July 9, 2025 • 16 mins
In this insightful episode of the Paymode series, Paul sits down with Patrick Sunday, Chief Accounting Officer at Bottomline, to explore the evolving role of the finance function in today’s fast-paced environment. Patrick shares his experience leading a global finance team, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how finance is transforming from a traditional reporting role into a strategic powerhouse. From leveraging AI and digital transformation to improving KPIs like DSO and closing cycles, Patrick provides practical insights and forward-looking advice for finance leaders navigating economic uncertainty and technological disruption.
#finance #financepodcast #AI #artificialintelligence #businessgrowth #automation #datadrivendecisions #CFOInsights #FinanceStrategy #AIinFinance #B2BPayments #WorkingCapital #payments
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Episode Transcript
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(00:18):
[Paul McMeekin]The payments podcast from Bottomline.
[Owen McDonald]Welcome to the Paymode edition of the
[Owen McDonald]payments podcast. I'm Bottomline managing editor, Owen
[Owen McDonald]McDonald. This series of Paymode themed podcasts looks
[Owen McDonald]at the hottest trends in business payments with
[Owen McDonald]Paul McMeekin, vice president of marketing at Bottomline,
[Owen McDonald] along with expert guests. In this episode,
(00:40):
[Owen McDonald]Paul welcomes Patrick Sunday, chief accounting officer at
[Owen McDonald]Bottomline, as they discuss controlling operational costs, the
[Owen McDonald]insights and guardrails that data driven accounting delivers,
[Owen McDonald]gen AI myths, and much more. Here's Paul
[Owen McDonald]McMeekin and Patrick Sunday.
[Paul McMeekin]And welcome to the Paymode podcast series. I'm
(01:00):
[Paul McMeekin]delighted to say Patrick Sundae is joining me
[Paul McMeekin]today. Welcome, Patrick.
[Patrick Sunday]It's great to be here. Thanks, Paul.
[Paul McMeekin]Yeah. Thank you. And for those in the
[Paul McMeekin]audience who don't know you, you're one of
[Paul McMeekin]the, people working inside Bottomline for the benefit
[Paul McMeekin]of our customers. Can you just describe your
[Paul McMeekin]role a little bit?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So I am the chief
[Patrick Sunday]accounting officer at Bottomline here. So just to
(01:21):
[Patrick Sunday]put that into context, my organization contributed to
[Patrick Sunday]roughly a hundred and twenty resources globally. And,
[Patrick Sunday]essentially, what we're overseeing is all of the
[Patrick Sunday]shared service, you know, transaction processing and APAR.
[Patrick Sunday]We do all the controllership, all the audit
[Patrick Sunday]work. We manage all the corporate tax stuff.
[Patrick Sunday]We also manage a deal hub process, so
(01:42):
[Patrick Sunday]there is a big interface between my organization
[Patrick Sunday]and sales, and I can I can certainly
[Patrick Sunday]get into that? And so, yeah, it's a
[Patrick Sunday]big remit. We're, you know, a big location
[Patrick Sunday]in India as well as we're scattered around
[Patrick Sunday]the US and the UK.
[Paul McMeekin]We wanna talk today about trends and priorities
[Paul McMeekin]driving financial decision making is kind of our
[Paul McMeekin]over overarching themes there. And so my first
(02:03):
[Paul McMeekin]question diving straight into it, what do CEOs
[Paul McMeekin]and the board of directors value when it
[Paul McMeekin]comes to the finance function?
[Patrick Sunday]I think first and foremost, Paul, honestly, when
[Patrick Sunday]you think about finance and I'll get into
[Patrick Sunday]this a little bit where know, the the
[Patrick Sunday]function historically has been very much an administrative
[Patrick Sunday]reporting function, and I think we're at a
(02:24):
[Patrick Sunday]kind of, we're at a crossroads now where
[Patrick Sunday]that where the finance function, is actually evolving.
[Patrick Sunday]It is something much more value added and
[Patrick Sunday]strategic. So I think first and foremost, the
[Patrick Sunday]board and CEOs, they they want finance they
[Patrick Sunday]want you to run it cheaper. So how
[Patrick Sunday]do you run it more efficient, faster? You
[Patrick Sunday]know, and you can do those sort of
[Patrick Sunday]things because, you know, if you're a, you
(02:45):
[Patrick Sunday]know, a growth minded CEO and board, you
[Patrick Sunday]don't want finance staff to add incremental cost
[Patrick Sunday]as you're growing. So you have to be
[Patrick Sunday]able to set up your organization to scale
[Patrick Sunday]with a rapidly growing business. And so when
[Patrick Sunday]you look at Bottomline, I mean, we're
[Patrick Sunday]growing north of fifteen percent, and, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]we've been around for thirty five years. So
[Patrick Sunday]that's that's a pretty big expansion year over
(03:05):
[Patrick Sunday]year. So to be able to set up
[Patrick Sunday]your organization to provide maximum support to the
[Patrick Sunday]business without having to add cost each year
[Patrick Sunday]as the business is growing, I think is
[Patrick Sunday]first and foremost what they expect. Secondly, they
[Patrick Sunday]want a in, you know, on one side
[Patrick Sunday]of their mouth, they want you to move
[Patrick Sunday]faster. How do you close faster? How do
[Patrick Sunday]you, you know, build a forecast faster? But
(03:27):
[Patrick Sunday]at the same time, you can't compromise precision.
[Patrick Sunday]So it's finding that right balance between, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, moving faster, but also maintaining, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]an adequate level of precision to be able
[Patrick Sunday]to provide that meaningful insights as to how
[Patrick Sunday]the business is operating, which will hopefully be
[Patrick Sunday]able to drive more impactful strategic decisions. So
(03:48):
[Patrick Sunday]and that kinda gets me to my third
[Patrick Sunday]point. You know, the really the big value
[Patrick Sunday]add is where finance can provide those insights
[Patrick Sunday]quicker, to essentially be driving those meaningful strategic
[Patrick Sunday]decisions. And so how do you do that?
