How to recover revenue on payment errors to vendors

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Transcript

Welcome to the Spend Advantage podcast by Varisource Spend advantage is the competitive advantage for your spend across 100 plus vendor categories. This podcast is all about interviewing amazing people, company, and solutions that will help you ten x your top line growth as well as bottom line savings for your business. Hello everyone, this is Victor with Varisource Welcome to another episode of the Spend Advantage podcast. Today I'm super excited to have one of our newest partners, uh, bedrock, with us. We have Devin Noonan, who's the CRO of bedrock. Bedrock is a supplier management solution provider for enterprise businesses. They offer a comprehensive suite of tools designed to streamline supplier management, uh, automate a supplier, onboarding, master data cleansing, real time risk and banking verification, and AP recovery audits that there's a lot of amazing things that they do. And I'm super excited to have, uh, Devin on the podcast. How are you doing, Devin? I'm doing well. How about yourself, Victor? Doing good. Super excited about the partnership. You know obviously their source is all about driving optimization and savings for clients. So anytime we work with a partner who also share the similar vision, we're excited. But yeah. So Devin, if you don't, maybe you can give the audience a little bit of sort of the the company background and maybe a little background about yourself as well. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, you know, relative to bedrock, we've been around going on about six years now. Uh, we've had a few name iterations prior to bedrock. Uh, back when our president and founder, Osama Sabbah, uh, created us six years ago. So we've gone from sphere access to Ex-pro and Ex-pro fintech. Uh, and we landed on bedrock about a year and a half ago now, uh, and really excited to bring a new kind of powerful brand, uh, to the market here, uh, was one of the first things I actually worked on when I came on board here and took over all of the, uh, strategic growth initiatives for the firm. Um, you know, little background on me, uh, actually met, uh, our president, Osama, um, through the Kellogg School of Management. We were both getting our executive MBA. Um, had a great, you know, product in place. Um, you know, continuing to even enhance what we're doing on the product side each and every day. Uh, and really was looking for a partner to come in on the C-suite level and help really scale up the, uh, the sales, the marketing and the partnership. Org. So, as you and I both know, uh, the partnerships has been a massive focus of ours from a growth perspective over the past year. Uh, which is what ultimately led us to, uh, resource and this incredible relationship that we are super excited to be kicking off. Yeah. So obviously, you know, there are so many areas we could talk for hours about all the different areas that you guys can drive savings and optimization. So let's start with one, right. Um, so, you know, obviously you guys offer what you call revenue recovery. First of all, can you kind of explain what that means to enterprises, to companies, and why is that? What I typically like to do is talk about the issue. Why is it an issue for companies. And then obviously after that let's talk about how you guys solve that. Absolutely. So first and foremost, every major organization enterprise in the world is experiencing some level of leakage through the AP department. Um, oftentimes due to no real fault, right, of the AP team. Um, they are often, you know, shorthanded, strapped for bandwidth, uh, and really doing their best to ensure that their suppliers are being paid on time. Um, when we think about that, right, there is a ton of areas where, um, some of that working capital is exiting the door via erroneous and duplicate payments. So you can think of things as little as, right, just a character difference on an invoice or a duplicate invoice that was simply sent in error. And the team, you know, just winds up paying it and sending that money out the door, uh, instead of, you know, kind of reconciling in real time. Um, we, you know, recover things such as, like rebates, sales and use tax, uh, you know, freight and shipping, uh, differences. And, you know, we will really look for for everything under the sun, essentially with a full white glove service layer behind our technology. And, you know, thinking back to, you know, our origin story, uh, Osama actually came from another big competitor in this market and, uh, realized that there were a lot of manual efforts that were still happening behind the scenes to ultimately identify these claims and recover them on behalf of the clients. Um, not only, you know, from that tech provider behind the scenes, but also when you think of, like, work that was getting thrown back into the client's lap where they ultimately were going to have to, you know, sift through invoices and, and do significant reconciliation in order to get these claims approved, pass through and receive right that that revenue back. So Osama really designed, um, you know, a technology centric approach here, which is something that we really pride ourselves on. And try to alleviate all of those bottlenecks, alleviate the work that gets thrown