October 2, 2024 • 36 mins
In this episode of the Multifamily Innovation® Podcast, Patrick Antrim sits down with Jon Land, Director of Sales at AvidXchange, who’s here to reveal how AP automation can transform the real estate industry. From AvidXchange’s remarkable growth—from 44 employees to nearly 2,000—to the evolution of AP solutions from simple invoice automation to comprehensive payment systems, Jon shares insights into how modernizing your financial operations can lead to significant time savings, reduced errors, and enhanced fraud prevention.
Hear firsthand how AvidXchange’s software and services have made a substantial impact on businesses, particularly from the perspective of CFOs and finance teams. Learn about the scalability of their system, which caters to both small and large enterprises by streamlining accounts payable processes and eliminating manual interventions.
Jon also discusses the essential considerations for businesses looking to adopt AP automation solutions, including growth, fraud prevention, and organizational transitions. Don’t miss out on Jon’s expert advice and the benefits of leveraging AI and robust partnerships within the multifamily and real estate industries to achieve seamless financial management.
About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is the executive level membership organization that makes a difference in your bottom line, drives a better experience for your employees, and allows you an experience that keeps demand strong for your company. The council is uniquely positioned to focus on the intersection of Leadership, Technology, AI, and Innovation.
The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.
To learn more or to join, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com.
For more information and to engage with leaders shaping the future of multifamily innovation, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com/.
Connect:
Multifamily Innovation® Council: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right.
So on this episode I have JohnLand, who is part of growth,
director of sales with AvidExchange, focused on the
category of real estatecommercial real estate,
multifamily, and we spent sometime going over the accounts
payable process, how to findvalue inside an organization,
moving from sort of everythingis working now, status quo to
(00:23):
reimagining work in africtionless way that creates
not only value for employees theexperience you want to create
for them but profitability tothe company, from the CFO's
vision to the CEO's vision and,ultimately, to that controller
who organizes and maintains thisaccounting, which is a steering
wheel for our organization.
(00:43):
As organizations move into themodern era, it stands to say
that we need to know what'savailable so we can build a
great, healthy organization.
So have a listen to thispodcast.
I think you're going to find itenjoyable and John does a great
job communicating key ideasthat can help you find money
inside your company.
Have a listen, All right,Jonathan.
(01:06):
Well, welcome in.
Good to be here, Patrick,Thanks for having me.
Yes, and so I know a lot ofCEOs CFOs are thinking about
productivity.
They're thinking about theirbusiness differently.
I'd love for you to give ourviewers and listeners a little
bit about what you're working onand maybe a little backstory of
(01:27):
who you are and the productsthat you're bringing to market.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, so my name is John Land.
I work at Avid Exchange.
So my role at Avid Exchange andwhat I do is I lead all of our
embedded resellers as well asour construction division at
Avid Exchange.
So I've been at Avid Exchangealmost 13 years now, so started
when it was much smaller than itis today.
(01:51):
We have almost 2,000 employeestoday.
I think I was around employeenumber 44 in the grand scheme of
things with Avid Exchange.
But we do quite a lot in theworld of AP automation.
That's really what we focus on.
We do quite a lot in the worldof AP automation.
That's really what we focus on.
Our goal is to give you timeback.
I mean, that's what automationreally is.
(02:12):
We're just trying to removemanual processes and give folks
time back that they can use todo other things, to help grow
their organization, grow theirbusiness and help make more
money or whatever they want todo with that time for, for that
matter.
But yeah, we, we, we automatethe AP process getting rid of
all the invoices and and all ofthe paper checks and making all
(02:35):
that stuff electronic is reallywhat we, what we do.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, that's great, and what great growth.
What'd you say?
44, 44?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, I was.
We were really small when Istarted and now we have I think
it's somewhere right about 2,000employees.
I mean, it hovers in and aroundthat number pretty consistently
for the past couple of years.
We've ramped up quite a bitover the history of Avid
Exchange.
When I started at Avid Exchangewe didn't have the payments
(03:03):
product, we just did the invoiceproduct.
So basically, when I say theinvoice product, that means that
vendors would send theirinvoices directly to us, so they
wouldn't send their invoices toour customer, so they wouldn't
send it to the propertymanagement company, they would
send them directly to us.
We would capture those invoices.
We still do that.
I should say we did, we do, westill do this today.
We would scan them, we wouldindex them, meaning we'd pull
(03:25):
off all that header level detailthat's on the invoice.
We would get that invoice fedinto whatever workflow or
approval process you wanted itto flow through and it would
flow through that approvalprocess.
Your team would go to code toapprove those invoices and then,
once they're fully coded andapproved, they would get
electronically fed right intoyour accounting system.
So it really takes away all ofthat manual entry and data entry
(03:46):
and errors and stuff like thatthat you would generally see in
a paper-based process and thenlater on the lines, once we
really like, hit a real bigstride and growth.
We rolled out a paymentsproduct, really completing the
swing of automation in the worldof AP, being able to not only
capture the invoice but also beable to facilitate the payment.
With just a click of the buttonwe can send out payments to the
(04:09):
vendors and they can take thosepayments any way they want them
.
So if they want them as checks,they want them as electronic
payments, whatever they wouldlike, we'll send them the
payment method they prefer andthey can receive their funds.
So it really kind of completesthe whole cycle.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, I mean you mentioned a few things there
redundancy, manual effort andsometimes people don't enjoy
this kind of work as well but,more importantly, fraud
reduction too.
I imagine, in terms of thisprocess that's got to be on the
rise.
Seems like this would be a goodsolution to combat that.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It is we do.
Just intrinsically how thesoftware and how the system is
set up reduces your risk offraud.
I mean we have a lot ofmeasures that are in place,
obviously, from being able totrack and receive the invoices,
monitor for duplicate invoicesthat are that are flowing
through, that maybe somebodyelse that they may be a vendor
sent in multiple of the sameinvoices, so you're not
(05:04):
necessarily going to have theopportunity to pay the same
invoice twice, three times,whatever.
So just because the vendor, forwhatever reason, fired over
multiple invoices, or if a bogusinvoice shows up, the system
will pick those kind of thingsup in the simple opportunity
that this isn't a vendor in yoursystem.
So you don't have thisparticular invoice flowing
(05:25):
through that you had nothing todo with and people don't really
recognize it.
They just don't recognize notto approve it.
So we really are really reallysure all that kind of stuff up
and then, as far as on thepayment side, just with how it
works and how we operate, itreally walls off all of your
actual bank accounts to preventfrom a lot of the check fraud
that you mainly start to seemore prevalent as opposed to.
(05:51):
There's still opportunities forpayment fraud in all different
shapes and sizes.
We can have a whole longconversation about that.
But the check fraud getsdrastically reduced, considering
we have positive pay on all thepayments that go out the door.
Plus, all of those paymentsaren't being sent directly off
of your checking accounts, soyou don't have the exposure of
(06:12):
somebody just intercepting thatcheck, washing that check,
changing that check, altering itto be fraudulent.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, that's interesting.
You're spending time withcustomers, both prospective and
your current customers.
What are you hearing from them?
Where are we as an industry,are you seeing?
I mean, obviously more and morepeople are going towards this
process, but we've got some workto do, right still?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, it's still something that's becoming in my
whole life cycle of this.
It's kind of funny how thisoperates.
In my whole life cycle of this.
It's kind of funny how thisoperates.
There's some reason that willpush somebody or push a company
to do this, like there'll besome sort of you know.
Maybe it's a natural disaster,maybe it's something that
happened in the company, maybesomebody stole a bunch of money,
(06:57):
who knows what it is.
But in my personal life it wasHurricane Sandy that hit New
York City.
That was the big like theparadigm shift for me and
actually Avid Exchange at thattime, because at that time the
idea of not receiving the mailand somebody handling your
invoices for you was kind oflike whoa, this is that's a
(07:19):
little much.