[Patrick Sunday]Providing guardrails for the business, you know, establishing
[Patrick Sunday]performance operating metrics that, you know, you can
[Patrick Sunday]hold different various functional leaders accountable for, setting
(04:12):
[Patrick Sunday]company priorities. You know, within finance, we can
[Patrick Sunday]do that. And I think we're kind of
[Patrick Sunday]uniquely positioned in a way that we see
[Patrick Sunday]things before everybody else. And so being able
[Patrick Sunday]to bring that to the forefront in a
[Patrick Sunday]much more, I'd say, transparent and effective manner,
[Patrick Sunday]I think is really where the board general
[Patrick Sunday]boards that I'm seeing as well as various
[Patrick Sunday]GM slash CEOs, however you wanna refer to
(04:34):
[Patrick Sunday]them, that's really where they're getting the value
[Patrick Sunday]out of the finance function.
[Paul McMeekin]That makes sense. So just a just a
[Paul McMeekin]follow-up question. What interesting use cases are you
[Paul McMeekin]seeing with regards to AI?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. No. It's interesting. We think about AI
[Patrick Sunday]well, so first off, like, this will be
[Patrick Sunday]part of, you know, what I've been talking
[Patrick Sunday]about to other groups that I I do
[Patrick Sunday]socialize with is that there's a big myth
(04:56):
[Patrick Sunday]out there right now that AI is gonna
[Patrick Sunday]make finance redundant. And so no we're no
[Patrick Sunday]longer gonna need people to run the finance
[Patrick Sunday]function. That is a myth. That's not true.
[Patrick Sunday]However, what is true is that all functions,
[Patrick Sunday]the finance in particular, needs to figure out
[Patrick Sunday]a way to embrace the capabilities of AI
[Patrick Sunday]and to actually deploy a thoughtful strategy. Now
(05:17):
[Patrick Sunday]right now, this is very theory very theoretical.
[Patrick Sunday]I have not seen a lot of use
[Patrick Sunday]cases, but what I have seen people talk
[Patrick Sunday]about is how can we leverage AI to
[Patrick Sunday]do more kind of routine tasks, reconciliations, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, cash application, things like that. How do
[Patrick Sunday]we use AI to do more enhanced data
[Patrick Sunday]analytics? That's definitely one that I think is
(05:39):
[Patrick Sunday]gonna come to the forefront of a a
[Patrick Sunday]use case that can be deployed pretty seamlessly.
[Patrick Sunday]Also predictive analytics. One of the biggest areas
[Patrick Sunday]that I'm seeing, that AI is being kinda
[Patrick Sunday]harvested around is around cash forecasting. So how
[Patrick Sunday]do you deploy the AI capabilities across your
[Patrick Sunday]different sort of order to cash kind of
(05:59):
[Patrick Sunday]reporting kind of silo to be able to
[Patrick Sunday]understand and predict when we're gonna start seeing
[Patrick Sunday]those inflows come in and then on the
[Patrick Sunday]payable side, you know, when do those outflows
[Patrick Sunday]and then, you know, ultimately, how do we
[Patrick Sunday]go ahead and build a forecast off of
[Patrick Sunday]that? So have I seen this done successfully?
[Patrick Sunday]No. But there's a lot of people talking
[Patrick Sunday]about it. Also, another thing is risk management,
[Patrick Sunday]you know, fraud detection. You know, one of
(06:22):
[Patrick Sunday]the things and when I think about payments
[Patrick Sunday]is that it's such a huge addressable market
[Patrick Sunday]doing a very manual, onerous payment process, which
[Patrick Sunday]by the way is, like, the norm out
[Patrick Sunday]there. So there is so much to go
[Patrick Sunday]after there, but just given the the age
[Patrick Sunday]of fraud and the age of these, fraud
[Patrick Sunday]actors or whatever, bad actors, if you will,
[Patrick Sunday]getting into sort of your ecosystem, it's it's
(06:43):
[Patrick Sunday]becoming so easy, and AI is a tool
[Patrick Sunday]for them to do that. So to be
[Patrick Sunday]able to counteract that threat with AI of
[Patrick Sunday]our own of our own within the payables
[Patrick Sunday]process, I think is definitely something that is
[Patrick Sunday]gonna prove to be incredibly critical, as we
[Patrick Sunday]continue to progress in this new digital age
[Patrick Sunday]with AI at the forefront.
[Paul McMeekin]When you're thinking of the finance function, what
(07:04):
[Paul McMeekin]benchmarks you look at, and how does the
[Paul McMeekin]finance organization become best in class?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. So I think there there there's a
[Patrick Sunday]couple of things. So when we think about
[Patrick Sunday]performance metrics, we talk about just the closing
[Patrick Sunday]cycle. You know, when I got to bottom
[Patrick Sunday]line, you know, we probably operated under a
[Patrick Sunday]fifteen day closing cycle just to close the
[Patrick Sunday]books. Today, we do it in six days,
[Patrick Sunday]and that's really without any sort of real
(07:27):
[Patrick Sunday]meaningful, investments in sort of a digital transformation.
