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/council.
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/council/
Multifamily Innovation® & AI Summit: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/
Speaker 1: All right.
00:00:00
So on this episode I have John Land, who is part of growth,
00:00:04
director of sales with Avid Exchange, focused on the
00:00:08
category of real estate commercial real estate,
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multifamily, and we spent some time going over the accounts
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payable process, how to find value inside an organization,
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moving from sort of everything is working now, status quo to
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reimagining work in a frictionless way that creates
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not only value for employees the experience you want to create
00:00:29
for them but profitability to the company, from the CFO's
00:00:34
vision to the CEO's vision and, ultimately, to that controller
00:00:37
who organizes and maintains this accounting, which is a steering
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wheel for our organization.
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As organizations move into the modern era, it stands to say
00:00:48
that we need to know what's available so we can build a
00:00:51
great, healthy organization.
00:00:52
So have a listen to this podcast.
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I think you're going to find it enjoyable and John does a great
00:00:58
job communicating key ideas that can help you find money
00:01:02
inside your company.
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Have a listen, All right, Jonathan.
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Well, welcome in.
00:01:07
Good to be here, Patrick, Thanks for having me.
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Yes, and so I know a lot of CEOs CFOs are thinking about
00:01:17
productivity.
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They're thinking about their business differently.
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I'd love for you to give our viewers and listeners a little
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bit about what you're working on and maybe a little backstory of
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who you are and the products that you're bringing to market.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so my name is John Land.
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I work at Avid Exchange.
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So my role at Avid Exchange and what I do is I lead all of our
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embedded resellers as well as our construction division at
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Avid Exchange.
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So I've been at Avid Exchange almost 13 years now, so started
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when it was much smaller than it is today.
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We have almost 2 employees today.
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I think I was around employee number 44 in the grand scheme of
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things with Avid Exchange.
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But we do quite a lot in the world of AP automation.
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That's really what we focus on.
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We do quite a lot in the world of AP automation.
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That's really what we focus on.
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Our goal is to give you time back.
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I mean, that's what automation really is.
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We're just trying to remove manual processes and give folks
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time back that they can use to do other things, to help grow
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their organization, grow their business and help make more
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money or whatever they want to do with that time for, for that
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matter.
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But yeah, we, we, we automate the AP process getting rid of
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all the invoices and and all of the paper checks and making all
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that stuff electronic is really what we, what we do.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, and what great growth.
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What'd you say?
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44, 44?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.
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We were really small when I started and now we have I think
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it's somewhere right about 2 employees.
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I mean, it hovers in and around that number pretty consistently
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for the past couple of years.
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We've ramped up quite a bit over the history of Avid
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Exchange.
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When I started at Avid Exchange we didn't have the payments
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product, we just did the invoice product.
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So basically, when I say the invoice product, that means that
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vendors would send their invoices directly to us, so they
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wouldn't send their invoices to our customer, so they wouldn't
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send it to the property management company, they would
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send them directly to us.
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We would capture those invoices .
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We still do that.
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I should say we did, we do, we still do this today.
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We would scan them, we would index them, meaning we'd pull
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off all that header level detail that's on the invoice.
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We would get that invoice fed into whatever workflow or
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approval process you wanted it to flow through and it would
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flow through that approval process.
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Your team would go to code to approve those invoices and then,
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once they're fully coded and approved, they would get
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electronically fed right into your accounting system.
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So it really takes away all of that manual entry and data entry
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and errors and stuff like that that you would generally see in
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a paper-based process and then later on the lines, once we
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really like, hit a real big stride and growth.
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We rolled out a payments product, really completing the
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swing of automation in the world of AP, being able to not only
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capture the invoice but also be able to facilitate the payment.
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With just a click of the button we can send out payments to the
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vendors and they can take those payments any way they want them
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.
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So if they want them as checks, they want them as electronic
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payments, whatever they would like, we'll send them the
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payment method they prefer and they can receive their funds.
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So it really kind of completes the whole cycle.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you mentioned a few things there
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redundancy, manual effort and sometimes people don't enjoy
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this kind of work as well but, more importantly, fraud
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reduction too.
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I imagine, in terms of this process that's got to be on the
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rise.
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Seems like this would be a good solution to combat that.
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Speaker 2: It is we do.
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Just intrinsically how the software and how the system is
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set up reduces your risk of fraud.
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I mean we have a lot of measures that are in place,
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obviously, from being able to track and receive the invoices,
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monitor for duplicate invoices that are that are flowing
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through, that maybe somebody else that they may be a vendor
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sent in multiple of the same invoices, so you're not
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necessarily going to have the opportunity to pay the same
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invoice twice, three times, whatever.