back on our clients, and really simplify the process. So at the end of the day. Our clients drop us their raw data, we ingest it. We'll interpret it in the manner that we need. They don't need to do any formatting or anything like that. Um, we go ahead and actually work directly with their suppliers on two critical initiatives kind of simultaneously. Uh, obviously the first one is the AP recovery piece, where we'll ask them to upload a statement of their accounts. Uh, before we start really diving in and identifying claims. But the other great piece that we include complimentary is a master data cleanse. So with the Master Data Cleanse, we're talking about, uh, cleansing and enriching all of your existing vendor contact records. We can update any relevant, you know, forms. So you think of things like tax forms, insurance, financial diversity certs, bank letters. We can update all of those as part of this exercise. And complimentary uh, will also build out parent child relationships. So if you think of a use case like maybe you're a global enterprise and you're using Verizon for your communications, but you're sending out payments to a bunch of different, you know, Verizon business units around the globe. Um, we'll kind of help break that parent child relationship down and consolidate. So it all really flows and rolls up, which is really, you know, critical kind of information for the, uh, the AP team. So we're doing all of these things in tandem. And to, you know, one of the I think the the reasons. Right, why, uh, our company is such a great fit for bear sauce. We're not charging anything upfront at all for this exercise. So it's truly contingency fee based. We get a percentage of what we earn. We are highly, highly, highly incentivized to go out and do great work, uh, recover as much as humanly possible on average with that equates to is about 1 to 1.5 million that we're putting back in our clients pockets for every billion in supplier spend. So we're not talking about pennies here. We're talking about pretty substantial dollars that we're recovering. Uh, and we do it all right in that kind of good faith manner. Uh, it's a great opportunity for us to to step up to the plate, show that we do good work, and earn every penny that we get. Yeah, I love that. What we call the win win model when you know our our incentives are aligned with the client, the more they save, the more we are successful. And so, uh, obviously you mentioned so many, uh, kind of golden nuggets here. I want to kind of have you go a little deeper in a few of the areas you talked about, because, you know, within this podcast we have CFOs, we have procurement, we have obviously CEOs and other stakeholders that listen in. And so I think when you speak on a lot of these, uh, terminologies, right, the CFOs and I'm sure they'll understand it, but imagine a CEO that may not understand these things. And obviously, when they look at it and say, I got a big finance department like they should be, you know, taking care of these things, can you maybe give a few, you know, a few examples of why it's very difficult for companies themselves to try to solve this problem? Is it because there's too many vendors? Is it because it's just, you know, when customers try to do it, it's manual and, you know, that's prone to more errors because it's human led, uh, versus automation. What are some of these maybe examples that you can help, maybe people that are not in the finance department understand why this becomes a a problem for the company. Yeah. So so the first thing I think I want to call out on that front is if you are, you know, a leader in your organization or you know, someone that's overseeing the, you know, finance or accounts payable department, this exercise is a fantastic feather in your cap because you're ultimately taking what is historically a call center, right, with with procurement and AP and your recovering dollars that are otherwise, you know, gone forever. So you're putting your working capital back where it belongs. Um, so it's a it's a massive initiative. And when you think of. Right, you know, putting yourself in the shoes of a CEO or a senior leader at one of these organizations you are likely working through, you know, I'd like to think of it as like one of three major initiatives, uh, digital transformation is, you know, very top of mind for every organization we're seeing in today's climate, a ton of cost savings initiatives that are being rolled out as well. Uh, and then, you know, trying to start leading a bit more and encompassing AI into the overall org. Um, those tend to be kind of three of those big buckets that I'm hearing very often in my conversations with these senior leaders. So when you think about, you know, kind of underpinning a great exercise that spans across all of those pieces, the AP recovery audit absolutely delivers. Um, you know, we've built out, I think, what, 40 or 50 plus different unique algorithms that are running behind the scenes right now, um, for our recovery audit. So if you're going to turn to your AP team and say, hey, we have 10,000 suppliers, of those 10,000 suppliers, we have had 100,000, let's say, right, transactions over the course of the past year. If you have 3 to 5 people, maybe on your AP team that are in charge of handling all of that volume. They literally do not have time