[Patrick Sunday]So I think to be able to do
[Patrick Sunday]that just through pure process diligence and just
[Patrick Sunday]globalizing the function. I mean, I think companies
[Patrick Sunday]like ours, we're not that dissimilar where companies
[Patrick Sunday]grow regionally, and all of a sudden you
[Patrick Sunday]have this, like, regional silo of of a
[Patrick Sunday]mix of, like, region and product line. And
(07:48):
[Patrick Sunday]so you tend to kinda gravitate and build
[Patrick Sunday]your function to support that. So now all
[Patrick Sunday]of a sudden you have a bunch of
[Patrick Sunday]disparate processes globally. We've done a ton of
[Patrick Sunday]work since I've been here to really globalize
[Patrick Sunday]everything we can, and that's really helped us
[Patrick Sunday]to speed up just our overall closing the
[Patrick Sunday]books process. And then that dovetails into the
[Patrick Sunday]FP and A function. Right? So they're they
[Patrick Sunday]they typically need to wait until the the
(08:09):
[Patrick Sunday]books are closed so they can start their
[Patrick Sunday]next forecast cycle. So they've been able to
[Patrick Sunday]start that earlier and get through their cycle
[Patrick Sunday]earlier. So now I think between the accounting
[Patrick Sunday]and FP and A teams, you know, we're
[Patrick Sunday]basically done our close and forecasting cycle within
[Patrick Sunday]ten days, which is that best in class?
[Patrick Sunday]I wouldn't say it's best in class because
[Patrick Sunday]I think there's an opportunity now through deploying,
[Patrick Sunday]you know, a more robust digital transformation strategy,
(08:32):
[Patrick Sunday]to be able to even enhance it even
[Patrick Sunday]more. But that's that's pretty good. So definitely
[Patrick Sunday]just process wise timing, we measure ourselves on
[Patrick Sunday]that. More specific to my function, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]when we think about working capital, I mean,
[Patrick Sunday]that is the lifeblood of what we're doing,
[Patrick Sunday]how we're able to sort of deploy investment
[Patrick Sunday]capital, whether we're doing it into development or
[Patrick Sunday]into sales and marketing or we need to
(08:53):
[Patrick Sunday]beef up g and a, that comes through
[Patrick Sunday]working capital. And so the biggest indicator there
[Patrick Sunday]is DSO. Right? How from the day we
[Patrick Sunday]sell a deal to when we actually start
[Patrick Sunday]to to generate some of that cash flow,
[Patrick Sunday]what does that look like? So we're constantly
[Patrick Sunday]tightly measuring that on a monthly basis. And
[Patrick Sunday]and so that's definitely a huge indicator as
[Patrick Sunday]to how well we're managing our working capital.
(09:14):
[Patrick Sunday]And then you have things like days payable
[Patrick Sunday]outstanding. You know, we have various compliance, with
[Patrick Sunday]our lenders. You know, we have various reporting
[Patrick Sunday]deadlines that we have to hit. So there
[Patrick Sunday]is a plethora of stuff like that that
[Patrick Sunday]we use to measure ourselves, but those are
[Patrick Sunday]just a few to highlight for sure, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, that I think really kinda speaks volumes
[Patrick Sunday]as to how well we're performing.
[Paul McMeekin]Okay. So you had a really good story
(09:35):
[Paul McMeekin]about, the closing cycle. You mentioned a few
[Paul McMeekin]different metrics there. What about DSO? Have we
[Paul McMeekin]got a a similar success story there?
[Patrick Sunday]We do. We do. So our order to
[Patrick Sunday]cash function has grown tremendously, through a very
[Patrick Sunday]diligent location strategy in Bangalore, India. And so
[Patrick Sunday]the majority of our, collection and cash application
(09:56):
[Patrick Sunday]staff resides there. So over the last year
[Patrick Sunday]and a half, that's how we've kind of
[Patrick Sunday]built the sort of org optimization. So it's
[Patrick Sunday]taken time for this team to be stood
[Patrick Sunday]up over there with critical mass to be
[Patrick Sunday]able to execute and deploy different tools to
[Patrick Sunday]be able to drive more time timely collections.
[Patrick Sunday]And I think we've gone from, I'd say,
[Patrick Sunday]the last year and a half at DSO
(10:16):
[Patrick Sunday]of close to sixty to the point where
[Patrick Sunday]about two months ago, we were down just
[Patrick Sunday]below thirty. It was sorry, below forty. It
[Patrick Sunday]was actually at thirty nine. So to have
[Patrick Sunday]a twenty one day improvement is remarkable. We
[Patrick Sunday]did have a significant billing event that has
[Patrick Sunday]crept that back up, but we have brought
[Patrick Sunday]that down again. And so we are really
[Patrick Sunday]anytime you can run a DSO process below
(10:38):
[Patrick Sunday]forty five, like if that's a metric, that's
[Patrick Sunday]that's usually pretty good. But just the drastic
[Patrick Sunday]improvement and how rapid that happened here just
[Patrick Sunday]here at Bottomline, was just a tremendous
[Patrick Sunday]success story.