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So just because the vendor, for whatever reason, fired over
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multiple invoices, or if a bogus invoice shows up, the system
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will pick those kind of things up in the simple opportunity
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that this isn't a vendor in your system.
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So you don't have this particular invoice flowing
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through that you had nothing to do with and people don't really
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recognize it.
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They just don't recognize not to approve it.
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So we really are really really sure all that kind of stuff up
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and then, as far as on the payment side, just with how it
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works and how we operate, it really walls off all of your
00:05:41
actual bank accounts to prevent from a lot of the check fraud
00:05:45
that you mainly start to see more prevalent as opposed to.
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There's still opportunities for payment fraud in all different
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shapes and sizes.
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We can have a whole long conversation about that.
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But the check fraud gets drastically reduced, considering
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we have positive pay on all the payments that go out the door.
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Plus, all of those payments aren't being sent directly off
00:06:08
of your checking accounts, so you don't have the exposure of
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somebody just intercepting that check, washing that check,
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changing that check, altering it to be fraudulent.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
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You're spending time with customers, both prospective and
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your current customers.
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What are you hearing from them?
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Where are we as an industry, are you seeing?
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I mean, obviously more and more people are going towards this
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process, but we've got some work to do, right still?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's still something that's becoming in my
00:06:40
whole life cycle of this.
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It's kind of funny how this operates.
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In my whole life cycle of this.
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It's kind of funny how this operates.
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There's some reason that will push somebody or push a company
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to do this, like there'll be some sort of you know.
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Maybe it's a natural disaster, maybe it's something that
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happened in the company, maybe somebody stole a bunch of money,
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who knows what it is.
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But in my personal life it was Hurricane Sandy that hit New
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York City.
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That was the big like the paradigm shift for me and
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actually Avid Exchange at that time, because at that time the
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idea of not receiving the mail and somebody handling your
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invoices for you was kind of like whoa, this is that's a
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little much.
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They weren't, they just weren't there.
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And all of a sudden Hurricane Sandy hit, washed out all over
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Manhattan.
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Half these companies that I was working with were, like some of
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them, closed.
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They never reopened because they just washed out of sea
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literally and it was kind of wild.
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But then all of a sudden, putting things in the cloud even
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though that's not exactly like the latest in technology, now
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that started to become way more prevalent.
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People wanted to do that because now all of their local
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servers that they were, that they were hosting, are now, you
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know, under four feet of water and don't work.
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So that pushed a lot of people.
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But it's just becoming more and more accepted.
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You know, just in your daily life and your personal life you
00:08:04
probably you've probably seen reductions in the amount of mail
00:08:08
you receive.
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You've probably started to pay less invoices with writing
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checks, probably pay a lot of stuff electronically, so that
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stuff just starts to bleed over into the business world as well
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and things are becoming more and more accepted that way.
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So we've seen steady growth over the past 13 years at Avid,
00:08:25
with it becoming more and more accepted that way.
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So we've seen steady growth over the past, you know, 13
00:08:28
years at Avid, with it becoming more and more widely adopted.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine and you know it's interesting, those
00:08:33
triggering events we do tend to there's a lot of things to
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prioritize in the business, you know, and prioritizing something
00:08:42
that we may feel like the process is working right, so
00:08:46
don't break it, even though it's not productive, not financially
00:08:50
viable, redundant, repetitive exposure to risk, all these
00:08:59
manual tasks and stuff.
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What are you seeing after somebody makes that move the aha
00:09:01
moments from going from an old process to this more secure and
00:09:06
more productive one.
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Speaker 2: By and large we get the response of why did we not
00:09:12
do this sooner?
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I loved it.
00:09:14
My roles have changed over the years that I've exchanged, but
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when I was a sales rep it was why did you not make us do this
00:09:22
sooner?
00:09:22
I was trying.
00:09:26
I'm glad you finally did it, but it's I think that there's a lot
00:09:31
more of a I don't know if it's fear, but there's a lot more
00:09:36
hesitation because folks associate something like AP
00:09:40
automation with a big upheaval in their process and a big like.
00:09:45
They almost liken it to a core system conversion, like changing
00:09:50
from one property management system to another.
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And it's not even close.
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But they kind of feel that way because they've been almost
00:10:00
conditioned with that, because everything always takes longer
00:10:04
and harder than they ever thought it was going to be.
00:10:05
But once we can implement this and you know, and for all
00:10:09
intents purposes a very short amount of time I mean 45, 60
00:10:12
days at the most to get everything up and running,
00:10:16
everybody trained, everything's working like it should, it
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doesn't take very long to do that and it's not an and even
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though that is, you know, that's not like an instant flip of the
00:10:26
switch.