in their day to go back through 3 to 5 years of historicals, of payments and start identifying discrepancies. So that's why this technology centric approach is so, so critical. We are identifying these proactively using the tech that we've built. And then we are also staffing a team of dedicated auditors to every account that are actually going to, you know, comb through and validate these claims and then communicate back to the supplier and get their approval before our client ever even needs to step foot back inside the bedrock portal. So all of that heavy lifting, which is right, I mean, pretty intensive, especially if you're doing it in a manual fashion, you know, whether it's in your ERP or your payments system and, you know, maybe some Excel spreadsheets. I mean, we've seen some horror stories out there, but allowing bedrock to really roll up their sleeves and handle that entire end to end process of recovery is a game changer for these organizations. So you know we we oftentimes we'll hear it's, you know, kind of a no brainer. Um, to kick things off with a recovery audit because there is no budget required. There are no upfront costs aside from dropping some raw data. You really don't need to do much of anything but approve those claims. And we even put on file how you want to get paid. So we'll say, hey, you want an ACH or a wire or maybe a check. Do you want a credit off an open invoice? We'll prioritize that for you too. So click of a button is really all you need to do inside of bedrock. So from a time savings perspective, it's immense when you think about your digital transformation and cost savings initiatives. Um, this absolutely hits the mark. And then on the I piece, we are working on some really great developments now with AI that are going to allow us to be a bit more proactive moving forward. When we think of, you know, the industry norm of recovery audits, being looking back in the past at, uh, issues that have already occurred, we're actually going to start preventing leakage in real time at the point of issuance. So we are super excited about our prevention module that will be rolling out likely in early 2025. Yeah, that is super exciting. Um, yeah, I think a lot of I think when we explain it to the executives, um, you know, there's a lot of, uh, discounts, there's a lot of rebates, uh, even coupons, all these things for soft at different kinds of software services that are available that are just free money, as I call it. The company just aren't aware that it's available there. And I think based on what you're talking about, um, you know, a lot of these companies are overcharging or mis charging and it's free money, right? It's just out there sitting in the ether. And you guys, um, help, uh, help, you know, kind of find that for the customer. Uh, so that's that's amazing. So I do want to move to the next topic around vendors, because I think a lot of these overcharges or mis charges, all of these, uh, you know, the reason why they're able to do that is because oftentimes, you know, companies just don't manage their vendors really well. So I want to break this apart into a couple different reasons because a couple of different topics. First, you talked to a lot of enterprises. To me, managing vendors are like managing your sales prospects like you. You know, obviously sales teams spend so much time, you know, wanting to make sure they manage their prospects and customers properly so that you can grow your revenue. Right? Which makes sense. They wake up, they want to do that. But then yet when it comes to your vendors, which are people you spent hundreds of millions and millions and a lot of money with, they don't have that same mindset. First of all, why do you think that is across all sizes of companies? Why do you think that is? Well, I think, you know, there's not a silver bullet necessarily on that from Victor, but there is a handful of key reasons. The first and foremost, I look at disparate data and disparate systems. So you think, right, most organizations have an ERP in place which is designed to be their, you know, core system of truth attached to that. You likely have some type of payment system, whether it's an add in module attached to the ERP or some, you know, a cool, you know, exciting vendor in like the AP automation space, you may have a full suite P2P solution in place. You may have a contracting module in place. Um, some organizations, even some of the larger ones that I talked to that are, you know, fortune 1000 are still doing some of this manually where their contracts are, you know, maybe living on a SharePoint or, you know, in Dropbox or something like that. Uh, you're you're constantly struggling to find the information that you need in order to action it. So I think that's one of the biggest challenges that organizations are facing across the board. Um, when we think of that. Right. And then we kind of distill that down into the vendor management piece. Um, I, we, you know, we provide like automated no touch supplier onboarding services, for example, a lot of organizations are still doing, uh, a very disjointed process. You may be kicking off a ticket in ServiceNow, which generates, right, a request to procurement. So you have like a business unit stakeholder who's initiating this whole process because they've identified someone that they want