[Paul McMeekin]Changes slightly from, successes to to challenges. What
[Paul McMeekin]challenges does the finance function face in the
[Paul McMeekin]next two to three years?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. Paul, I would say how much how
(10:58):
[Patrick Sunday]much how much time do we have? What
[Patrick Sunday]do we have? I'll try to I'll try
[Patrick Sunday]to keep this brief. I mean, I think
[Patrick Sunday]first and foremost, and I'm not gonna get
[Patrick Sunday]into this too much, but navigating all the
[Patrick Sunday]economic uncertainty, you know, with everything that's going
[Patrick Sunday]on and just the the equity markets and
[Patrick Sunday]the bond markets with the tariffs and everything
[Patrick Sunday]like that, this is a, a very difficult
[Patrick Sunday]time. So how do you navigate that, and
(11:20):
[Patrick Sunday]really kind of build a pretty nimble, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, planning and forecasting process? I mean, it's
[Patrick Sunday]it's very difficult in this sort of environment
[Patrick Sunday]plus trying to predict. I mean, we're in
[Patrick Sunday]payments. I mean, if we enter into a
[Patrick Sunday]recession, which many people believe that we are,
[Patrick Sunday]what does that mean for our corporates in
[Patrick Sunday]terms of their spending? I mean, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]our biggest growth engine is Paymode. And
[Patrick Sunday]so, you know, we need to do what
(11:41):
[Patrick Sunday]we can to push as many dollars into
[Patrick Sunday]that network. Well, if, you know, things need
[Patrick Sunday]to be tightened up because of just the
[Patrick Sunday]macroeconomic kind of environment that we're entering into,
[Patrick Sunday]how do we navigate that? So I think
[Patrick Sunday]that's number one. I I think just also
[Patrick Sunday]I'll keep using this word. I know it's
[Patrick Sunday]a buzzword, which in terms of digital transformation,
[Patrick Sunday]but it is so important. And I'll kinda
(12:01):
[Patrick Sunday]tie that into AI, like because you can't
[Patrick Sunday]really use the word digital transformation anymore without
[Patrick Sunday]a. And I think being able to be
[Patrick Sunday]be able to build an ecosystem of integrated
[Patrick Sunday]solutions, you know, and it might not be
[Patrick Sunday]everything, but having a way to kind of
[Patrick Sunday]connect your ERP to your payable system, to
[Patrick Sunday]your procurement system, to your planning system, all
(12:21):
[Patrick Sunday]the way to some sort of a data
[Patrick Sunday]warehouse, which brings me to my next point
[Patrick Sunday]is that having a proper data governance strategy
[Patrick Sunday]is absolutely it's probably critical, you know, priority
[Patrick Sunday]number one, to be able to actually utilize
[Patrick Sunday]the capabilities of AI because AI is only
[Patrick Sunday]as good as the underlying data that it's
[Patrick Sunday]actually mining. And so I think that's why
(12:41):
[Patrick Sunday]a lot of organizations are struggling right now.
[Patrick Sunday]So I think this is gonna be a
[Patrick Sunday]challenge because if it's I don't wanna say
[Patrick Sunday]it's an arm trace, but every company is
[Patrick Sunday]gonna be trying to find a way to
[Patrick Sunday]successfully deploy whether it's in finance, whether it's
[Patrick Sunday]in operations, whether it's in your compliance function,
[Patrick Sunday]whether it's in your cybersecurity function. Every function
[Patrick Sunday]within every organization is going to try to
[Patrick Sunday]figure out a way to leverage it. And
(13:03):
[Patrick Sunday]I think the first thing that we can
[Patrick Sunday]be doing as custodians of the data is
[Patrick Sunday]really employing a strategy to make sure that
[Patrick Sunday]our datasets are clean, they're complete, and that
[Patrick Sunday]they're actually usable.
[Paul McMeekin]So you speak to CFOs, you speak to
[Paul McMeekin]treasurers, you speak to CEOs, UPS. If you
[Paul McMeekin]could give one piece of advice to that
(13:23):
[Paul McMeekin]cohort about the future of payments, what would
[Paul McMeekin]it be?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. So the future of payments, particularly just
[Patrick Sunday]if we're gonna talk about in our space,
[Patrick Sunday]like, having secure, automated payments is not going
[Patrick Sunday]to be nice to have. It is going
[Patrick Sunday]to be a requirement. And so a couple
[Patrick Sunday]of things to to kind of mention there.
[Patrick Sunday]When I mentioned before about, you know, the
(13:45):
[Patrick Sunday]the the threat actors that are out there
[Patrick Sunday]and the different sophisticated methods in which fraudsters
[Patrick Sunday]are getting into our system, there is going
[Patrick Sunday]to be such a need for companies to
[Patrick Sunday]have that security blanket over their working capital.
[Patrick Sunday]There is no question. And, I'll just give
[Patrick Sunday]you one data point that backs that up.
[Patrick Sunday]Just kind of being able to monitor all
[Patrick Sunday]the different companies that operate whether they be
(14:06):
[Patrick Sunday]in our arena or in adjacent arenas within
[Patrick Sunday]fintech, but Visa is a great story. You
[Patrick Sunday]look at Visa, if they had a couple
[Patrick Sunday]investor days recently where they're basically talking about
[Patrick Sunday]the the the the payments market and that
[Patrick Sunday]it's roughly eighty five trillion of, like, addressable
[Patrick Sunday]market. And so they sit over sixty of
[Patrick Sunday]it or something like that that is more
[Patrick Sunday]in card virtual card and card payments and
(14:28):
[Patrick Sunday]things like that. But the overall sort of
[Patrick Sunday]AP and AR are kinda like b two
[Patrick Sunday]b, the place that we operate. They're not
[Patrick Sunday]really playing in that space and that is
[Patrick Sunday]absolutely part of their strategy. They see that
[Patrick Sunday]that is definitely an area, like I said,
[Patrick Sunday]at the top of the call. There's just
[Patrick Sunday]so many companies that are so archaic when
[Patrick Sunday]it comes to managing their payables that I
[Patrick Sunday]just think that there's gonna be a ton
(14:49):
[Patrick Sunday]of momentum now in particular to get more
[Patrick Sunday]security around that, to get more automation around
[Patrick Sunday]that, and, obviously, Visa sees it. If you
[Patrick Sunday]actually see their top five bullets of their
[Patrick Sunday]strategy going forward that they just communicated at
[Patrick Sunday]an investor day, number three is to go
[Patrick Sunday]after this additional thirty five to forty trillion
[Patrick Sunday]dollars of b to b transactions between corporates.
(15:09):
[Patrick Sunday]And what that would be is building a
[Patrick Sunday]a network like we have.
[Paul McMeekin]Well, Patrick, thank you, for joining me today.
[Patrick Sunday]Of course.