They weren't, they just weren'tthere.
And all of a sudden HurricaneSandy hit, washed out all over
Manhattan.
Half these companies that I wasworking with were, like some of
them, closed.
They never reopened becausethey just washed out of sea
literally and it was kind ofwild.
But then all of a sudden,putting things in the cloud even
(07:42):
though that's not exactly likethe latest in technology, now
that started to become way moreprevalent.
People wanted to do thatbecause now all of their local
servers that they were, thatthey were hosting, are now, you
know, under four feet of waterand don't work.
So that pushed a lot of people.
But it's just becoming more andmore accepted.
You know, just in your dailylife and your personal life you
(08:04):
probably you've probably seenreductions in the amount of mail
you receive.
You've probably started to payless invoices with writing
checks, probably pay a lot ofstuff electronically, so that
stuff just starts to bleed overinto the business world as well
and things are becoming more andmore accepted that way.
So we've seen steady growthover the past 13 years at Avid,
(08:25):
with it becoming more and moreaccepted that way.
So we've seen steady growthover the past, you know, 13
years at Avid, with it becomingmore and more widely adopted.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, I imagine and you know it's interesting, those
triggering events we do tend tothere's a lot of things to
prioritize in the business, youknow, and prioritizing something
that we may feel like theprocess is working right, so
don't break it, even though it'snot productive, not financially
viable, redundant, repetitiveexposure to risk, all these
(08:59):
manual tasks and stuff.
What are you seeing aftersomebody makes that move the aha
moments from going from an oldprocess to this more secure and
more productive one.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
By and large we get the response of why did we not
do this sooner?
I loved it.
My roles have changed over theyears that I've exchanged, but
when I was a sales rep it waswhy did you not make us do this
sooner?
I was trying.
I'm glad you finally did it, butit's I think that there's a lot
(09:31):
more of a I don't know if it'sfear, but there's a lot more
hesitation because folksassociate something like AP
automation with a big upheavalin their process and a big like.
They almost liken it to a coresystem conversion, like changing
from one property managementsystem to another.
(09:51):
And it's not even close.
But they kind of feel that waybecause they've been almost
conditioned with that, becauseeverything always takes longer
and harder than they everthought it was going to be.
But once we can implement thisand you know, and for all
intents purposes a very shortamount of time I mean 45, 60
(10:12):
days at the most to geteverything up and running,
everybody trained, everything'sworking like it should, it
doesn't take very long to dothat and it's not an and even
though that is, you know, that'snot like an instant flip of the
switch.
It's not a lot of lift on ourcustomers' part.
We're doing a lot of thisbackend work where we're putting
(10:33):
together the workflows likethey want them.
We're getting everything set up.
We're importing their chart ofaccounts, their vendor table,
all of those things.
We're working on putting allthat stuff together for them and
building their portals out andgetting all their users set up.
So it's a lot of work thatwe're doing.
But once it gets set up, it'sjust starts to kind of it'll
(10:54):
just grow itself and you'll just.
It's very you know.
Once you understand how itworks, it's very user friendly
on being able to like moveforward.
It's not a hard process.
It's something easy to adapt to.
You don't have to send yourinvoices to us, mr and Mrs
Vendor.
You just send them to thisaddress or you email them to
(11:14):
this address and then we takecare of the rest.
So it's not a huge lift.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And if someone's not building this technology or
experiencing it, it's hard forthem to envision a new way,
right?
I mean, are you finding thatyou're almost consulting on the
sales side of it?
Where?
Tell us about your currentprocess?
How does that work?
And then coming up withroadmaps from is it?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
unique to every company, or is it pretty
standardized?
So the reason, what will pushthem, can be unique, but as far
as what we're doing for everyoneand I don't want this to come
across as, like you know,insulting or anything like that
it's generally the same.
You know there's not.
I mean, yes, some companieshave different little
idiosyncrasies than others intheir particular approval
processes and in their workflows, and we can accommodate for
(12:02):
those things.
This isn't something that'sjust, you know, insurmountable,
that we can't figure out.
The system is highlyconfigurable and you can
construct it any way you'dreally like.
So having that, you know,having that advantage on our
side definitely helps.
But it's kind of going back toa point you made earlier our
biggest competitor is status quoand that's the one that really
(12:25):
it's.
Well, this isn't broken.
So why are we fixing it?
And you're you know what.
You're right.
It isn't technically broken,but you can.
You can make a simple change andbecome way more efficient at
what you're doing and get a lotof time back.
I mean, you can.
You're literally talking aboutgetting 60% of the minimum of
your time back that you'recurrently spending on doing a
(12:46):
process and making it.
You know better, but that's thepart that, like you've you're
that's, that's kind of thehardest part You've.
You're working in a situationwhere somebody has been doing it
this one way literally theirwhole life and you come in and
you're saying no, or they takeit as no, you're doing it wrong.
(13:07):
And I wouldn't say that we'retelling them they're doing it
wrong.
We're just trying to give theman opportunity to help yourself.
And you can.
You can change, make thischange, and it's going to make
drastic improvements in your, inyour, in your actual daily life
, in your personal life.
You're going to receive somebenefits of this not having to.
You know you're not have you're.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, I know that.
You know we as leaders havemoved through different
platforms, from PC to internetto cloud and mobile, and you
know we're just constantly inthis state of change and those
leaders that can navigate thosewaters and provide, you know,
(13:50):
direction and profitability to acompany during all those
periods make the business morevaluable.
And so you know it's one of thereasons that we love partnering
with you guys is because we knowlike, hey, this is, companies
are looking for better ways tomake their company better and
profitable, so there's afinancial piece to this.
(14:12):
Then there's an experience,right, and then there's the
fiduciary around, like there'stechnology that exists that can
de-risk the organization.
It stands to say me as a leadershould pay attention, get on a
call with you, figure out likewhat do I need to know about
this?
Who else has done this?
How did that go?
What kind of impact can thismake and bring this into my
(14:33):
organization, because ourassumptions may not be true
about how much time it takes,what that effort is, but at the
end of the day, there's someinvestor there saying I'm
counting on you to make thisbusiness better.
Use the tools that areavailable to us.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, and that's what our job really is.
We're trying to give you theopportunity to come in, get
comfortable with what we'regoing to do, make sure that we
can, you know, establish andbuild out what you're trying to
solve.
You know you're what might bebringing you or your trigger
might be different than the nextguy, but you know we want to
make sure that we're, thatyou're comfortable with with
(15:10):
this and how this is going towork, and give you that
education so you can make theright decision on what all you
need this to do and what youreally should see results from
it by yeah, and you guys have agreat brand, by the way.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I see your work.
You guys show up in so manyeducational-based ways to
provide value.
I think you guys have your ownpodcast.
Was it the Net30 podcast, am Iright?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, we have a couple.
We've started rolling those outa little more consistently as
of late yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Well, what a great name, right?
Net30, I mean it kind of playsoff the payment timelines that
we all expect, right, I will saywhat are you hearing from CFOs?
I mean, business leadersobviously are looking for more
ways to make their businessbetter.
Cfos, the finance teams,clearly they must be getting
excited about the work you guysare doing.
Talk me through.
What are the things you'reseeing after people are engaging
(16:08):
?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
So after they're engaging with us and they really
get through that implementationtime frame and they've rolled
the product out, they reallystart to experience the true
power and the true ability ofthe actual software and the
service.
There's a lot about AvidExchange that's not just
software driven and that's oneof the things that I believe
(16:31):
gives them the most impact.
There's a lot going on at Avid,you know.
I mentioned we talked a littlebit earlier about the number of
employees at Avid Exchange andyou know we have roughly 2000
employees.