to, um, you know, do business with and procure some goods or services from. So from there it gets shifted over to the procurement team. The procurement team may now be generating in a tool or sending out manually an email with an attachment with some type of questionnaire and info that the supplier needs to now send back to them. So now we're. Getting outside of the tech. We're going via email. They received that back, you know. Uh, you would hope, right, in a timely manner. But realistically, I've heard, you know, it could take anywhere from a week or two sometimes just to get that preliminary data back. Now you've got to go and input that data. So you're inputting it manually. You got someone on your team that's putting it into your ERP, um, or your P2P system. It's a question mark as to whether or not those systems are right, automated and connected via API. So you still may have some silos there. And now when you think about that ongoing right, future looking, um, management of your suppliers, whether you're transacting with them, getting updates from them on, you know, critical data, right? Maybe they switch a bank account and they need to update that. Maybe they have turnover of staff. There's a lot of manual, um, pieces going on behind the scenes. There's a lot of hands in that cookie jar. So organizations are struggling to streamline that experience. And it's twofold, right, where you have the internal pain points where you are dealing with a number of different individuals, oftentimes from different business units, sometimes from different geographies right around the globe for these larger enterprises, um, that are all touching this supplier in some way, shape or form, you also then have right the transacting piece where your AP team is submitting payments. You have someone internally that has actually, you know, putting through these purchase wrecks and poss to get the goods and services they need to operate. So there are just so many moving parts and there isn't like a single entity out there, unfortunately. I'm sure you know this. Well, Victor, that has cracked the code on like streamlining every single piece of this puzzle into one singular tool. Yet that's kind of what the long game is here for us at bedrock, we found a great niche with the supplier management, you know, from the onboarding, the risk and banking verification, the AP recovery audit. We're doing that extremely well. We are um, we acquired an RFP solution provider a few months back that will be integrating into our tech stack in early 2025 as well. So we're trying to nail that kind of front end of the sourcing, the supplier onboarding and management. And then right, we currently partner with some organizations in the payments realm and all of that. But then we'll start to kind of expand deeper into that. Uh, and really our goal, right, is to either be kind of that, you know, central hub or spoke for your data across your procurement tech stack. And then ultimately, as we continue to grow, scale, acquire more, build more, um, be, you know, as close to a one stop shop as you can and really get to the Holy Grail, which is what I would consider to be a true supplier relationship management suite. And I know just through my conversations with, uh, you know, industry leaders and, uh, you know, experts like, uh, over at Gartner, um. A true supplier relationship management tool is that holy grail, and it's something that just has not been cracked yet in the market. So we're kind of building to that and plugging and playing, you know, as we grow, I love that. I love that vision. So I got a follow up, uh, for you because, uh, first of all, you know, spend advantage to me is all about, you know, on the revenue side, they have what they call the competitive advantage, right? For, you know, how do you win against competition? I think competitive advantage is a big thing. But then on the spend side, we call it spend advantage. So I want to focus on someone more of the ROI because a lot of supplier management or vendor management today is focused on compliance and risk. And some of these things that you're talking about that lack the tools, right? The tools are all disparate and all these things. But can you talk about why the tools are not enough? It's also a people or resource problem for these companies. Can you kind of speak to that meaning even if you have the right tools? Um, why is it a challenge for, you know, procurement team or even the people side to really make a work? And how do you guys complement? I think the key word here is compliment. Um, these customers that already have procurement teams to not only provide them the right tools and the software, but also on the people side. How does that and then can you kind of maybe speak to more around the ROI, the vendor savings, uh, side of it? Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's funny you talked about the ROI piece, uh, because, you know, with the with the AP recovery audit, right, that we run a there's a very easy, right kind of calculation that we can, can give you to determine, you know, a ballpark at least of what we're we're going to recover. Um, when we think of that. Right? I mentioned earlier, for every billion in spend, it's about 1 to 1.5 million in recoverable revenue. So you could do pretty, you know, simple math there to figure out where your organization might land. When you look at the overall, you know, kind of end to end P2P process, it's tough to articulate value because there are so many different moving parts across the board. So you mentioned the human capital piece, right? Depending on the maturity of where you're at on your digital transformation journey, um, really is going to have a direct impact on, you know, the overall ROI that any tool is going to bring into the picture if you're already fairly buttoned up, if you have all of your data synced across all of your tools, if you're able to visualize that and get actionable insights, which is critical, right, for procurement leaders. When you think of, um, you know, what you're buying, who you're buying from, when you're going to be making these purchases. Um, these are critical to your business success. So you need to have some line of sight into these metrics. When you're operating in more of that manual function. Um, you're bogging down a lot of your resources with things that, you know, I consider to be either repeatable or, you know, automatable, uh, tasks. I'm not even sure if that's a word, but I'm going to use it. And, you know, you think of things like RPA and AI, um, there's so much opportunity to save significant time across your entire workforce so that they can focus on more strategic, right aspects of their overall role. So if you're paying someone, let's say, I don't know, anywhere from 50 to $100,000 a year to, you know, manage your payments. Um, if you are able to optimize that using technology and automate, right, some of the invoice processing and matching and things of that nature. You may be able to get a tool right that costs less than one full time employee. That is going to save you hundreds and hundreds of hours throughout the course of the year. You can now allocate that resource right from a human capital perspective to significantly more, um, pressing strategic initiatives that are critical to the organization's success. So I always, you know, highly recommend to my clients to try and find ways to lead with technology. But that also brings up a point that you mentioned, Victor in, um, you know, not necessarily rolling out technology for technology's sake. Um, we've all heard, right. I'm sure a lot of the listeners hear of these massive ERP implementations by way of example, that can take, I don't know, 18 to 24 months or 36 months or in some horror stories, even longer. Um, it's a common thing that happens when you have CTO turnover. They'll, you know, come on in, they will or CIO even, you know, you'll come in, you want to bring in your ERP system that you've used historically. You spend so much time and effort, but in a lot of instances, you're not incorporating the level of feedback that you need from the critical users, from different business units and stakeholders into making this tool and this rollout a true success. And I always I mean, I think of this when I, you know, run my sales org and my growth here. Um, I always try to focus on, you know, putting the customer first and foremost, trying to create an automated digital experience for them. Right? You know, to buy and purchase and all of those fun things. Um, but I also need to take a look at the underlying KPIs and data that are going to be key indicators of success for our organization, and allowing that data to tell a story and having all of that data connected is essential. And I think a lot of people drop the ball on that and really mapping back everything that you're doing with technology and human capital to your core critical right business objectives. So you need to lead with the business objectives. You need to tie the data to that. And then you got to think about your client or supplier facing, you know, part of your organization. These relationships are the most essential piece of your operational success. How do you create a better experience for them? Um, and with a lot of these disjointed processes that I see out there, uh, it's a bad experience internally and it's a bad experience externally. And if I'm a new supplier and my first right opportunity or, you know, working with your organization is through a, you know, wonky, disjointed, back and forth, very messy, uh, onboarding experience and transaction experience. Uh, it's going to leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's going to, you know, ultimately. Just not allow us to move as fast and efficiently as we can. And there are going to be bottom line impacts across the board. So I know that was a lot to digest. It was kind of a loaded question. I think you dropped on me there, Victor, because there are so many things you can pick apart. Um, but but yeah, you know, that's that's that's the high level perspective there on where there are gaps and what needs to be plugged. Yeah. No. You know, I think, um, you know, obviously I always love your insights. Um, and you guys just have so many ways to help customer optimize and, and, um, you know, save and optimize on, on the vendor and finance side of things. And I think but I think that also speaks to how complex this, this whole thing is. It's not just one specific problem you're solving. Vendor is like a whole ecosystem of problems, right? Just like I think revenue on the customer prospect side, there's multiple things you're trying to solve. Uh, it's not just