking a collaborative approach with our value chain and partnering with the best technologies in the industry, in order to provide a world-class service, we fully understand that you can't be an expert at everything, you can't be the best data capture system can't be the best matching system if you're spread too thin. So we've made some very strategic partnerships, some very collaborative partnerships, that's going to help us build our system. So that we can focus on what we believe is the most critical part of the Cash App process, which is that matching on our teams to focus on that matching, and then collaborate with other vendors when necessary to bring in that world class enterprise system. The last piece of collaboration that I'd like to talk about today is really around customer collaboration, working with the 2000-plus Sidetrade customers, getting their feedback in order to build a user interface. And really an overall tool that automates the most cash, one bit of feedback that we've got from them, and that we started working on that is really going to be helpful is tapping into our Data Lake to build what are called cash out buyer profiles. We're the only ones in the industry doing this right now, we'll be able to bring up a buyer bring up a customer and provide an overall buyer profile similar to like a credit profile for a customer that gives them key cash app data points, how they are being automated with other customers really becomes a cheat sheet for our users, in order for them to work with their customers and to optimize it in different ways. And so it was a great idea from our customers that they love this type of buyer profile. And we're working to implement it as well. So as you can see, collaboration is really what it comes down to whether it be that collaborative intelligence working with our value chain working with our customers really going to be kind of the the future of cash application here.
Natalie Silverman:I love it, Kurtis, I can feel your enthusiasm just through this podcast. You know, we're super excited to have you on board. I'm excited to work with you again here and definitely going to take cash app to the next level. So last question, I always throw a curveball into the mix. It's getting close to the end of the year. And you know, we're getting close to what's going to come in 2023. So I wondered, do you have a crystal ball and what's your prediction for order- to-cash in 2023?
Kurtis Heister:I'm going to focus it mostly on the cash application, we can spread it out a bit more to order-to-cash. From a Cash App perspective, I truly believe there's going to be a pretty seismic shift in 2023 and 2024. Around the industry in general turning from a reactive process. Right now it's it's very reactive, right? A payment comes in a cash team does what they need to do in order to apply the payment, whether that be go find the remittance, start a research process and all of that they wait for the payment alien. And then they react with the rise of these AP systems and tools, being able to integrate with those. I see cash application, the cash analyst in general, being able to really become proactive, if we're working with that AP system, we know when that payments going to be scheduled, we know what the remittance is going to look like ahead of time. And so the cash analyst can begin to plan and be proactive, so that as soon as those funds hit the account, everything is needed, everything is there ready for that cash to be applied. So I really even see that that cash analyst role switching from an overall research and kind of reconnaissance role to more of a proactive nurturing role with the customer, getting to know their AP systems better how they work in all of that really becoming that kind of face of the order-to-cash team along with that with the collections team in that relationship with the customer, optimizing the relationship pre payment, focusing on those things. So by the time that the funds are hit, we know that the automation is going to be clean, it's going to post quickly and easily within the ERP. So that's kind of it in short, is industry changing a bit from being a reactive cost center to a proactive, let's see what we can do ahead of time prior to payment funding in order to make sure that this payment goes through smoothly.
Natalie Silverman:I think those predictions sounds very positive. And I think you're right, order-to-cash is moving towards finance being more of a strategic partner to the business and as you said, being more dynamic. So again, super excited for Cash App and for what's happening at Sidetrade. Because Aimie and our Data Lake and collaborative intelligence, I think that really is the way of the future. And I think that's going to help the finance team get to where they need to be in terms of being a business partner, versus just a cost center.
Kurtis Heister:You nailed it. There's these customers and buyers out there that you know, they're not just doing business with you, they're dealing with hundreds if not thousands of others. There's no reason to do this in a silo. Let's learn how they're interacting with all those multiple vendors and use that intelligent to apply it to your system when it comes down to automate more.
Natalie Silverman:Thanks, Kurtis for your insights into the future of finance. For Sidetrade, this is Natalie Silverman.
Conclusion:This has been another episode of Finance to Futurist a Sidetrade podcast series. Make sure you catch every episode by subscribing to our podcast on Sidetrade.com or through your podcast platform of choice. Thanks so much for tuning in. This podcast is brought to you by Sidetrade and is for general information purposes only. All rights reserved.