We don't necessarily need 2000folks to run a software company,
but those people got to dosomething.
The simple fact of, like, ourpayments department has right at
(16:53):
500 employees in it that dothat, you know, help manage and
facilitate and get thosepayments through to the vendors,
you know there's.
So there's a lot of work thatgoes on with this.
So it's not a situation thatthey just, you know, hit the
button and this payment goes outinto who knows where and
hopefully it finds its way towhoever we're paying.
(17:13):
You know we're going to makesure that it's going to get
there.
We're going to call them, we'regoing to follow up with it,
because there's work that has tobe done.
That's more than what, at thisstage in the game, the software
can actually provide in reachingout and contacting a supplier
for a particular invoice that'sgetting paid.
But I think one of the thingsthat they come back to us with
(17:35):
is just kind of the amount oftime that they're saving, the
amount of opportunity thatthey're being able to now roll
out to their team, to, you know,give them opportunities to do
other things, the other projectsthey can start working on, and
just the like you hear this allthe time where you know we had
to do this particular report orthat particular report like an
(17:57):
accrual or something along thoselines, and that used to take us
, you know, a week, and now ittakes us like 15 minutes, you
know, to make sure that we'vegot the report set up like we
want it and just boom, click,run and it's over with.
And you know that's a lot oftime to be saving somebody on
just one little example but wehave multiple examples of that
and just giving them theopportunity to access and, you
(18:19):
know, like in the CFO level,giving them the visibility to
know what's going on with theirfunds at any given moment.
You can see what's going on atany time.
You don't necessarily have to,you know, run down to some file
room and pull together a reportby pulling all the files and
making copies and passing thison which that stuff still
(18:40):
happens to this day, which asmall part of me dies every time
I hear somebody tell me a storylike that.
But it just gives them a lotmore ease of use and feasibility
to run their business andmanage their money.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, Talk a little bit about the ideal customer.
Who's this for?
Is there a certain marketcustomer that's best suited to
start, or is it all acrossenterprise as well?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So we really I mean, that's's a great question, to be
honest with you, because itwell, I'll give you two.
I'll try to answer thisquestion as best I can, because
we really can help anyone.
Okay, and I know you don't wantto get that answer because
that's like well, okay, that'sreally awful broad strokes well,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
What that says is if you have 300 units, it still
works right.
If you have 300,000 units?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
yeah, so and we run into those exact scenarios.
We work with some of thelargest property managers in the
world and we work with some ofthe smallest property managers
in the world.
It really doesn't matter.
The system is completelyscalable and it can be used for
multiple I mean, any sizecompany can really really use it
and benefit it.
You can have the small company,the lean and mean guy that's
(19:58):
looking to save money, he'slooking to try, and you know,
streamline everything.
He can grow his businesswithout having to add headcount.
You know we were set up to workwith those folks, as well as
the one that has an AP team of35 people in there that all of a
sudden, they just look aroundand they're like we could
probably use 35 people to dosomething else and what we can
(20:22):
help them with being able tostreamline and scale their own
business.
So it's really it's our averagecustomer, though, and we look at
the world through invoices andpayments, which is kind of a
hard translation for folks thatdon't dabble in that on a
regular basis to know.
But we'll ask people how manypayments do you make a month?
(20:45):
And you'll be shocked how manypeople don't have a clue, but
generally, what we see is ouraverage customer will be
somewhere in the neighborhood of750 to 1500 monthly payments.
Now that takes intoconsideration that that pulls
out the outliers, the guys thatare doing 50,000, 100,000, and
(21:06):
you know, pulls out the outliersthat the guys are doing 10.
But you know, generally day inday out, that's who we see the
most of.
But that doesn't mean that wecan't help the guy that's doing
100 or that we can't help theguy that's doing 15,000, because
we absolutely can.
But that's just generally whatwe see.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
What is the?
And maybe you don't know thisoff the top of your head, but
what is the amount of time forone like, what do people spend
on one invoice?
Is that research out there?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, so it depends on how big the organization is
as to how much time they spendon it.
But generally an invoicethey're going to spend upwards
of, on a payment they spend onan average of seven minutes of
payment and then on an invoicethey could spend anywhere
between 12 to 20 minutes onaverage and you take into
consideration everybody that'sgot to touch it and look at it
(21:52):
and go through, and you takeinto consideration everybody
that's, you know, got to touchit and look at it and go through
it and you just multiply thatover.
If you're doing a thousand, Imean that's you're talking about
a lot of time that's gettingspent just looking at an invoice
where you can reduce thatremarkably with automating this
process, so and that.
And you can also translate thatbecause we can do full ROI
(22:14):
analysis for customers if theywant to, so they can understand,
like, really what's this goingto be worth to you to do it?
You know how much you're goingto save just in hard costs alone
.
You know you think about thehard costs on the payment side
of things.
You've got stamps, you've gotmicrotoner, you've got envelopes
, you've got check stock.
You know how much money you'regoing to save just not having to
(22:34):
do that again, just not havingto worry about buying that near
as much, if at all, and beingable to automate that process.
And then the soft cost piece ofit with what you're paying folks
to do and you're paying thefolks to put it together and you
know, to put this, just to mailit out and all the folks on
capturing the invoices and allthat time that it takes them to
(22:58):
get those invoices through andentered into the system and be
able to be facilitated to bepaid.
So we could actually give youlike a number as to what that's
going to be and so you can weighthat against, like what this is
going to cost.
And you know we've talked aboutpayments.
There's also the opportunityfor rebates to be involved.
We do have a lot of customersthat take on receiving rebates
(23:24):
in their deal with Avid Exchangeand that can outweigh a lot of
the costs and sometimes it canoutweigh all of it, depending on
how many payments they processand how much rebate we're able
to collect for folks.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yes, and the math seems simple with that analysis,
right.
The question then becomes howdo you get out in front of it?
So you're not like thehurricane you mentioned, you're
reacting, because I wouldimagine doing this in a state of
planning is much more enjoyablethan in a state of need, where
you're reacting to a problem youknow and you've been told to do
(24:00):
this, that type of thing.
Which leads me to my questionof who are you talking to inside
the organization to bring thisin.
Is it CFO?
Like who do you want to spendtime with inside the
organization?
Like who do you want to spendtime with inside the
organization?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So generally, we like the controller and this is just
my opinion of it.
You could probably askdifferent people at Avid
Exchange.
But the controller to me isthat like ideal person, because
they kind of sit right there,they're involved with everything
.
They're passing reports up tothe CFO, but they're also
(24:36):
dealing with all the accountantsand the AP staff, so they can
see both sides of the fence andthey can understand and
appreciate the value that you'regoing want to talk to.
But the roles can be vast indifferent organizations and you
(24:56):
know, obviously you know furtheroff the food chain is generally
going to be the one that signsoff on doing something like this
.
So you know, obviously, gettingbuy-in from the CFO and their
leadership, the leadership ofthe organization is ideal.
But you know we talk to, youknow AP managers we talk to, you
(25:17):
know controllers, cfos.
You know we talk to a lot ofdifferent roles, but I would say
that our ideal customer wegenerally like to have the
controller involved.
That's a really good person tohave a lot of perspective on the
value we can bring.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, I mean, to your point, the leadership team, if
that be, cfo, CEO, whatever thatis, board, I mean they're
looking for productivity,experience, value creation in
the business.
Clearly, the controller isorganized to do all of those
things and it impacts theirworld so much.
Right, Like I imagine they'reyour best champions in so many
ways.
(25:52):
But sometimes the CEOs and alot of the leaders that listen
to the podcast aren't doing thatwork right.
So it's like do you want to bea status quo organization?
Do you want to kind of staywhere you are, leave some money
on the table, you know, or doyou want to create some
experience, better experiencesfor employees, create some
profitability and modernize thebusiness?