one thing. Right. And so, uh, so, yeah, no, I think that kind of speaks to the complexity of what you guys are doing, and, and, uh, but making it easy for the client. So I love that, uh, as we kind of wrap up with a couple of last questions, um, you know, another area of optimization I know where we talked about a few is what you guys call prevent, which I, which I love. Uh, but I want you to to speak a few minutes on what? First of all, let's talk about the problem, help the audience understand why or, you know, why do companies have erroneous payments and why does that happen? Is it again? Is it human error? Why does it happen within mid-size or even enterprise? And how do you guys kind of help them solve that? It's a fantastic question. I mean, in its simplest form, right? They're going to be just things that fall through the cracks. Any time that you have a resource constrained, you know, piece of your organization doing significant volumes of work. So when you think about the AP department, um, you know, these are your boots on the ground. These are the people that are getting those dollars out to try and pay your suppliers on time. Um, you can think of some actual, you know, real life use cases with risk and fraud and things to where, you know, based on certain controls and things that you have in place. Um, I don't know if you've seen any of these stories out there, Victor, but, you know, they they'll someone will go email like Google or Meta or Microsoft and simply say, hey, I have an outstanding invoice for, you know, $10,000, please submit payment. And someone's just paying it. Right. So so it all kind of starts with some of those internal controls. And you need to have checks and balances in place that are going to, you know, either give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down on ultimately issuing a payment to your supplier. So one of the things that we actually do when we go through this exercise with the AP recovery audit is we provide an executive summary once we complete the project and break down the common errors and use cases that we've identified. So it could be, you know, we've even seen situations where you have one supplier that just, you know, if they don't get paid right on time, maybe you're a few days late, you get another invoice that comes in as your invoices are piling up. You may just be getting right back payments out and not double checking that this is in fact a duplicate. Some of this right gets caught depending on the type of technology that you have. If you have like an AP automation and invoice processing, you know, tool in place, it'll catch a lot of these things, but there's still errors that are going to fall through the cracks when you think of sales and use tax, right. Currency exchange when you think of freight and shipping rebates, uh, you know, refund credits, these are all things that absolutely are, you know, impossible for, um, you know, your you're very strapped, right? AP team to ultimately manage in real time. So they're going to continue getting the payments out. Things are going to fall through the cracks is the short and sweet of it. The issue that we've seen is the AP recovery audit has been around. You know, it's a decades old, um, you know, process where you're taking this look back in time. Right. So if we kicked off a new project and we're strictly doing an AP recovery audit right now, Victor, we would say, hey, we're going to look 3 to 5 years back at every, you know, um, supplier that you've paid. And we're going to see what we can find that has fallen through the cracks. That does not help keep your working capital where it belongs in real time, right? It's not I mean, yeah, we're going to give you a diagnostic at the end and give you some recommendations on controls and things you can put in place to alleviate leakage. But there are still going to be issues that will arise. So what we've done with prevent is we've built a module which has, uh, a really, really strong technology layer that has AI, machine learning, fuzzy logic. Uh, we're bringing in some intelligent, uh, intelligent document processing, uh, which is rooted in, like, you know, AI to query, um, specific pieces of data from any type of document that we receive that we're super excited about. This is going to allow us to catch these things at the point of issuance. So think of right. You're going to make your pay run on a Wednesday. You go ahead. Now you drop your pay file into bedrock. We'll run it through the tool and we'll actually identify some of these duplicates with that technology. So now you can remove it from your pay file. You can go make the proper payments and you're alleviating the leakage at that point of issuance. It's not something that, uh, you know, has been out in the market. You know, to date, there may be a handful of other vendors that are attempting to do this in any meaningful way, but it hasn't really become a, you know, commercial trend yet. Uh, we're excited to be, you know, one of the first, if not the first to do it extremely well. Um, and, you know, we'll kind of parlay that in with what we do in that post audit recovery. So super exciting stuff ahead here at bedrock with what we're going to do. And you know, we really pride ourselves on being trailblazers and innovators in this space. And we think this one is is absolutely