[Owen McDonald]Balancing payment speed with precision, generating better insights
[Owen McDonald]from your finance function, getting the most out
[Owen McDonald]of AI using the right data. It's the
(15:29):
[Owen McDonald]rather exciting world of b to b accounting
[Owen McDonald]and payments. Thanks to Bottomline's Patrick Sundae and
[Owen McDonald]to cohost Paul McMeekin. To our fantastic audience,
[Owen McDonald]thanks for listening. Hit subscribe. Catch us again
[Owen McDonald]on your favorite podcast platforms, including Apple and
[Owen McDonald]Spotify. Bye for now.
[Paul McMeekin]The payments podcast from Bottomline.
[Owen McDonald]Welcome to the Paymode edition of the
[Owen McDonald]payments podcast. I'm Bottomline managing editor, Owen
[Owen McDonald]McDonald. This series of Paymode themed podcasts looks
[Owen McDonald]at the hottest trends in business payments with
[Owen McDonald]Paul McMeekin, vice president of marketing at Bottomline,
[Owen McDonald] along with expert guests. In this episode,
(00:40):
[Owen McDonald]Paul welcomes Patrick Sunday, chief accounting officer at
[Owen McDonald]Bottomline, as they discuss controlling operational costs, the
[Owen McDonald]insights and guardrails that data driven accounting delivers,
[Owen McDonald]gen AI myths, and much more. Here's Paul
[Owen McDonald]McMeekin and Patrick Sunday.
[Paul McMeekin]And welcome to the Paymode podcast series. I'm
(01:00):
[Paul McMeekin]delighted to say Patrick Sundae is joining me
[Paul McMeekin]today. Welcome, Patrick.
[Patrick Sunday]It's great to be here. Thanks, Paul.
[Paul McMeekin]Yeah. Thank you. And for those in the
[Paul McMeekin]audience who don't know you, you're one of
[Paul McMeekin]the, people working inside Bottomline for the benefit
[Paul McMeekin]of our customers. Can you just describe your
[Paul McMeekin]role a little bit?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So I am the chief
[Patrick Sunday]accounting officer at Bottomline here. So just to
(01:21):
[Patrick Sunday]put that into context, my organization contributed to
[Patrick Sunday]roughly a hundred and twenty resources globally. And,
[Patrick Sunday]essentially, what we're overseeing is all of the
[Patrick Sunday]shared service, you know, transaction processing and APAR.
[Patrick Sunday]We do all the controllership, all the audit
[Patrick Sunday]work. We manage all the corporate tax stuff.
[Patrick Sunday]We also manage a deal hub process, so
(01:42):
[Patrick Sunday]there is a big interface between my organization
[Patrick Sunday]and sales, and I can I can certainly
[Patrick Sunday]get into that? And so, yeah, it's a
[Patrick Sunday]big remit. We're, you know, a big location
[Patrick Sunday]in India as well as we're scattered around
[Patrick Sunday]the US and the UK.
[Paul McMeekin]We wanna talk today about trends and priorities
[Paul McMeekin]driving financial decision making is kind of our
[Paul McMeekin]over overarching themes there. And so my first
(02:03):
[Paul McMeekin]question diving straight into it, what do CEOs
[Paul McMeekin]and the board of directors value when it
[Paul McMeekin]comes to the finance function?
[Patrick Sunday]I think first and foremost, Paul, honestly, when
[Patrick Sunday]you think about finance and I'll get into
[Patrick Sunday]this a little bit where know, the the
[Patrick Sunday]function historically has been very much an administrative
[Patrick Sunday]reporting function, and I think we're at a
(02:24):
[Patrick Sunday]kind of, we're at a crossroads now where
[Patrick Sunday]that where the finance function, is actually evolving.
[Patrick Sunday]It is something much more value added and
[Patrick Sunday]strategic. So I think first and foremost, the
[Patrick Sunday]board and CEOs, they they want finance they
[Patrick Sunday]want you to run it cheaper. So how
[Patrick Sunday]do you run it more efficient, faster? You
[Patrick Sunday]know, and you can do those sort of
[Patrick Sunday]things because, you know, if you're a, you
(02:45):
[Patrick Sunday]know, a growth minded CEO and board, you
[Patrick Sunday]don't want finance staff to add incremental cost
[Patrick Sunday]as you're growing. So you have to be
[Patrick Sunday]able to set up your organization to scale
[Patrick Sunday]with a rapidly growing business. And so when
[Patrick Sunday]you look at Bottomline, I mean, we're
[Patrick Sunday]growing north of fifteen percent, and, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]we've been around for thirty five years. So
[Patrick Sunday]that's that's a pretty big expansion year over
(03:05):
[Patrick Sunday]year. So to be able to set up
[Patrick Sunday]your organization to provide maximum support to the
[Patrick Sunday]business without having to add cost each year
[Patrick Sunday]as the business is growing, I think is
[Patrick Sunday]first and foremost what they expect. Secondly, they
[Patrick Sunday]want a in, you know, on one side
[Patrick Sunday]of their mouth, they want you to move
[Patrick Sunday]faster. How do you close faster? How do
[Patrick Sunday]you, you know, build a forecast faster? But
(03:27):
[Patrick Sunday]at the same time, you can't compromise precision.
[Patrick Sunday]So it's finding that right balance between, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, moving faster, but also maintaining, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]an adequate level of precision to be able
[Patrick Sunday]to provide that meaningful insights as to how
[Patrick Sunday]the business is operating, which will hopefully be
[Patrick Sunday]able to drive more impactful strategic decisions. So
(03:48):
[Patrick Sunday]and that kinda gets me to my third
[Patrick Sunday]point. You know, the really the big value
[Patrick Sunday]add is where finance can provide those insights
[Patrick Sunday]quicker, to essentially be driving those meaningful strategic
[Patrick Sunday]decisions. And so how do you do that?