(26:14):
I think that's kind of the wayI would be thinking about it if
I'm a CEO today.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, you don't want to be in a scenario where we run
into this actually a lot, wherewe run into scenarios where the
organization is going through achange ie people are leaving or
growing or whatever the case is, and they don't have like a
established, a true establishedprocess which you can, which you
(26:42):
can make an Avid exchange, andit can be an established
electronic process that you know.
This is how the invoices aregoing to flow, this is how the
you know this is, this is whathappens.
So you could, if somebody leftand you brought somebody else in
.
This is how it works.
Where you we have a lot ofscenarios where you got a lot of
this like colloquial knowledgethat when somebody retires or
leaves the organization, alonggoes all that knowledge too, and
(27:04):
they have to go.
They get kind of caught ontheir heels trying to figure out
well, how did we do this in thepast?
You know what is, you knowthere's no established process
for this.
What do we?
What do we do now?
And you know that's one of thethings where, kind of to your
point, patrick, getting out infront of it will help, you know,
shore up those kind ofconversations down the road.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yes, and even with talent shortages, I would
imagine that people kind of seethe writing on the wall in many
ways, with even AI around.
Like you know, supportingorganizations like this, like
companies, are not expanding.
They're relying on, likerelationships that you've built
to get the job done in a moretechnically advanced way.
So I would imagine it's alsohard to find more and more staff
(27:49):
as well, and this provides, Ithink I'm assuming some relief
to that as well.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It does, it definitely takes a lot of the
pressure off.
I mean, you still need peoplein there to make decisions.
I mean the software is not adecision-making piece.
It's just going to give you theopportunity to take all that
work off your plate and you'rejust, you know, as far as coding
the invoices and all that kindof stuff, you're just checking
to make sure this is right,you're checking to make sure you
want to approve it and you wantto pay this thing, and so it's
not, it's not making thedecisions for you, but you still
(28:16):
need those kind ofdecision-making folks in there
to deal with that.
But yeah, outside of that, itdefinitely will take the
pressure off of you needinglarge staffs of folks to handle
your day-to-day business.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
And I think that's another comfort level is you're
still in charge of approvals andauthority over the governance
of the organization.
Nothing really changes, fromwhat I understand with that.
You're just kind of gettingthat middle piece redundant
process out and systematizing itin so many ways.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yep, we get asked that a lot.
I don't want things to just goout the door automatically.
Well, good thing they don't, soyou're in luck.
No, nothing comes through andgets automatically approved.
Nothing gets automaticallyapproved.
Nothing gets automatically paid.
So there's no way for anythingto get set up to where something
comes in and goes out the doorand no one touched it.
(29:07):
So you're still going to haveto have people that are going to
say, yes, we did this, yes, wewant to pay it.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, and so, John, what are the questions people
are asking you if they haven'tbeen through this process yet,
right?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
So and what questions should we be asking as far as
getting looking into doingsomething like this, I think you
just it's a little bit of likekind of looking back at the
company that you're with andkind of going through a little
bit of a checklist, you know, dowe, are we looking to grow?
Are we?
If we're looking to grow, thenthis is an opportunity for us to
(29:39):
scale our business and be ableto expand without having to add
any back office staff.
You know I hate to do it kindof the fear mongering thing, but
have we experienced fraud?
Do we experience issues withpayments?
Do we experience issues withinvoices coming in, or do we
have folks that are looking toleave?
Are we in some level of atransition at our company?
You know, is ownership changingover?
(30:01):
A lot of times you havechildren that are taking over
companies for their parents thatbuilt the company.
So there's a whole host ofthings that can take place.
That would be really goodopportunities.
Are we looking to move offices?
That's one that I think is aninteresting one that I used to
face years ago and they're likewe want to hold off, we're
(30:24):
moving offices and my responsewould be well, this is the
perfect time because you'removing offices.
You're going to tell every oneof your vendors you're changing
the address they're going tosend this invoice to.
Why not just tell them you'rechanging the address to Avid
Exchange and then not have totell them again, and then it's
done, and then you can moveoffices all you want.
So if there's any sort of likechange, anything going on or
(30:47):
you're just sick and tired ofdealing with paper, we would
love to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, that's great.
So let's talk about that.
How do people get in touch withyou?
Where can they follow you andlearn more about what this
product is?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, so I mean you can reach out to Avid Exchange.
I mean obviouslyavidexchangecom.
You can obviously reach out tome.
I mean I'm on LinkedIn.
My name's John Land, l-a-n-d.
Been working at Avid for awhile.
Email address is simpleJ-L-A-N-D at avidexchangecom.
But, yeah, you can reach out toAvid Exchange obviously through
(31:22):
our website.
If you're kind of catching this, you can reach out to me.
We're at a lot of differenttrade shows so we will take any
sort of contact that you canfind.
But, yeah, that's probably thesimplest way Go to the website
and then you just request moreinformation and we have teams of
folks that will reach out toyou.
(31:44):
You know, kind of find out alittle bit more about you.
You're going to have aconversation with somebody in
our business developmentdepartment, understanding you
know what you're after, whatyou're looking for, and then
they'll set you up with beingable to speak with the.
You know, because we, you knowwe work with a lot of different
verticals at Avid Exchange.
We got right at 10,000 customers.
So you know there's a lot ofdifferent things going on.
(32:05):
We have different relationshipswith different accounting
systems.
Some of them we're embedded in,some of them we're not.
But they'll route you to thecorrect person and they'll be
able to take care of you andkind of get you in the process
to see if this is a solutionthat would work for you kind of
get you in the process to see ifthis is a solution that would
work for you.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I think we did a greatjob covering some of the things
that you're innovating in ourspace.
Is there anything that wemissed?
Number one.
Number two is tell us justfinal thoughts, anything you
want to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I don't know that we missed terribly much.
Obviously, avid Exchange is agrowing business.
I mean we've got a lot going on.
We're constantly developingthings.
We're working on a lot of stuff.
You mentioned AI.
We do a lot with that.
That's something that's reallyramping up pretty heavily.
In fact, Avid Exchange probablyis one of the companies that's
(33:03):
got the most benefit fromartificial intelligence, and the
fact that we have millions andmillions of invoices that come
through Avid Exchange each andevery day and being able to
capture that information evenmore accurately than we do today
would definitely be beneficialto us, because there's a lot of
systems in place that we have tomake sure that we hold a really
(33:25):
high regard to our accuracy.
But I mean, as far as anythingelse, without going into
specific systems and stuff likethat, we're always working to
grow our network and we woulddefinitely want to hear from
(33:47):
everybody that we can, so we cando what we can to partner with
as many folks in the multifamilyand real estate industries, for
that matter, that we can, andwe've done a lot with our
integrations over the years.
Uh, I mean just in my time atavid exchange.
I mean it's it's like a quantumleap from when we started.
So there's a, there's a lot,especially the embedded
(34:10):
solutions are becoming reallypopular.
So we're and when I say thatthat means that, like when you,
if you used, let's's say youknow RealPage, that the Avid's,
the payments piece, is builtinto RealPage, meaning you don't
leave RealPage, it's inRealPage.
So when you select payments,you can send them right through
(34:30):
RealPage, vendor pay and that'spowered by Avid Exchange.
So we're the ones that arefacilitating the payments, we're
basically the engine behind it.
But you don't ever have toleave engine behind it, but you
don't ever have to leave.
So there's not, it's not goingto come across as some kind of
bolt on system or you know.
You know it's going to beintegrated fully into your
actual, into your actualexperience.
(34:51):
So that's that's probably oneof the most popular things that
we have.
That's going on with with our,with our folks.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
but Wonderful, wonderful, no, I'm really glad
you shared that because I thinkpeople, um, you know, they want
to know how this experience andit's probably best to reach out
and get in touch with your team,maybe do a demo, see how this
stuff works from a visual andand ask the questions.