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It's not a lot of lift on our customers' part.
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We're doing a lot of this backend work where we're putting
00:10:33
together the workflows like they want them.
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We're getting everything set up .
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We're importing their chart of accounts, their vendor table,
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all of those things.
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We're working on putting all that stuff together for them and
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building their portals out and getting all their users set up.
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So it's a lot of work that we're doing.
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But once it gets set up, it's just starts to kind of it'll
00:10:54
just grow itself and you'll just .
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It's very you know.
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Once you understand how it works, it's very user friendly
00:11:02
on being able to like move forward.
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It's not a hard process.
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It's something easy to adapt to .
00:11:08
You don't have to send your invoices to us, mr and Mrs
00:11:11
Vendor.
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You just send them to this address or you email them to
00:11:14
this address and then we take care of the rest.
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So it's not a huge lift.
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Speaker 1: And if someone's not building this technology or
00:11:22
experiencing it, it's hard for them to envision a new way,
00:11:24
right?
00:11:25
I mean, are you finding that you're almost consulting on the
00:11:29
sales side of it?
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Where?
00:11:30
Tell us about your current process?
00:11:32
How does that work?
00:11:33
And then coming up with roadmaps from is it?
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Speaker 2: unique to every company, or is it pretty
00:11:42
standardized?
00:11:42
So the reason, what will push them, can be unique, but as far
00:11:46
as what we're doing for everyone and I don't want this to come
00:11:48
across as, like you know, insulting or anything like that
00:11:51
it's generally the same.
00:11:52
You know there's not.
00:11:54
I mean, yes, some companies have different little
00:11:57
idiosyncrasies than others in their particular approval
00:11:59
processes and in their workflows , and we can accommodate for
00:12:02
those things.
00:12:02
This isn't something that's just, you know, insurmountable,
00:12:10
that we can't figure out.
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The system is highly configurable and you can
00:12:12
construct it any way you'd really like.
00:12:12
So having that, you know, having that advantage on our
00:12:14
side definitely helps.
00:12:15
But it's kind of going back to a point you made earlier our
00:12:21
biggest competitor is status quo and that's the one that really
00:12:25
it's.
00:12:25
Well, this isn't broken.
00:12:27
So why are we fixing it?
00:12:29
And you're you know what.
00:12:30
You're right.
00:12:31
It isn't technically broken, but you can.
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You can make a simple change and become way more efficient at
00:12:38
what you're doing and get a lot of time back.
00:12:40
I mean, you can.
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You're literally talking about getting 60% of the minimum of
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your time back that you're currently spending on doing a
00:12:46
process and making it.
00:12:48
You know better, but that's the part that, like you've you're
00:12:54
that's, that's kind of the hardest part You've.
00:12:55
You're working in a situation where somebody has been doing it
00:12:59
this one way literally their whole life and you come in and
00:13:04
you're saying no, or they take it as no, you're doing it wrong.
00:13:07
And I wouldn't say that we're telling them they're doing it
00:13:09
wrong.
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We're just trying to give them an opportunity to help yourself.
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And you can.
00:13:13
You can change, make this change, and it's going to make
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drastic improvements in your, in your, in your actual daily life
00:13:23
, in your personal life.
00:13:24
You're going to receive some benefits of this not having to.
00:13:25
You know you're not have you're .
00:13:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that.
00:13:32
You know we as leaders have moved through different
00:13:35
platforms, from PC to internet to cloud and mobile, and you
00:13:40
know we're just constantly in this state of change and those
00:13:45
leaders that can navigate those waters and provide, you know,
00:13:50
direction and profitability to a company during all those
00:13:55
periods make the business more valuable.
00:13:57
And so you know it's one of the reasons that we love partnering
00:14:01
with you guys is because we know like, hey, this is, companies
00:14:05
are looking for better ways to make their company better and
00:14:09
profitable, so there's a financial piece to this.
00:14:12
Then there's an experience, right, and then there's the
00:14:15
fiduciary around, like there's technology that exists that can
00:14:19
de-risk the organization.
00:14:20
It stands to say me as a leader should pay attention, get on a
00:14:25
call with you, figure out like what do I need to know about
00:14:27
this?
00:14:27
Who else has done this?
00:14:28
How did that go?
00:14:29
What kind of impact can this make and bring this into my
00:14:33
organization, because our assumptions may not be true
00:14:35
about how much time it takes, what that effort is, but at the
00:14:40
end of the day, there's some investor there saying I'm
00:14:42
counting on you to make this business better.
00:14:45
Use the tools that are available to us.
00:14:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what our job really is.