[Patrick Sunday]Providing guardrails for the business, you know, establishing
[Patrick Sunday]performance operating metrics that, you know, you can
[Patrick Sunday]hold different various functional leaders accountable for, setting
(04:12):
[Patrick Sunday]company priorities. You know, within finance, we can
[Patrick Sunday]do that. And I think we're kind of
[Patrick Sunday]uniquely positioned in a way that we see
[Patrick Sunday]things before everybody else. And so being able
[Patrick Sunday]to bring that to the forefront in a
[Patrick Sunday]much more, I'd say, transparent and effective manner,
[Patrick Sunday]I think is really where the board general
[Patrick Sunday]boards that I'm seeing as well as various
[Patrick Sunday]GM slash CEOs, however you wanna refer to
(04:34):
[Patrick Sunday]them, that's really where they're getting the value
[Patrick Sunday]out of the finance function.
[Paul McMeekin]That makes sense. So just a just a
[Paul McMeekin]follow-up question. What interesting use cases are you
[Paul McMeekin]seeing with regards to AI?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. No. It's interesting. We think about AI
[Patrick Sunday]well, so first off, like, this will be
[Patrick Sunday]part of, you know, what I've been talking
[Patrick Sunday]about to other groups that I I do
[Patrick Sunday]socialize with is that there's a big myth
(04:56):
[Patrick Sunday]out there right now that AI is gonna
[Patrick Sunday]make finance redundant. And so no we're no
[Patrick Sunday]longer gonna need people to run the finance
[Patrick Sunday]function. That is a myth. That's not true.
[Patrick Sunday]However, what is true is that all functions,
[Patrick Sunday]the finance in particular, needs to figure out
[Patrick Sunday]a way to embrace the capabilities of AI
[Patrick Sunday]and to actually deploy a thoughtful strategy. Now
(05:17):
[Patrick Sunday]right now, this is very theory very theoretical.
[Patrick Sunday]I have not seen a lot of use
[Patrick Sunday]cases, but what I have seen people talk
[Patrick Sunday]about is how can we leverage AI to
[Patrick Sunday]do more kind of routine tasks, reconciliations, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, cash application, things like that. How do
[Patrick Sunday]we use AI to do more enhanced data
[Patrick Sunday]analytics? That's definitely one that I think is
(05:39):
[Patrick Sunday]gonna come to the forefront of a a
[Patrick Sunday]use case that can be deployed pretty seamlessly.
[Patrick Sunday]Also predictive analytics. One of the biggest areas
[Patrick Sunday]that I'm seeing, that AI is being kinda
[Patrick Sunday]harvested around is around cash forecasting. So how
[Patrick Sunday]do you deploy the AI capabilities across your
[Patrick Sunday]different sort of order to cash kind of
(05:59):
[Patrick Sunday]reporting kind of silo to be able to
[Patrick Sunday]understand and predict when we're gonna start seeing
[Patrick Sunday]those inflows come in and then on the
[Patrick Sunday]payable side, you know, when do those outflows
[Patrick Sunday]and then, you know, ultimately, how do we
[Patrick Sunday]go ahead and build a forecast off of
[Patrick Sunday]that? So have I seen this done successfully?
[Patrick Sunday]No. But there's a lot of people talking
[Patrick Sunday]about it. Also, another thing is risk management,
[Patrick Sunday]you know, fraud detection. You know, one of
(06:22):
[Patrick Sunday]the things and when I think about payments
[Patrick Sunday]is that it's such a huge addressable market
[Patrick Sunday]doing a very manual, onerous payment process, which
[Patrick Sunday]by the way is, like, the norm out
[Patrick Sunday]there. So there is so much to go
[Patrick Sunday]after there, but just given the the age
[Patrick Sunday]of fraud and the age of these, fraud
[Patrick Sunday]actors or whatever, bad actors, if you will,
[Patrick Sunday]getting into sort of your ecosystem, it's it's
(06:43):
[Patrick Sunday]becoming so easy, and AI is a tool
[Patrick Sunday]for them to do that. So to be
[Patrick Sunday]able to counteract that threat with AI of
[Patrick Sunday]our own of our own within the payables
[Patrick Sunday]process, I think is definitely something that is
[Patrick Sunday]gonna prove to be incredibly critical, as we
[Patrick Sunday]continue to progress in this new digital age
[Patrick Sunday]with AI at the forefront.
[Paul McMeekin]When you're thinking of the finance function, what
(07:04):
[Paul McMeekin]benchmarks you look at, and how does the
[Paul McMeekin]finance organization become best in class?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. So I think there there there's a
[Patrick Sunday]couple of things. So when we think about
[Patrick Sunday]performance metrics, we talk about just the closing
[Patrick Sunday]cycle. You know, when I got to bottom
[Patrick Sunday]line, you know, we probably operated under a
[Patrick Sunday]fifteen day closing cycle just to close the
[Patrick Sunday]books. Today, we do it in six days,
[Patrick Sunday]and that's really without any sort of real
(07:27):
[Patrick Sunday]meaningful, investments in sort of a digital transformation.
[Patrick Sunday]So I think to be able to do
[Patrick Sunday]that just through pure process diligence and just
[Patrick Sunday]globalizing the function. I mean, I think companies
[Patrick Sunday]like ours, we're not that dissimilar where companies
[Patrick Sunday]grow regionally, and all of a sudden you
[Patrick Sunday]have this, like, regional silo of of a
[Patrick Sunday]mix of, like, region and product line. And
(07:48):
[Patrick Sunday]so you tend to kinda gravitate and build
[Patrick Sunday]your function to support that. So now all
[Patrick Sunday]of a sudden you have a bunch of
[Patrick Sunday]disparate processes globally. We've done a ton of
[Patrick Sunday]work since I've been here to really globalize
[Patrick Sunday]everything we can, and that's really helped us
[Patrick Sunday]to speed up just our overall closing the
[Patrick Sunday]books process. And then that dovetails into the
[Patrick Sunday]FP and A function. Right? So they're they
[Patrick Sunday]they typically need to wait until the the
(08:09):
[Patrick Sunday]books are closed so they can start their
[Patrick Sunday]next forecast cycle. So they've been able to
[Patrick Sunday]start that earlier and get through their cycle
[Patrick Sunday]earlier. So now I think between the accounting
[Patrick Sunday]and FP and A teams, you know, we're
[Patrick Sunday]basically done our close and forecasting cycle within
[Patrick Sunday]ten days, which is that best in class?