I'm sure it's unique to everycustomer and, uh, you know,
(35:18):
hopefully this podcast has beenhelpful and would encourage
people to take that first step,regardless of what the priority
is today, it doesn't cost moneyto reach out and get in touch
with somebody that canpotentially help transform an
organization.
So it's been great sharing thetime.
We'll be following your successand appreciate you showing up
and creating the value for ourlisteners.
(35:40):
Thank you, john.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Thank you, patrick, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, all right.
Well, we'll see you guys in thenext one.
Make sure you give them afollow and enjoy it.
Go after it.
We'll see you next one.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, thanks.
All right.
So on this episode I have JohnLand, who is part of growth,
director of sales with AvidExchange, focused on the
category of real estatecommercial real estate,
multifamily, and we spent sometime going over the accounts
payable process, how to findvalue inside an organization,
moving from sort of everythingis working now, status quo to
(00:23):
reimagining work in africtionless way that creates
not only value for employees theexperience you want to create
for them but profitability tothe company, from the CFO's
vision to the CEO's vision and,ultimately, to that controller
who organizes and maintains thisaccounting, which is a steering
wheel for our organization.
(00:43):
As organizations move into themodern era, it stands to say
that we need to know what'savailable so we can build a
great, healthy organization.
So have a listen to thispodcast.
I think you're going to find itenjoyable and John does a great
job communicating key ideasthat can help you find money
inside your company.
Have a listen, All right,Jonathan.
(01:06):
Well, welcome in.
Good to be here, Patrick,Thanks for having me.
Yes, and so I know a lot ofCEOs CFOs are thinking about
productivity.
They're thinking about theirbusiness differently.
I'd love for you to give ourviewers and listeners a little
bit about what you're working onand maybe a little backstory of
(01:27):
who you are and the productsthat you're bringing to market.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, so my name is John Land.
I work at Avid Exchange.
So my role at Avid Exchange andwhat I do is I lead all of our
embedded resellers as well asour construction division at
Avid Exchange.
So I've been at Avid Exchangealmost 13 years now, so started
when it was much smaller than itis today.
(01:51):
We have almost 2,000 employeestoday.
I think I was around employeenumber 44 in the grand scheme of
things with Avid Exchange.
But we do quite a lot in theworld of AP automation.
That's really what we focus on.
We do quite a lot in the worldof AP automation.
That's really what we focus on.
Our goal is to give you timeback.
I mean, that's what automationreally is.
(02:12):
We're just trying to removemanual processes and give folks
time back that they can use todo other things, to help grow
their organization, grow theirbusiness and help make more
money or whatever they want todo with that time for, for that
matter.
But yeah, we, we, we automatethe AP process getting rid of
all the invoices and and all ofthe paper checks and making all
(02:35):
that stuff electronic is reallywhat we, what we do.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, that's great, and what great growth.
What'd you say?
44, 44?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, I was.
We were really small when Istarted and now we have I think
it's somewhere right about 2,000employees.
I mean, it hovers in and aroundthat number pretty consistently
for the past couple of years.
We've ramped up quite a bitover the history of Avid
Exchange.
When I started at Avid Exchangewe didn't have the payments
(03:03):
product, we just did the invoiceproduct.
So basically, when I say theinvoice product, that means that
vendors would send theirinvoices directly to us, so they
wouldn't send their invoices toour customer, so they wouldn't
send it to the propertymanagement company, they would
send them directly to us.
We would capture those invoices.
We still do that.
I should say we did, we do, westill do this today.
We would scan them, we wouldindex them, meaning we'd pull
(03:25):
off all that header level detailthat's on the invoice.
We would get that invoice fedinto whatever workflow or
approval process you wanted itto flow through and it would
flow through that approvalprocess.
Your team would go to code toapprove those invoices and then,
once they're fully coded andapproved, they would get
electronically fed right intoyour accounting system.
So it really takes away all ofthat manual entry and data entry
(03:46):
and errors and stuff like thatthat you would generally see in
a paper-based process and thenlater on the lines, once we
really like, hit a real bigstride and growth.
We rolled out a paymentsproduct, really completing the
swing of automation in the worldof AP, being able to not only
capture the invoice but also beable to facilitate the payment.
With just a click of the buttonwe can send out payments to the
(04:09):
vendors and they can take thosepayments any way they want them
.
So if they want them as checks,they want them as electronic
payments, whatever they wouldlike, we'll send them the
payment method they prefer andthey can receive their funds.
So it really kind of completesthe whole cycle.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, I mean you mentioned a few things there
redundancy, manual effort andsometimes people don't enjoy
this kind of work as well but,more importantly, fraud
reduction too.
I imagine, in terms of thisprocess that's got to be on the
rise.
Seems like this would be a goodsolution to combat that.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It is we do.
Just intrinsically how thesoftware and how the system is
set up reduces your risk offraud.
I mean we have a lot ofmeasures that are in place,
obviously, from being able totrack and receive the invoices,
monitor for duplicate invoicesthat are that are flowing
through, that maybe somebodyelse that they may be a vendor
sent in multiple of the sameinvoices, so you're not
(05:04):
necessarily going to have theopportunity to pay the same
invoice twice, three times,whatever.
So just because the vendor, forwhatever reason, fired over
multiple invoices, or if a bogusinvoice shows up, the system
will pick those kind of thingsup in the simple opportunity
that this isn't a vendor in yoursystem.
So you don't have thisparticular invoice flowing
(05:25):
through that you had nothing todo with and people don't really
recognize it.
They just don't recognize notto approve it.
So we really are really reallysure all that kind of stuff up
and then, as far as on thepayment side, just with how it
works and how we operate, itreally walls off all of your
actual bank accounts to preventfrom a lot of the check fraud
that you mainly start to seemore prevalent as opposed to.
(05:51):
There's still opportunities forpayment fraud in all different
shapes and sizes.
We can have a whole longconversation about that.
But the check fraud getsdrastically reduced, considering
we have positive pay on all thepayments that go out the door.
Plus, all of those paymentsaren't being sent directly off
of your checking accounts, soyou don't have the exposure of
(06:12):
somebody just intercepting thatcheck, washing that check,
changing that check, altering itto be fraudulent.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, that's interesting.
You're spending time withcustomers, both prospective and
your current customers.
What are you hearing from them?
Where are we as an industry,are you seeing?
I mean, obviously more and morepeople are going towards this
process, but we've got some workto do, right still?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, it's still something that's becoming in my
whole life cycle of this.
It's kind of funny how thisoperates.
In my whole life cycle of this.
It's kind of funny how thisoperates.
There's some reason that willpush somebody or push a company
to do this, like there'll besome sort of you know.
Maybe it's a natural disaster,maybe it's something that
happened in the company, maybesomebody stole a bunch of money,
(06:57):
who knows what it is.
But in my personal life it wasHurricane Sandy that hit New
York City.
That was the big like theparadigm shift for me and
actually Avid Exchange at thattime, because at that time the
idea of not receiving the mailand somebody handling your
invoices for you was kind oflike whoa, this is that's a
(07:19):
little much.
They weren't, they just weren'tthere.
And all of a sudden HurricaneSandy hit, washed out all over
Manhattan.
Half these companies that I wasworking with were, like some of
them, closed.
They never reopened becausethey just washed out of sea
literally and it was kind ofwild.
But then all of a sudden,putting things in the cloud even
(07:42):
though that's not exactly likethe latest in technology, now
that started to become way moreprevalent.
People wanted to do thatbecause now all of their local
servers that they were, thatthey were hosting, are now, you
know, under four feet of waterand don't work.
So that pushed a lot of people.
But it's just becoming more andmore accepted.
