Companies Will Shift Their Focus to Profitability for Their Path to Success

All companies should look at automated purchasing and compliance in today’s marketplace. Tyler Kern, and co-host Hunter Austin, Managing Partner of Kelley Austin, got some hot tips on the latest trend in automated payment control solutions from James Thomas, CEO and Founder of Itemize. 

In the B2B space, where you need a lot more data in that transaction, that hasn’t effectively been automated the same way the consumer space has been automated,” Thomas said. 

The financial control software a company uses may be automated, but often getting the information into the system is still a manual effort. Thomas believes the AP (automated payment) world is ripe for digitization. “The data we need to automate business purchasing, so there’s not a lot of people involved in moving paper and workflow systems, that’s a problem most people probably thought was solved in the twentieth century. To make that happen, we need a lot more data coming in some manner into our financial control or expense management systems.”

The opportunity exists in payment control to reduce costs and mistakes and transform precious human resources to work on higher-value activities. Thomas, whose history with the payment industry is rich with experience, founded Itemize to provide solutions for B2B because the need is extensive. “We’ve all heard and seen about the labor shortages in the United States and globally,” Thomas said. “And that labor shortage is making it incumbent upon finance departments to look towards automation as a potential way to solve the problem.”

Hosts Tyler Kern and Hunter Austin sit down with Itemize CEO and founder James Thomas to talk about the future of automated payment control solutions. 

With the right automated solutions, an AP specialist can increase invoice processing volume and gain time elsewhere. “We can do five-to-ten invoices in a minute,” Thomas said. “So, that person can look at the data and use it for analysis and intelligence. That’s a welcome contribution to an accounts payable department.” 

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