00:14:51
We're trying to give you the opportunity to come in, get
00:14:55
comfortable with what we're going to do, make sure that we
00:14:57
can, you know, establish and build out what you're trying to
00:15:00
solve.
00:15:01
You know you're what might be bringing you or your trigger
00:15:04
might be different than the next guy, but you know we want to
00:15:08
make sure that we're, that you're comfortable with with
00:15:10
this and how this is going to work, and give you that
00:15:13
education so you can make the right decision on what all you
00:15:16
need this to do and what you really should see results from
00:15:20
it by yeah, and you guys have a great brand, by the way.
00:15:24
Speaker 1: I see your work.
00:15:25
You guys show up in so many educational-based ways to
00:15:29
provide value.
00:15:30
I think you guys have your own podcast.
00:15:32
Was it the Net30 podcast, am I right?
00:15:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a couple.
00:15:36
We've started rolling those out a little more consistently as
00:15:41
of late yes, yeah.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: Well, what a great name, right?
00:15:48
Net30, I mean it kind of plays off the payment timelines that
00:15:50
we all expect, right, I will say what are you hearing from CFOs?
00:15:52
I mean, business leaders obviously are looking for more
00:15:56
ways to make their business better.
00:15:57
Cfos, the finance teams, clearly they must be getting
00:16:02
excited about the work you guys are doing.
00:16:03
Talk me through.
00:16:04
What are the things you're seeing after people are engaging
00:16:08
?
00:16:09
Speaker 2: So after they're engaging with us and they really
00:16:12
get through that implementation time frame and they've rolled
00:16:15
the product out, they really start to experience the true
00:16:20
power and the true ability of the actual software and the
00:16:23
service.
00:16:23
There's a lot about Avid Exchange that's not just
00:16:27
software driven and that's one of the things that I believe
00:16:31
gives them the most impact.
00:16:32
There's a lot going on at Avid, you know.
00:16:36
I mentioned we talked a little bit earlier about the number of
00:16:38
employees at Avid Exchange and you know we have roughly 2000
00:16:41
employees.
00:16:42
We don't necessarily need 2000 folks to run a software company,
00:16:46
but those people got to do something.
00:16:49
The simple fact of, like, our payments department has right at
00:16:53
500 employees in it that do that, you know, help manage and
00:16:57
facilitate and get those payments through to the vendors,
00:17:00
you know there's.
00:17:06
So there's a lot of work that goes on with this.
00:17:08
So it's not a situation that they just, you know, hit the
00:17:09
button and this payment goes out into who knows where and
00:17:11
hopefully it finds its way to whoever we're paying.
00:17:13
You know we're going to make sure that it's going to get
00:17:16
there.
00:17:16
We're going to call them, we're going to follow up with it,
00:17:18
because there's work that has to be done.
00:17:19
That's more than what, at this stage in the game, the software
00:17:23
can actually provide in reaching out and contacting a supplier
00:17:27
for a particular invoice that's getting paid.
00:17:32
But I think one of the things that they come back to us with
00:17:35
is just kind of the amount of time that they're saving, the
00:17:39
amount of opportunity that they're being able to now roll
00:17:42
out to their team, to, you know, give them opportunities to do
00:17:45
other things, the other projects they can start working on, and
00:17:49
just the like you hear this all the time where you know we had
00:17:53
to do this particular report or that particular report like an
00:17:57
accrual or something along those lines, and that used to take us
00:17:59
, you know, a week, and now it takes us like 15 minutes, you
00:18:04
know, to make sure that we've got the report set up like we
00:18:06
want it and just boom, click, run and it's over with.
00:18:09
And you know that's a lot of time to be saving somebody on
00:18:12
just one little example but we have multiple examples of that
00:18:16
and just giving them the opportunity to access and, you
00:18:19
know, like in the CFO level, giving them the visibility to
00:18:23
know what's going on with their funds at any given moment.
00:18:27
You can see what's going on at any time.
00:18:28
You don't necessarily have to, you know, run down to some file
00:18:33
room and pull together a report by pulling all the files and
00:18:36
making copies and passing this on which that stuff still
00:18:40
happens to this day, which a small part of me dies every time
00:18:44
I hear somebody tell me a story like that.
00:18:46
But it just gives them a lot more ease of use and feasibility
00:18:53
to run their business and manage their money.
00:18:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, Talk a little bit about the ideal customer.
00:19:01
Who's this for?
00:19:02
Is there a certain market customer that's best suited to
00:19:07
start, or is it all across enterprise as well?
00:19:11
Speaker 2: So we really I mean, that's's a great question, to be
00:19:15
honest with you, because it well, I'll give you two.