[Patrick Sunday]I wouldn't say it's best in class because
[Patrick Sunday]I think there's an opportunity now through deploying,
[Patrick Sunday]you know, a more robust digital transformation strategy,
(08:32):
[Patrick Sunday]to be able to even enhance it even
[Patrick Sunday]more. But that's that's pretty good. So definitely
[Patrick Sunday]just process wise timing, we measure ourselves on
[Patrick Sunday]that. More specific to my function, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]when we think about working capital, I mean,
[Patrick Sunday]that is the lifeblood of what we're doing,
[Patrick Sunday]how we're able to sort of deploy investment
[Patrick Sunday]capital, whether we're doing it into development or
[Patrick Sunday]into sales and marketing or we need to
(08:53):
[Patrick Sunday]beef up g and a, that comes through
[Patrick Sunday]working capital. And so the biggest indicator there
[Patrick Sunday]is DSO. Right? How from the day we
[Patrick Sunday]sell a deal to when we actually start
[Patrick Sunday]to to generate some of that cash flow,
[Patrick Sunday]what does that look like? So we're constantly
[Patrick Sunday]tightly measuring that on a monthly basis. And
[Patrick Sunday]and so that's definitely a huge indicator as
[Patrick Sunday]to how well we're managing our working capital.
(09:14):
[Patrick Sunday]And then you have things like days payable
[Patrick Sunday]outstanding. You know, we have various compliance, with
[Patrick Sunday]our lenders. You know, we have various reporting
[Patrick Sunday]deadlines that we have to hit. So there
[Patrick Sunday]is a plethora of stuff like that that
[Patrick Sunday]we use to measure ourselves, but those are
[Patrick Sunday]just a few to highlight for sure, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, that I think really kinda speaks volumes
[Patrick Sunday]as to how well we're performing.
[Paul McMeekin]Okay. So you had a really good story
(09:35):
[Paul McMeekin]about, the closing cycle. You mentioned a few
[Paul McMeekin]different metrics there. What about DSO? Have we
[Paul McMeekin]got a a similar success story there?
[Patrick Sunday]We do. We do. So our order to
[Patrick Sunday]cash function has grown tremendously, through a very
[Patrick Sunday]diligent location strategy in Bangalore, India. And so
[Patrick Sunday]the majority of our, collection and cash application
(09:56):
[Patrick Sunday]staff resides there. So over the last year
[Patrick Sunday]and a half, that's how we've kind of
[Patrick Sunday]built the sort of org optimization. So it's
[Patrick Sunday]taken time for this team to be stood
[Patrick Sunday]up over there with critical mass to be
[Patrick Sunday]able to execute and deploy different tools to
[Patrick Sunday]be able to drive more time timely collections.
[Patrick Sunday]And I think we've gone from, I'd say,
[Patrick Sunday]the last year and a half at DSO
(10:16):
[Patrick Sunday]of close to sixty to the point where
[Patrick Sunday]about two months ago, we were down just
[Patrick Sunday]below thirty. It was sorry, below forty. It
[Patrick Sunday]was actually at thirty nine. So to have
[Patrick Sunday]a twenty one day improvement is remarkable. We
[Patrick Sunday]did have a significant billing event that has
[Patrick Sunday]crept that back up, but we have brought
[Patrick Sunday]that down again. And so we are really
[Patrick Sunday]anytime you can run a DSO process below
(10:38):
[Patrick Sunday]forty five, like if that's a metric, that's
[Patrick Sunday]that's usually pretty good. But just the drastic
[Patrick Sunday]improvement and how rapid that happened here just
[Patrick Sunday]here at Bottomline, was just a tremendous
[Patrick Sunday]success story.
[Paul McMeekin]Changes slightly from, successes to to challenges. What
[Paul McMeekin]challenges does the finance function face in the
[Paul McMeekin]next two to three years?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. Paul, I would say how much how
(10:58):
[Patrick Sunday]much how much time do we have? What
[Patrick Sunday]do we have? I'll try to I'll try
[Patrick Sunday]to keep this brief. I mean, I think
[Patrick Sunday]first and foremost, and I'm not gonna get
[Patrick Sunday]into this too much, but navigating all the
[Patrick Sunday]economic uncertainty, you know, with everything that's going
[Patrick Sunday]on and just the the equity markets and
[Patrick Sunday]the bond markets with the tariffs and everything
[Patrick Sunday]like that, this is a, a very difficult
[Patrick Sunday]time. So how do you navigate that, and
(11:20):
[Patrick Sunday]really kind of build a pretty nimble, you
[Patrick Sunday]know, planning and forecasting process? I mean, it's
[Patrick Sunday]it's very difficult in this sort of environment
[Patrick Sunday]plus trying to predict. I mean, we're in
[Patrick Sunday]payments. I mean, if we enter into a
[Patrick Sunday]recession, which many people believe that we are,
[Patrick Sunday]what does that mean for our corporates in
[Patrick Sunday]terms of their spending? I mean, you know,
[Patrick Sunday]our biggest growth engine is Paymode. And
[Patrick Sunday]so, you know, we need to do what
(11:41):
[Patrick Sunday]we can to push as many dollars into
[Patrick Sunday]that network. Well, if, you know, things need
[Patrick Sunday]to be tightened up because of just the
[Patrick Sunday]macroeconomic kind of environment that we're entering into,
[Patrick Sunday]how do we navigate that? So I think
[Patrick Sunday]that's number one. I I think just also
[Patrick Sunday]I'll keep using this word. I know it's
[Patrick Sunday]a buzzword, which in terms of digital transformation,
[Patrick Sunday]but it is so important. And I'll kinda
(12:01):
[Patrick Sunday]tie that into AI, like because you can't
[Patrick Sunday]really use the word digital transformation anymore without
[Patrick Sunday]a. And I think being able to be
[Patrick Sunday]be able to build an ecosystem of integrated
[Patrick Sunday]solutions, you know, and it might not be
[Patrick Sunday]everything, but having a way to kind of
[Patrick Sunday]connect your ERP to your payable system, to
[Patrick Sunday]your procurement system, to your planning system, all
(12:21):
[Patrick Sunday]the way to some sort of a data
[Patrick Sunday]warehouse, which brings me to my next point
[Patrick Sunday]is that having a proper data governance strategy
[Patrick Sunday]is absolutely it's probably critical, you know, priority
[Patrick Sunday]number one, to be able to actually utilize
[Patrick Sunday]the capabilities of AI because AI is only
[Patrick Sunday]as good as the underlying data that it's
[Patrick Sunday]actually mining. And so I think that's why
(12:41):
[Patrick Sunday]a lot of organizations are struggling right now.