You know, just in your dailylife and your personal life you
(08:04):
probably you've probably seenreductions in the amount of mail
you receive.
You've probably started to payless invoices with writing
checks, probably pay a lot ofstuff electronically, so that
stuff just starts to bleed overinto the business world as well
and things are becoming more andmore accepted that way.
So we've seen steady growthover the past 13 years at Avid,
(08:25):
with it becoming more and moreaccepted that way.
So we've seen steady growthover the past, you know, 13
years at Avid, with it becomingmore and more widely adopted.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, I imagine and you know it's interesting, those
triggering events we do tend tothere's a lot of things to
prioritize in the business, youknow, and prioritizing something
that we may feel like theprocess is working right, so
don't break it, even though it'snot productive, not financially
viable, redundant, repetitiveexposure to risk, all these
(08:59):
manual tasks and stuff.
What are you seeing aftersomebody makes that move the aha
moments from going from an oldprocess to this more secure and
more productive one.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
By and large we get the response of why did we not
do this sooner?
I loved it.
My roles have changed over theyears that I've exchanged, but
when I was a sales rep it waswhy did you not make us do this
sooner?
I was trying.
I'm glad you finally did it, butit's I think that there's a lot
(09:31):
more of a I don't know if it'sfear, but there's a lot more
hesitation because folksassociate something like AP
automation with a big upheavalin their process and a big like.
They almost liken it to a coresystem conversion, like changing
from one property managementsystem to another.
(09:51):
And it's not even close.
But they kind of feel that waybecause they've been almost
conditioned with that, becauseeverything always takes longer
and harder than they everthought it was going to be.
But once we can implement thisand you know, and for all
intents purposes a very shortamount of time I mean 45, 60
(10:12):
days at the most to geteverything up and running,
everybody trained, everything'sworking like it should, it
doesn't take very long to dothat and it's not an and even
though that is, you know, that'snot like an instant flip of the
switch.
It's not a lot of lift on ourcustomers' part.
We're doing a lot of thisbackend work where we're putting
(10:33):
together the workflows likethey want them.
We're getting everything set up.
We're importing their chart ofaccounts, their vendor table,
all of those things.
We're working on putting allthat stuff together for them and
building their portals out andgetting all their users set up.
So it's a lot of work thatwe're doing.
But once it gets set up, it'sjust starts to kind of it'll
(10:54):
just grow itself and you'll just.
It's very you know.
Once you understand how itworks, it's very user friendly
on being able to like moveforward.
It's not a hard process.
It's something easy to adapt to.
You don't have to send yourinvoices to us, mr and Mrs
Vendor.
You just send them to thisaddress or you email them to
(11:14):
this address and then we takecare of the rest.
So it's not a huge lift.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And if someone's not building this technology or
experiencing it, it's hard forthem to envision a new way,
right?
I mean, are you finding thatyou're almost consulting on the
sales side of it?
Where?
Tell us about your currentprocess?
How does that work?
And then coming up withroadmaps from is it?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
unique to every company, or is it pretty
standardized?
So the reason, what will pushthem, can be unique, but as far
as what we're doing for everyoneand I don't want this to come
across as, like you know,insulting or anything like that
it's generally the same.
You know there's not.
I mean, yes, some companieshave different little
idiosyncrasies than others intheir particular approval
processes and in their workflows, and we can accommodate for
(12:02):
those things.
This isn't something that'sjust, you know, insurmountable,
that we can't figure out.
The system is highlyconfigurable and you can
construct it any way you'dreally like.
So having that, you know,having that advantage on our
side definitely helps.
But it's kind of going back toa point you made earlier our
biggest competitor is status quoand that's the one that really
(12:25):
it's.
Well, this isn't broken.
So why are we fixing it?
And you're you know what.
You're right.
It isn't technically broken,but you can.
You can make a simple change andbecome way more efficient at
what you're doing and get a lotof time back.
I mean, you can.
You're literally talking aboutgetting 60% of the minimum of
your time back that you'recurrently spending on doing a
(12:46):
process and making it.
You know better, but that's thepart that, like you've you're
that's, that's kind of thehardest part You've.
You're working in a situationwhere somebody has been doing it
this one way literally theirwhole life and you come in and
you're saying no, or they takeit as no, you're doing it wrong.
(13:07):
And I wouldn't say that we'retelling them they're doing it
wrong.
We're just trying to give theman opportunity to help yourself.
And you can.
You can change, make thischange, and it's going to make
drastic improvements in your, inyour, in your actual daily life
, in your personal life.
You're going to receive somebenefits of this not having to.
You know you're not have you're.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, I know that.
You know we as leaders havemoved through different
platforms, from PC to internetto cloud and mobile, and you
know we're just constantly inthis state of change and those
leaders that can navigate thosewaters and provide, you know,
(13:50):
direction and profitability to acompany during all those
periods make the business morevaluable.
And so you know it's one of thereasons that we love partnering
with you guys is because we knowlike, hey, this is, companies
are looking for better ways tomake their company better and
profitable, so there's afinancial piece to this.
(14:12):
Then there's an experience,right, and then there's the
fiduciary around, like there'stechnology that exists that can
de-risk the organization.
It stands to say me as a leadershould pay attention, get on a
call with you, figure out likewhat do I need to know about
this?
Who else has done this?
How did that go?
What kind of impact can thismake and bring this into my
(14:33):
organization, because ourassumptions may not be true
about how much time it takes,what that effort is, but at the
end of the day, there's someinvestor there saying I'm
counting on you to make thisbusiness better.
Use the tools that areavailable to us.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, and that's what our job really is.
We're trying to give you theopportunity to come in, get
comfortable with what we'regoing to do, make sure that we
can, you know, establish andbuild out what you're trying to
solve.
You know you're what might bebringing you or your trigger
might be different than the nextguy, but you know we want to
make sure that we're, thatyou're comfortable with with
(15:10):
this and how this is going towork, and give you that
education so you can make theright decision on what all you
need this to do and what youreally should see results from
it by yeah, and you guys have agreat brand, by the way.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I see your work.
You guys show up in so manyeducational-based ways to
provide value.
I think you guys have your ownpodcast.
Was it the Net30 podcast, am Iright?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, we have a couple.
We've started rolling those outa little more consistently as
of late yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Well, what a great name, right?
Net30, I mean it kind of playsoff the payment timelines that
we all expect, right, I will saywhat are you hearing from CFOs?
I mean, business leadersobviously are looking for more
ways to make their businessbetter.
Cfos, the finance teams,clearly they must be getting
excited about the work you guysare doing.
Talk me through.
What are the things you'reseeing after people are engaging
(16:08):
?
Speaker 2 (16:09):
So after they're engaging with us and they really
get through that implementationtime frame and they've rolled
the product out, they reallystart to experience the true
power and the true ability ofthe actual software and the
service.
There's a lot about AvidExchange that's not just
software driven and that's oneof the things that I believe
(16:31):
gives them the most impact.
There's a lot going on at Avid,you know.
I mentioned we talked a littlebit earlier about the number of
employees at Avid Exchange andyou know we have roughly 2000
employees.
We don't necessarily need 2000folks to run a software company,
but those people got to dosomething.
The simple fact of, like, ourpayments department has right at
(16:53):
500 employees in it that dothat, you know, help manage and
facilitate and get thosepayments through to the vendors,
you know there's.
So there's a lot of work thatgoes on with this.
So it's not a situation thatthey just, you know, hit the
button and this payment goes outinto who knows where and
hopefully it finds its way towhoever we're paying.
(17:13):
You know we're going to makesure that it's going to get
there.
We're going to call them, we'regoing to follow up with it,
because there's work that has tobe done.
That's more than what, at thisstage in the game, the software
can actually provide in reachingout and contacting a supplier
for a particular invoice that'sgetting paid.