00:19:19
I'll try to answer this question as best I can, because
00:19:22
we really can help anyone.
00:19:24
Okay, and I know you don't want to get that answer because
00:19:25
that's like well, okay, that's really awful broad strokes well,
00:19:28
I mean.
00:19:28
Speaker 1: What that says is if you have 300 units, it still
00:19:32
works right.
00:19:34
If you have 300 units?
00:19:36
Speaker 2: yeah, so and we run into those exact scenarios.
00:19:39
We work with some of the largest property managers in the
00:19:42
world and we work with some of the smallest property managers
00:19:44
in the world.
00:19:45
It really doesn't matter.
00:19:46
The system is completely scalable and it can be used for
00:19:51
multiple I mean, any size company can really really use it
00:19:54
and benefit it.
00:19:55
You can have the small company, the lean and mean guy that's
00:19:58
looking to save money, he's looking to try, and you know,
00:20:02
streamline everything.
00:20:03
He can grow his business without having to add headcount.
00:20:06
You know we were set up to work with those folks, as well as
00:20:10
the one that has an AP team of 35 people in there that all of a
00:20:15
sudden, they just look around and they're like we could
00:20:17
probably use 35 people to do something else and what we can
00:20:22
help them with being able to streamline and scale their own
00:20:25
business.
00:20:25
So it's really it's our average customer, though, and we look at
00:20:31
the world through invoices and payments, which is kind of a
00:20:34
hard translation for folks that don't dabble in that on a
00:20:39
regular basis to know.
00:20:40
But we'll ask people how many payments do you make a month?
00:20:45
And you'll be shocked how many people don't have a clue, but
00:20:48
generally, what we see is our average customer will be
00:20:54
somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 to 1500 monthly payments.
00:20:59
Now that takes into consideration that that pulls
00:21:02
out the outliers, the guys that are doing 50, 100, and
00:21:06
you know, pulls out the outliers that the guys are doing 10.
00:21:09
But you know, generally day in day out, that's who we see the
00:21:13
most of.
00:21:13
But that doesn't mean that we can't help the guy that's doing
00:21:15
100 or that we can't help the guy that's doing 15, because
00:21:19
we absolutely can.
00:21:20
But that's just generally what we see.
00:21:23
Speaker 1: What is the?
00:21:24
And maybe you don't know this off the top of your head, but
00:21:26
what is the amount of time for one like, what do people spend
00:21:29
on one invoice?
00:21:29
Is that research out there?
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it depends on how big the organization is
00:21:37
as to how much time they spend on it.
00:21:38
But generally an invoice they're going to spend upwards
00:21:40
of, on a payment they spend on an average of seven minutes of
00:21:44
payment and then on an invoice they could spend anywhere
00:21:47
between 12 to 20 minutes on average and you take into
00:21:50
consideration everybody that's got to touch it and look at it
00:21:52
and go through, and you take into consideration everybody
00:21:54
that's, you know, got to touch it and look at it and go through
00:21:57
it and you just multiply that over.
00:21:59
If you're doing a thousand, I mean that's you're talking about
00:22:01
a lot of time that's getting spent just looking at an invoice
00:22:04
where you can reduce that remarkably with automating this
00:22:09
process, so and that.
00:22:11
And you can also translate that because we can do full ROI
00:22:14
analysis for customers if they want to, so they can understand,
00:22:17
like, really what's this going to be worth to you to do it?
00:22:20
You know how much you're going to save just in hard costs alone
00:22:25
.
00:22:25
You know you think about the hard costs on the payment side
00:22:28
of things.
00:22:29
You've got stamps, you've got microtoner, you've got envelopes
00:22:31
, you've got check stock.
00:22:32
You know how much money you're going to save just not having to
00:22:34
do that again, just not having to worry about buying that near
00:22:38
as much, if at all, and being able to automate that process.
00:22:42
And then the soft cost piece of it with what you're paying folks
00:22:46
to do and you're paying the folks to put it together and you
00:22:50
know, to put this, just to mail it out and all the folks on
00:22:53
capturing the invoices and all that time that it takes them to
00:22:58
get those invoices through and entered into the system and be
00:23:01
able to be facilitated to be paid.
00:23:03
So we could actually give you like a number as to what that's
00:23:06
going to be and so you can weigh that against, like what this is
00:23:11
going to cost.
00:23:12
And you know we've talked about payments.
00:23:15
There's also the opportunity for rebates to be involved.
00:23:18
We do have a lot of customers that take on receiving rebates
00:23:24
in their deal with Avid Exchange and that can outweigh a lot of
00:23:31
the costs and sometimes it can outweigh all of it, depending on
00:23:33
how many payments they process and how much rebate we're able
00:23:37
to collect for folks.