[Patrick Sunday]So I think this is gonna be a
[Patrick Sunday]challenge because if it's I don't wanna say
[Patrick Sunday]it's an arm trace, but every company is
[Patrick Sunday]gonna be trying to find a way to
[Patrick Sunday]successfully deploy whether it's in finance, whether it's
[Patrick Sunday]in operations, whether it's in your compliance function,
[Patrick Sunday]whether it's in your cybersecurity function. Every function
[Patrick Sunday]within every organization is going to try to
[Patrick Sunday]figure out a way to leverage it. And
(13:03):
[Patrick Sunday]I think the first thing that we can
[Patrick Sunday]be doing as custodians of the data is
[Patrick Sunday]really employing a strategy to make sure that
[Patrick Sunday]our datasets are clean, they're complete, and that
[Patrick Sunday]they're actually usable.
[Paul McMeekin]So you speak to CFOs, you speak to
[Paul McMeekin]treasurers, you speak to CEOs, UPS. If you
[Paul McMeekin]could give one piece of advice to that
(13:23):
[Paul McMeekin]cohort about the future of payments, what would
[Paul McMeekin]it be?
[Patrick Sunday]Yeah. So the future of payments, particularly just
[Patrick Sunday]if we're gonna talk about in our space,
[Patrick Sunday]like, having secure, automated payments is not going
[Patrick Sunday]to be nice to have. It is going
[Patrick Sunday]to be a requirement. And so a couple
[Patrick Sunday]of things to to kind of mention there.
[Patrick Sunday]When I mentioned before about, you know, the
(13:45):
[Patrick Sunday]the the threat actors that are out there
[Patrick Sunday]and the different sophisticated methods in which fraudsters
[Patrick Sunday]are getting into our system, there is going
[Patrick Sunday]to be such a need for companies to
[Patrick Sunday]have that security blanket over their working capital.
[Patrick Sunday]There is no question. And, I'll just give
[Patrick Sunday]you one data point that backs that up.
[Patrick Sunday]Just kind of being able to monitor all
[Patrick Sunday]the different companies that operate whether they be
(14:06):
[Patrick Sunday]in our arena or in adjacent arenas within
[Patrick Sunday]fintech, but Visa is a great story. You
[Patrick Sunday]look at Visa, if they had a couple
[Patrick Sunday]investor days recently where they're basically talking about
[Patrick Sunday]the the the the payments market and that
[Patrick Sunday]it's roughly eighty five trillion of, like, addressable
[Patrick Sunday]market. And so they sit over sixty of
[Patrick Sunday]it or something like that that is more
[Patrick Sunday]in card virtual card and card payments and
(14:28):
[Patrick Sunday]things like that. But the overall sort of
[Patrick Sunday]AP and AR are kinda like b two
[Patrick Sunday]b, the place that we operate. They're not
[Patrick Sunday]really playing in that space and that is
[Patrick Sunday]absolutely part of their strategy. They see that
[Patrick Sunday]that is definitely an area, like I said,
[Patrick Sunday]at the top of the call. There's just
[Patrick Sunday]so many companies that are so archaic when
[Patrick Sunday]it comes to managing their payables that I
[Patrick Sunday]just think that there's gonna be a ton
(14:49):
[Patrick Sunday]of momentum now in particular to get more
[Patrick Sunday]security around that, to get more automation around
[Patrick Sunday]that, and, obviously, Visa sees it. If you
[Patrick Sunday]actually see their top five bullets of their
[Patrick Sunday]strategy going forward that they just communicated at
[Patrick Sunday]an investor day, number three is to go
[Patrick Sunday]after this additional thirty five to forty trillion
[Patrick Sunday]dollars of b to b transactions between corporates.
(15:09):
[Patrick Sunday]And what that would be is building a
[Patrick Sunday]a network like we have.
[Paul McMeekin]Well, Patrick, thank you, for joining me today.
[Patrick Sunday]Of course.
[Owen McDonald]Balancing payment speed with precision, generating better insights
[Owen McDonald]from your finance function, getting the most out
[Owen McDonald]of AI using the right data. It's the
(15:29):
[Owen McDonald]rather exciting world of b to b accounting
[Owen McDonald]and payments. Thanks to Bottomline's Patrick Sundae and
[Owen McDonald]to cohost Paul McMeekin. To our fantastic audience,
[Owen McDonald]thanks for listening. Hit subscribe. Catch us again
[Owen McDonald]on your favorite podcast platforms, including Apple and
[Owen McDonald]Spotify. Bye for now.
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