But I think one of the thingsthat they come back to us with
(17:35):
is just kind of the amount oftime that they're saving, the
amount of opportunity thatthey're being able to now roll
out to their team, to, you know,give them opportunities to do
other things, the other projectsthey can start working on, and
just the like you hear this allthe time where you know we had
to do this particular report orthat particular report like an
(17:57):
accrual or something along thoselines, and that used to take us
, you know, a week, and now ittakes us like 15 minutes, you
know, to make sure that we'vegot the report set up like we
want it and just boom, click,run and it's over with.
And you know that's a lot oftime to be saving somebody on
just one little example but wehave multiple examples of that
and just giving them theopportunity to access and, you
(18:19):
know, like in the CFO level,giving them the visibility to
know what's going on with theirfunds at any given moment.
You can see what's going on atany time.
You don't necessarily have to,you know, run down to some file
room and pull together a reportby pulling all the files and
making copies and passing thison which that stuff still
(18:40):
happens to this day, which asmall part of me dies every time
I hear somebody tell me a storylike that.
But it just gives them a lotmore ease of use and feasibility
to run their business andmanage their money.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, Talk a little bit about the ideal customer.
Who's this for?
Is there a certain marketcustomer that's best suited to
start, or is it all acrossenterprise as well?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
So we really I mean, that's's a great question, to be
honest with you, because itwell, I'll give you two.
I'll try to answer thisquestion as best I can, because
we really can help anyone.
Okay, and I know you don't wantto get that answer because
that's like well, okay, that'sreally awful broad strokes well,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
What that says is if you have 300 units, it still
works right.
If you have 300,000 units?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
yeah, so and we run into those exact scenarios.
We work with some of thelargest property managers in the
world and we work with some ofthe smallest property managers
in the world.
It really doesn't matter.
The system is completelyscalable and it can be used for
multiple I mean, any sizecompany can really really use it
and benefit it.
You can have the small company,the lean and mean guy that's
(19:58):
looking to save money, he'slooking to try, and you know,
streamline everything.
He can grow his businesswithout having to add headcount.
You know we were set up to workwith those folks, as well as
the one that has an AP team of35 people in there that all of a
sudden, they just look aroundand they're like we could
probably use 35 people to dosomething else and what we can
(20:22):
help them with being able tostreamline and scale their own
business.
So it's really it's our averagecustomer, though, and we look at
the world through invoices andpayments, which is kind of a
hard translation for folks thatdon't dabble in that on a
regular basis to know.
But we'll ask people how manypayments do you make a month?
(20:45):
And you'll be shocked how manypeople don't have a clue, but
generally, what we see is ouraverage customer will be
somewhere in the neighborhood of750 to 1500 monthly payments.
Now that takes intoconsideration that that pulls
out the outliers, the guys thatare doing 50,000, 100,000, and
(21:06):
you know, pulls out the outliersthat the guys are doing 10.
But you know, generally day inday out, that's who we see the
most of.
But that doesn't mean that wecan't help the guy that's doing
100 or that we can't help theguy that's doing 15,000, because
we absolutely can.
But that's just generally whatwe see.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
What is the?
And maybe you don't know thisoff the top of your head, but
what is the amount of time forone like, what do people spend
on one invoice?
Is that research out there?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, so it depends on how big the organization is
as to how much time they spendon it.
But generally an invoicethey're going to spend upwards
of, on a payment they spend onan average of seven minutes of
payment and then on an invoicethey could spend anywhere
between 12 to 20 minutes onaverage and you take into
consideration everybody that'sgot to touch it and look at it
(21:52):
and go through, and you takeinto consideration everybody
that's, you know, got to touchit and look at it and go through
it and you just multiply thatover.
If you're doing a thousand, Imean that's you're talking about
a lot of time that's gettingspent just looking at an invoice
where you can reduce thatremarkably with automating this
process, so and that.
And you can also translate thatbecause we can do full ROI
(22:14):
analysis for customers if theywant to, so they can understand,
like, really what's this goingto be worth to you to do it?
You know how much you're goingto save just in hard costs alone
.
You know you think about thehard costs on the payment side
of things.
You've got stamps, you've gotmicrotoner, you've got envelopes
, you've got check stock.
You know how much money you'regoing to save just not having to
(22:34):
do that again, just not havingto worry about buying that near
as much, if at all, and beingable to automate that process.
And then the soft cost piece ofit with what you're paying folks
to do and you're paying thefolks to put it together and you
know, to put this, just to mailit out and all the folks on
capturing the invoices and allthat time that it takes them to
(22:58):
get those invoices through andentered into the system and be
able to be facilitated to bepaid.
So we could actually give youlike a number as to what that's
going to be and so you can weighthat against, like what this is
going to cost.
And you know we've talked aboutpayments.
There's also the opportunityfor rebates to be involved.
We do have a lot of customersthat take on receiving rebates
(23:24):
in their deal with Avid Exchangeand that can outweigh a lot of
the costs and sometimes it canoutweigh all of it, depending on
how many payments they processand how much rebate we're able
to collect for folks.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yes, and the math seems simple with that analysis,
right.
The question then becomes howdo you get out in front of it?
So you're not like thehurricane you mentioned, you're
reacting, because I wouldimagine doing this in a state of
planning is much more enjoyablethan in a state of need, where
you're reacting to a problem youknow and you've been told to do
(24:00):
this, that type of thing.
Which leads me to my questionof who are you talking to inside
the organization to bring thisin.
Is it CFO?
Like who do you want to spendtime with inside the
organization?
Like who do you want to spendtime with inside the
organization?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So generally, we like the controller and this is just
my opinion of it.
You could probably askdifferent people at Avid
Exchange.
But the controller to me isthat like ideal person, because
they kind of sit right there,they're involved with everything
.
They're passing reports up tothe CFO, but they're also
(24:36):
dealing with all the accountantsand the AP staff, so they can
see both sides of the fence andthey can understand and
appreciate the value that you'regoing want to talk to.
But the roles can be vast indifferent organizations and you
(24:56):
know, obviously you know furtheroff the food chain is generally
going to be the one that signsoff on doing something like this
.
So you know, obviously, gettingbuy-in from the CFO and their
leadership, the leadership ofthe organization is ideal.
But you know we talk to, youknow AP managers we talk to, you
(25:17):
know controllers, cfos.
You know we talk to a lot ofdifferent roles, but I would say
that our ideal customer wegenerally like to have the
controller involved.
That's a really good person tohave a lot of perspective on the
value we can bring.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, I mean, to your point, the leadership team, if
that be, cfo, CEO, whatever thatis, board, I mean they're
looking for productivity,experience, value creation in
the business.
Clearly, the controller isorganized to do all of those
things and it impacts theirworld so much.
Right, Like I imagine they'reyour best champions in so many
ways.
(25:52):
But sometimes the CEOs and alot of the leaders that listen
to the podcast aren't doing thatwork right.
So it's like do you want to bea status quo organization?
Do you want to kind of staywhere you are, leave some money
on the table, you know, or doyou want to create some
experience, better experiencesfor employees, create some
profitability and modernize thebusiness?
(26:14):
I think that's kind of the wayI would be thinking about it if
I'm a CEO today.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, you don't want to be in a scenario where we run
into this actually a lot, wherewe run into scenarios where the
organization is going through achange ie people are leaving or
growing or whatever the case is, and they don't have like a
established, a true establishedprocess which you can, which you
(26:42):
can make an Avid exchange, andit can be an established
electronic process that you know.
This is how the invoices aregoing to flow, this is how the
you know this is, this is whathappens.
So you could, if somebody leftand you brought somebody else in
.
This is how it works.
Where you we have a lot ofscenarios where you got a lot of
this like colloquial knowledgethat when somebody retires or
leaves the organization, alonggoes all that knowledge too, and
(27:04):
they have to go.