00:23:39
Speaker 1: Yes, and the math seems simple with that analysis,
00:23:43
right.
00:23:43
The question then becomes how do you get out in front of it?
00:23:47
So you're not like the hurricane you mentioned, you're
00:23:49
reacting, because I would imagine doing this in a state of
00:23:52
planning is much more enjoyable than in a state of need, where
00:23:57
you're reacting to a problem you know and you've been told to do
00:24:00
this, that type of thing.
00:24:01
Which leads me to my question of who are you talking to inside
00:24:06
the organization to bring this in.
00:24:07
Is it CFO?
00:24:08
Like who do you want to spend time with inside the
00:24:11
organization?
00:24:11
Like who do you want to spend time with inside the
00:24:13
organization?
00:24:14
Speaker 2: So generally, we like the controller and this is just
00:24:18
my opinion of it.
00:24:20
You could probably ask different people at Avid
00:24:21
Exchange.
00:24:22
But the controller to me is that like ideal person, because
00:24:28
they kind of sit right there, they're involved with everything
00:24:31
.
00:24:31
They're passing reports up to the CFO, but they're also
00:24:36
dealing with all the accountants and the AP staff, so they can
00:24:38
see both sides of the fence and they can understand and
00:24:41
appreciate the value that you're going want to talk to.
00:24:44
But the roles can be vast in different organizations and you
00:24:56
know, obviously you know further off the food chain is generally
00:25:00
going to be the one that signs off on doing something like this
00:25:02
.
00:25:02
So you know, obviously, getting buy-in from the CFO and their
00:25:08
leadership, the leadership of the organization is ideal.
00:25:11
But you know we talk to, you know AP managers we talk to, you
00:25:17
know controllers, cfos.
00:25:18
You know we talk to a lot of different roles, but I would say
00:25:22
that our ideal customer we generally like to have the
00:25:25
controller involved.
00:25:26
That's a really good person to have a lot of perspective on the
00:25:30
value we can bring.
00:25:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, to your point, the leadership team, if
00:25:34
that be, cfo, CEO, whatever that is, board, I mean they're
00:25:43
looking for productivity, experience, value creation in
00:25:44
the business.
00:25:45
Clearly, the controller is organized to do all of those
00:25:46
things and it impacts their world so much.
00:25:49
Right, Like I imagine they're your best champions in so many
00:25:52
ways.
00:25:52
But sometimes the CEOs and a lot of the leaders that listen
00:25:56
to the podcast aren't doing that work right.
00:25:59
So it's like do you want to be a status quo organization?
00:26:02
Do you want to kind of stay where you are, leave some money
00:26:05
on the table, you know, or do you want to create some
00:26:08
experience, better experiences for employees, create some
00:26:12
profitability and modernize the business?
00:26:14
I think that's kind of the way I would be thinking about it if
00:26:17
I'm a CEO today.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't want to be in a scenario where we run
00:26:22
into this actually a lot, where we run into scenarios where the
00:26:26
organization is going through a change ie people are leaving or
00:26:32
growing or whatever the case is , and they don't have like a
00:26:39
established, a true established process which you can, which you
00:26:42
can make an Avid exchange, and it can be an established
00:26:44
electronic process that you know .
00:26:46
This is how the invoices are going to flow, this is how the
00:26:48
you know this is, this is what happens.
00:26:49
So you could, if somebody left and you brought somebody else in
00:26:53
.
00:26:53
This is how it works.
00:26:55
Where you we have a lot of scenarios where you got a lot of
00:26:57
this like colloquial knowledge that when somebody retires or
00:27:00
leaves the organization, along goes all that knowledge too, and
00:27:04
they have to go.
00:27:05
They get kind of caught on their heels trying to figure out
00:27:08
well, how did we do this in the past?
00:27:10
You know what is, you know there's no established process
00:27:13
for this.
00:27:13
What do we?
00:27:14
What do we do now?
00:27:15
And you know that's one of the things where, kind of to your
00:27:18
point, patrick, getting out in front of it will help, you know,
00:27:21
shore up those kind of conversations down the road.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: Yes, and even with talent shortages, I would
00:27:27
imagine that people kind of see the writing on the wall in many
00:27:30
ways, with even AI around.
00:27:31
Like you know, supporting organizations like this, like
00:27:35
companies, are not expanding.
00:27:36
They're relying on, like relationships that you've built
00:27:40
to get the job done in a more technically advanced way.
00:27:44
So I would imagine it's also hard to find more and more staff
00:27:49
as well, and this provides, I think I'm assuming some relief
00:27:52
to that as well.