a game changer for our clients. Yeah. And first of all, Devin, I just love the way you explain things. And, you know, obviously, um, a lot of people rely on the finance team to try to manage all this and just say, hey, why is this still happening? Sometimes if you're in the if you're not in the finance department, you just don't understand or don't get it. Uh, their pain and their challenges. And I think, um, this also helps educate a lot of the other stakeholders to, um, on on why it's difficult. So so I love it. I love the way you explain it. I think the last question is such a great way to kind of sum everything up. Everything you talked about has been a challenge for a long time, especially as companies scale and grow like these, things get just bigger and worse. Unfortunately for these companies, um, why do you think procurement and vendor management is overall, uh, ripe for innovation and changes? Uh, now, especially in the last, you know, I think 1 or 2 years. Well, I mean, I think, you know, Covid kind of preempted a lot of digital transformation in the procurement sector. Um, you all of a sudden we're seeing, you know, these massive constraints across your global supply chain that had never really been, you know, seen at that, you know, just impact and scale before. So with that, organizations realized, hey, um. We thought we were disaster planning before, but like, we never really thought of all of the bottlenecks and issues that we could realize on this level of scale. So organizations have been trying to, you know, glean better insights across the board into how do we insulate our overall supply chain from risk, how do we keep our business operational during tough times and, you know, simultaneously increase our efficiencies in the good times? Um, you know, so it's it's all about, right, you know, trying to to maintain that bottom line, trying to keep your costs down, efficiency up. And ultimately, you know, your delivery rates on, you know, your goods, your services, your products, um, as best as humanly possible. So I think that kind of, you know, jumpstarted this whole digital transformation initiative across procurement. And it's not that people weren't looking at it beforehand. Um, this really just put the microscope on a lot of issues that these enterprise organizations are faced with. Each and every day. When you think about, you know, why bedrock is around and what we're trying to do to help combat some of that. Um, we're firm believers that having clean data is first and foremost, right. The foundational piece of your supplier management success. That's why we include a complimentary, uh, vendor master cleanse with every product that we offer to our clients. We've also built our technology in such a way where it's modular by design, so you can kind of plug and play right. You don't need to rip the whole bandaid off at once and totally overhaul everything that you're doing. But you could say, maybe we have an area of weakness when it comes to verifying risk and banking. Or maybe we, you know, are getting forced due to regulatory shifts into monitoring ESG and sustainability and our carbon footprint. And we need to now have meaningful metrics and scoring surrounding that with bedrock. You can kind of pick and choose your own adventure, identify that module that's going to make the most impact for you and get started there. And it all lives in one cohesive bedrock portal. It seamlessly integrates via API into any other right, you know, technology stack items that you have across your procurement, sourcing and AP functions. So we are really trying to be a kind of a launching point for getting better data, getting better, right? Insights into that data, and just streamlining every piece of your supplier management experience. So we are, you know, actively right. Kind of adding on to to what we're doing, whether it's, you know, via building it in in-house or partnering with great organizations like source so we can continue to deliver value. And I think one of the biggest differentiators for bedrock two is that AP recovery audit or now, right, the services that we can offer through our partnership with Vera Source, because these are no cost items that are going to plug into any organizations overall. Right. Massive savings initiatives and you're going to see results. Um, yes. Right. There's a contingency fee that's tied to that, but we're in it together. It's like you said before, right? It's that win win dynamic that people are looking for. It also helps to demonstrate trust. It helps to demonstrate that, you know, bedrock is in fact a fantastic vendor that's going to be able to deliver for our organization. And then you're able to add additional products down the road, which you can oftentimes pay for via that AP recovery audit. So like I said, it's kind of a no brainer. And I think it really aligns well with the direction that every major organization is now pushing towards, which is massive digital transformation, overhauls, cost saving and initiatives and, uh, and implementing. Right, you know, AI to to drive the business forward. Yeah. One thing I, um, one thing I'll mention, um, you know what I love about this partnership? The potential of it is I think you guys do such a great job of, like you said, cleansing the data and gathering the data and building that data foundation