They get kind of caught ontheir heels trying to figure out
well, how did we do this in thepast?
You know what is, you knowthere's no established process
for this.
What do we?
What do we do now?
And you know that's one of thethings where, kind of to your
point, patrick, getting out infront of it will help, you know,
shore up those kind ofconversations down the road.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yes, and even with talent shortages, I would
imagine that people kind of seethe writing on the wall in many
ways, with even AI around.
Like you know, supportingorganizations like this, like
companies, are not expanding.
They're relying on, likerelationships that you've built
to get the job done in a moretechnically advanced way.
So I would imagine it's alsohard to find more and more staff
(27:49):
as well, and this provides, Ithink I'm assuming some relief
to that as well.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It does, it definitely takes a lot of the
pressure off.
I mean, you still need peoplein there to make decisions.
I mean the software is not adecision-making piece.
It's just going to give you theopportunity to take all that
work off your plate and you'rejust, you know, as far as coding
the invoices and all that kindof stuff, you're just checking
to make sure this is right,you're checking to make sure you
want to approve it and you wantto pay this thing, and so it's
not, it's not making thedecisions for you, but you still
(28:16):
need those kind ofdecision-making folks in there
to deal with that.
But yeah, outside of that, itdefinitely will take the
pressure off of you needinglarge staffs of folks to handle
your day-to-day business.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
And I think that's another comfort level is you're
still in charge of approvals andauthority over the governance
of the organization.
Nothing really changes, fromwhat I understand with that.
You're just kind of gettingthat middle piece redundant
process out and systematizing itin so many ways.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yep, we get asked that a lot.
I don't want things to just goout the door automatically.
Well, good thing they don't, soyou're in luck.
No, nothing comes through andgets automatically approved.
Nothing gets automaticallyapproved.
Nothing gets automatically paid.
So there's no way for anythingto get set up to where something
comes in and goes out the doorand no one touched it.
(29:07):
So you're still going to haveto have people that are going to
say, yes, we did this, yes, wewant to pay it.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, and so, John, what are the questions people
are asking you if they haven'tbeen through this process yet,
right?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
So and what questions should we be asking as far as
getting looking into doingsomething like this, I think you
just it's a little bit of likekind of looking back at the
company that you're with andkind of going through a little
bit of a checklist, you know, dowe, are we looking to grow?
Are we?
If we're looking to grow, thenthis is an opportunity for us to
(29:39):
scale our business and be ableto expand without having to add
any back office staff.
You know I hate to do it kindof the fear mongering thing, but
have we experienced fraud?
Do we experience issues withpayments?
Do we experience issues withinvoices coming in, or do we
have folks that are looking toleave?
Are we in some level of atransition at our company?
You know, is ownership changingover?
(30:01):
A lot of times you havechildren that are taking over
companies for their parents thatbuilt the company.
So there's a whole host ofthings that can take place.
That would be really goodopportunities.
Are we looking to move offices?
That's one that I think is aninteresting one that I used to
face years ago and they're likewe want to hold off, we're
(30:24):
moving offices and my responsewould be well, this is the
perfect time because you'removing offices.
You're going to tell every oneof your vendors you're changing
the address they're going tosend this invoice to.
Why not just tell them you'rechanging the address to Avid
Exchange and then not have totell them again, and then it's
done, and then you can moveoffices all you want.
So if there's any sort of likechange, anything going on or
(30:47):
you're just sick and tired ofdealing with paper, we would
love to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, that's great.
So let's talk about that.
How do people get in touch withyou?
Where can they follow you andlearn more about what this
product is?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, so I mean you can reach out to Avid Exchange.
I mean obviouslyavidexchangecom.
You can obviously reach out tome.
I mean I'm on LinkedIn.
My name's John Land, l-a-n-d.
Been working at Avid for awhile.
Email address is simpleJ-L-A-N-D at avidexchangecom.
But, yeah, you can reach out toAvid Exchange obviously through
(31:22):
our website.
If you're kind of catching this, you can reach out to me.
We're at a lot of differenttrade shows so we will take any
sort of contact that you canfind.
But, yeah, that's probably thesimplest way Go to the website
and then you just request moreinformation and we have teams of
folks that will reach out toyou.
(31:44):
You know, kind of find out alittle bit more about you.
You're going to have aconversation with somebody in
our business developmentdepartment, understanding you
know what you're after, whatyou're looking for, and then
they'll set you up with beingable to speak with the.
You know, because we, you knowwe work with a lot of different
verticals at Avid Exchange.
We got right at 10,000 customers.
So you know there's a lot ofdifferent things going on.
(32:05):
We have different relationshipswith different accounting
systems.
Some of them we're embedded in,some of them we're not.
But they'll route you to thecorrect person and they'll be
able to take care of you andkind of get you in the process
to see if this is a solutionthat would work for you kind of
get you in the process to see ifthis is a solution that would
work for you.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, I think we did a greatjob covering some of the things
that you're innovating in ourspace.
Is there anything that wemissed?
Number one.
Number two is tell us justfinal thoughts, anything you
want to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I don't know that we missed terribly much.
Obviously, avid Exchange is agrowing business.
I mean we've got a lot going on.
We're constantly developingthings.
We're working on a lot of stuff.
You mentioned AI.
We do a lot with that.
That's something that's reallyramping up pretty heavily.
In fact, Avid Exchange probablyis one of the companies that's
(33:03):
got the most benefit fromartificial intelligence, and the
fact that we have millions andmillions of invoices that come
through Avid Exchange each andevery day and being able to
capture that information evenmore accurately than we do today
would definitely be beneficialto us, because there's a lot of
systems in place that we have tomake sure that we hold a really
(33:25):
high regard to our accuracy.
But I mean, as far as anythingelse, without going into
specific systems and stuff likethat, we're always working to
grow our network and we woulddefinitely want to hear from
(33:47):
everybody that we can, so we cando what we can to partner with
as many folks in the multifamilyand real estate industries, for
that matter, that we can, andwe've done a lot with our
integrations over the years.
Uh, I mean just in my time atavid exchange.
I mean it's it's like a quantumleap from when we started.
So there's a, there's a lot,especially the embedded
(34:10):
solutions are becoming reallypopular.
So we're and when I say thatthat means that, like when you,
if you used, let's's say youknow RealPage, that the Avid's,
the payments piece, is builtinto RealPage, meaning you don't
leave RealPage, it's inRealPage.
So when you select payments,you can send them right through
(34:30):
RealPage, vendor pay and that'spowered by Avid Exchange.
So we're the ones that arefacilitating the payments, we're
basically the engine behind it.
But you don't ever have toleave engine behind it, but you
don't ever have to leave.
So there's not, it's not goingto come across as some kind of
bolt on system or you know.
You know it's going to beintegrated fully into your
actual, into your actualexperience.
(34:51):
So that's that's probably oneof the most popular things that
we have.
That's going on with with our,with our folks.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
but Wonderful, wonderful, no, I'm really glad
you shared that because I thinkpeople, um, you know, they want
to know how this experience andit's probably best to reach out
and get in touch with your team,maybe do a demo, see how this
stuff works from a visual andand ask the questions.
I'm sure it's unique to everycustomer and, uh, you know,
(35:18):
hopefully this podcast has beenhelpful and would encourage
people to take that first step,regardless of what the priority
is today, it doesn't cost moneyto reach out and get in touch
with somebody that canpotentially help transform an
organization.
So it's been great sharing thetime.
We'll be following your successand appreciate you showing up
and creating the value for ourlisteners.
(35:40):
Thank you, john.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Thank you, patrick, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, all right.
Well, we'll see you guys in thenext one.
Make sure you give them afollow and enjoy it.
Go after it.
We'll see you next one.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, thanks.
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