00:27:54
Speaker 2: It does, it definitely takes a lot of the
00:27:55
pressure off.
00:27:56
I mean, you still need people in there to make decisions.
00:27:58
I mean the software is not a decision-making piece.
00:28:00
It's just going to give you the opportunity to take all that
00:28:04
work off your plate and you're just, you know, as far as coding
00:28:06
the invoices and all that kind of stuff, you're just checking
00:28:08
to make sure this is right, you're checking to make sure you
00:28:10
want to approve it and you want to pay this thing, and so it's
00:28:13
not, it's not making the decisions for you, but you still
00:28:16
need those kind of decision-making folks in there
00:28:18
to deal with that.
00:28:19
But yeah, outside of that, it definitely will take the
00:28:24
pressure off of you needing large staffs of folks to handle
00:28:27
your day-to-day business.
00:28:28
Speaker 1: And I think that's another comfort level is you're
00:28:31
still in charge of approvals and authority over the governance
00:28:36
of the organization.
00:28:36
Nothing really changes, from what I understand with that.
00:28:39
You're just kind of getting that middle piece redundant
00:28:42
process out and systematizing it in so many ways.
00:28:45
Speaker 2: Yep, we get asked that a lot.
00:28:48
I don't want things to just go out the door automatically.
00:28:51
Well, good thing they don't, so you're in luck.
00:28:56
No, nothing comes through and gets automatically approved.
00:28:59
Nothing gets automatically approved.
00:29:01
Nothing gets automatically paid .
00:29:02
So there's no way for anything to get set up to where something
00:29:04
comes in and goes out the door and no one touched it.
00:29:07
So you're still going to have to have people that are going to
00:29:09
say, yes, we did this, yes, we want to pay it.
00:29:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so, John, what are the questions people
00:29:15
are asking you if they haven't been through this process yet,
00:29:18
right?
00:29:18
Speaker 2: So and what questions should we be asking as far as
00:29:27
getting looking into doing something like this, I think you
00:29:29
just it's a little bit of like kind of looking back at the
00:29:30
company that you're with and kind of going through a little
00:29:33
bit of a checklist, you know, do we, are we looking to grow?
00:29:36
Are we?
00:29:36
If we're looking to grow, then this is an opportunity for us to
00:29:39
scale our business and be able to expand without having to add
00:29:42
any back office staff.
00:29:43
You know I hate to do it kind of the fear mongering thing, but
00:29:48
have we experienced fraud?
00:29:50
Do we experience issues with payments?
00:29:51
Do we experience issues with invoices coming in, or do we
00:29:55
have folks that are looking to leave?
00:29:57
Are we in some level of a transition at our company?
00:29:59
You know, is ownership changing over?
00:30:01
A lot of times you have children that are taking over
00:30:04
companies for their parents that built the company.
00:30:07
So there's a whole host of things that can take place.
00:30:11
That would be really good opportunities.
00:30:13
Are we looking to move offices?
00:30:14
That's one that I think is an interesting one that I used to
00:30:21
face years ago and they're like we want to hold off, we're
00:30:24
moving offices and my response would be well, this is the
00:30:27
perfect time because you're moving offices.
00:30:29
You're going to tell every one of your vendors you're changing
00:30:32
the address they're going to send this invoice to.
00:30:33
Why not just tell them you're changing the address to Avid
00:30:37
Exchange and then not have to tell them again, and then it's
00:30:40
done, and then you can move offices all you want.
00:30:42
So if there's any sort of like change, anything going on or
00:30:47
you're just sick and tired of dealing with paper, we would
00:30:50
love to talk to you.
00:30:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great.
00:30:53
So let's talk about that.
00:30:55
How do people get in touch with you?
00:30:56
Where can they follow you and learn more about what this
00:30:59
product is?
00:31:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean you can reach out to Avid Exchange.
00:31:03
I mean obviously avidexchangecom.
00:31:04
You can obviously reach out to me.
00:31:06
I mean I'm on LinkedIn.
00:31:08
My name's John Land, l-a-n-d.
00:31:11
Been working at Avid for a while.
00:31:13
Email address is simple J-L-A-N-D at avidexchangecom.
00:31:17
But, yeah, you can reach out to Avid Exchange obviously through
00:31:22
our website.
00:31:22
If you're kind of catching this , you can reach out to me.
00:31:26
We're at a lot of different trade shows so we will take any
00:31:30
sort of contact that you can find.
00:31:33
But, yeah, that's probably the simplest way Go to the website
00:31:39
and then you just request more information and we have teams of
00:31:42
folks that will reach out to you.