to, you know, for the client. And so it's great management. But what I've seen a lot of companies, you know, trying to, you know, build this foundation is let's assume they work with you guys or any other tool that end up, you know, building up the data and the vendor, uh, successfully. Now the question is, what do we do next? Right. How do we then optimize? And obviously you have your revenue audit and we have our savings program. And I think together we're kind of solving that question of, okay, once I have my data ready, once I know what's going on, how do I optimize it? Because sometimes that's a whole other set of problems for companies where they also don't have enough resource and expertise and time to execute on those saving. And so together, uh, we can kind of automate those savings for them. And so, so yeah, we're super excited about the partnership. Um, and this has been a great conversation, super educational. The last question we always ask every, uh, guest, which, um, you've seen a lot, you've been through a lot. Obviously you have so much insight into kind of the space, but if you were to give one personal and or business advice that you just really believe in, what do you think? Um, that would be? Yeah. You know, I like to, you know, maybe to a fault, oversimplify things at times and, um, you know, thinking of my background, you know, working with, uh, CEOs of tech vendors during my time at Gartner. You know, I've got a master's in tech entrepreneurship. And then, you know, through Kellogg, I think one of the biggest challenges that I see with organizations is tying their, you know, kind of grassroots, right. You know, um, uh, individual contributor efforts to your strategic initiatives. Um, there are, you know, in these large enterprises, we're talking, right, tens of thousands of employees that are all in some way, shape or form, um, you know, working around the scene, around the, uh, the clock to, you know, get your product to market and get it in the hands, right, or your solutions in the hands of the people that need them. Um, you need to really underpin, I think, your big picture business goals and start there for any rollout of technology, uh, any alignment of human capital. And I think it really just is such a simple oversight in a lot of instances where I mentioned it earlier, you're seeing technology come in for technology sake. Someone just says, hey, you know, we have an AI initiative. We need to bring in AI, or you have a new, you know, CIO, CTO that comes in and they're like, I'm going to bring in some some new tech and it's going to solve all our problems. Well, until you really take the time to identify the critical metrics to your business success, analyze the data that you currently have, identify whether all of that data is speaking to one another, right, or living in one holistic place that you can actually see, um, you know, visible metrics that are going to give you actionable insights. And this all ties into right optimization here. It's making sure that all of that stuff is in alignment before you do anything else. And I don't think enough senior leaders are, you know, really one distilling this down right in a digestible format for the rest of the organization to, you know, understand, and then to mapping that over to the plethora of disparate systems that they have in the tech stack. So distill down that data, make sure it's very clear that everyone knows what these metrics of success are for the company. Make sure that every business unit is aligned. Try to break down some of those silos. Um, and you know, that's you know, why you turn to a company like a bedrock or average source, you know, and you look to create these efficiencies and optimize across the board. But I think it's it's a fail more often than not at a higher level. Um, and then everyone's constantly playing catch up or, you know, that old adage of running around like a, you know, chicken with their head cut off? Uh, you really need to make sure there's alignment across the board. And I think that's something that I see in a lot of conversations that. Yeah, I, I love that. Um, no, I mean, easier said than done, you know, especially the bigger the companies. They're just so many silos. And I think that's where, you know, you and us really, uh, help companies with that. So I know again, thank you so much for the conversation. And we're super excited to, uh, take this partnership to the next level. Absolutely. Yeah. Victor, I appreciate the time. Uh, on behalf of the entire, you know, bedrock team, we are thrilled to be partnering with Vera Source. Uh, a lot of really great interest in traction, you know, that we're we're starting to see already. And I can't wait to, you know, uh, revisit, right, this conversation and then, you know, a year from now and just see all the success that we've had together. So thanks again for having me on. Thanks to all the listeners. And, uh, really appreciate the time and can't wait to, uh, you know, continue, uh, just doing great work together. That was an amazing episode of the Spend advantage Podcast, where we show you how we can help you ten x your bottom line savings and top line growth for your business. Hope you enjoyed the conversation. And if you want to get the best deals from the guest today, make sure to send us a message at sales@varisource.com