00:31:44
You know, kind of find out a little bit more about you.
00:31:46
You're going to have a conversation with somebody in
00:31:49
our business development department, understanding you
00:31:52
know what you're after, what you're looking for, and then
00:31:54
they'll set you up with being able to speak with the.
00:31:56
You know, because we, you know we work with a lot of different
00:31:59
verticals at Avid Exchange.
00:32:00
We got right at 10 customers .
00:32:03
So you know there's a lot of different things going on.
00:32:05
We have different relationships with different accounting
00:32:07
systems.
00:32:08
Some of them we're embedded in, some of them we're not.
00:32:11
But they'll route you to the correct person and they'll be
00:32:15
able to take care of you and kind of get you in the process
00:32:17
to see if this is a solution that would work for you kind of
00:32:21
get you in the process to see if this is a solution that would
00:32:23
work for you.
00:32:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great.
00:32:27
Well, I think we did a great job covering some of the things
00:32:28
that you're innovating in our space.
00:32:29
Is there anything that we missed?
00:32:31
Number one.
00:32:32
Number two is tell us just final thoughts, anything you
00:32:36
want to leave our listeners with .
00:32:40
Speaker 2: I don't know that we missed terribly much.
00:32:41
Obviously, avid Exchange is a growing business.
00:32:44
I mean we've got a lot going on .
00:32:46
We're constantly developing things.
00:32:48
We're working on a lot of stuff .
00:32:53
You mentioned AI.
00:32:54
We do a lot with that.
00:32:56
That's something that's really ramping up pretty heavily.
00:32:59
In fact, Avid Exchange probably is one of the companies that's
00:33:03
got the most benefit from artificial intelligence, and the
00:33:07
fact that we have millions and millions of invoices that come
00:33:10
through Avid Exchange each and every day and being able to
00:33:14
capture that information even more accurately than we do today
00:33:18
would definitely be beneficial to us, because there's a lot of
00:33:21
systems in place that we have to make sure that we hold a really
00:33:25
high regard to our accuracy.
00:33:27
But I mean, as far as anything else, without going into
00:33:38
specific systems and stuff like that, we're always working to
00:33:43
grow our network and we would definitely want to hear from
00:33:47
everybody that we can, so we can do what we can to partner with
00:33:52
as many folks in the multifamily and real estate industries, for
00:33:55
that matter, that we can, and we've done a lot with our
00:33:59
integrations over the years.
00:34:01
Uh, I mean just in my time at avid exchange.
00:34:03
I mean it's it's like a quantum leap from when we started.
00:34:06
So there's a, there's a lot, especially the embedded
00:34:10
solutions are becoming really popular.
00:34:12
So we're and when I say that that means that, like when you,
00:34:17
if you used, let's's say you know RealPage, that the Avid's,
00:34:22
the payments piece, is built into RealPage, meaning you don't
00:34:25
leave RealPage, it's in RealPage.
00:34:27
So when you select payments, you can send them right through
00:34:30
RealPage, vendor pay and that's powered by Avid Exchange.
00:34:33
So we're the ones that are facilitating the payments, we're
00:34:35
basically the engine behind it.
00:34:37
But you don't ever have to leave engine behind it, but you
00:34:40
don't ever have to leave.
00:34:41
So there's not, it's not going to come across as some kind of
00:34:43
bolt on system or you know.
00:34:44
You know it's going to be integrated fully into your
00:34:48
actual, into your actual experience.
00:34:51
So that's that's probably one of the most popular things that
00:34:54
we have.
00:34:54
That's going on with with our, with our folks.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: but Wonderful, wonderful, no, I'm really glad
00:35:01
you shared that because I think people, um, you know, they want
00:35:05
to know how this experience and it's probably best to reach out
00:35:08
and get in touch with your team, maybe do a demo, see how this
00:35:11
stuff works from a visual and and ask the questions.
00:35:15
I'm sure it's unique to every customer and, uh, you know,
00:35:18
hopefully this podcast has been helpful and would encourage
00:35:21
people to take that first step, regardless of what the priority
00:35:26
is today, it doesn't cost money to reach out and get in touch
00:35:28
with somebody that can potentially help transform an
00:35:31
organization.
00:35:32
So it's been great sharing the time.
00:35:34
We'll be following your success and appreciate you showing up
00:35:38
and creating the value for our listeners.
00:35:40
Thank you, john.
00:35:41
Speaker 2: Thank you, patrick, appreciate it.
00:35:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
00:35:43
Well, we'll see you guys in the next one.
00:35:45
Make sure you give them a follow and enjoy it.
00:35:48
Go after it.
00:35:49
We'll see you next one.
00:35:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks.
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