This is a special episode featuring an interview with Thomas Gavaghan, the Vice President of Global Pre-Sales at Kyriba. Tom is a solutions architect. He has multi-billion-dollar companies relying on his guidance so they can achieve their KPIs. Tom has helped more than 12,000 clients identify, target and solve for financial technology challenges. So they can get better visibility on their cash flow and achieve their goals. On this episode, Tom and host Daniel Shaffer discuss two key topics: Payments and Visibility. Together, they look back at what previous guests have said about the topics, including Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, Laurie Krebs, SVP and CFO at Red Hat, Danielle Murcray, CFO at AttackIQ, and Benjamin Seal, VP of Treasury Services at Cenveo.
This is a special episode featuring an interview with Thomas Gavaghan, the Vice President of Global Pre-Sales at Kyriba.
Tom is a solutions architect. He has multi-billion-dollar companies relying on his guidance so they can achieve their KPIs. Tom has helped more than 12,000 clients identify, target and solve for financial technology challenges. So they can get better visibility on their cash flow and achieve their goals.
On this episode, Tom and host Daniel Shaffer discuss two key topics: Payments and Visibility. Together, they look back at what previous guests have said about the topics, including Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, Laurie Krebs, SVP and CFO at Red Hat, Danielle Murcray, CFO at AttackIQ, and Benjamin Seal, VP of Treasury Services at Cenveo.
Quotes
*“When you think about a puzzle, you think about a jigsaw puzzle. What do you have? You have a box with a picture on it. You have the pieces inside of it. And your goal was to make the pieces match the picture. One of the things I think is different in financial technology and in our environment, in our space which we're in, we don't know what that picture is. We need to understand first, what does that picture look like? What's the landscape of an organization look like? We have the pieces and we have so many of them, but we have to then figure out how to put them together to match what the customers are ultimately looking to do.”
*”Size of a company does not dictate complexity. I think sometimes in technology selling business type arrangements, you just equate biggest companies with being the most complicated… Companies of all sizes are naturally international in their supply chain, how they get material or resources, and how they sell their product. And with that then comes a lot of nuance and a lot of complexity that they have to manage and they have to deal with.”
*”The more touch points I have, the more systems I have in place that are making payments and sending payments to the bank, each outlet Is an opportunity for fraud. It's an opportunity for someone to come in and infiltrate that connection, that system, and do something perhaps nefarious… It doesn't matter if you’re in finance or you're in another part of the organization. Criminals are trying to infiltrate and get access to those systems. And they can do it so easily if you're not careful by putting the payments centrally, managing incentives, singular type technology, or that pursuit will give companies better ability to monitor that flow, monitor those payments, protect their cash, protect their organization, protect the reputation that they have.”
Time Stamps
*[5:36] Understanding the fintech landscape
*[11:18] Company size does not dictate complexity
*[15:55] Controlling the interest rate environment
*[17:24] The benefits and risks of real-time payments
*[26:28] Why relying on the bank for payment security isn’t enough
*[30:10] What is visibility?
*[34:50] Leveraging data for ML and AI
*[39:30] Excel is a tool, not the answer to reporting needs
*[44:06] Justifying investment in new tech through value engineering
*[47:27] Including clients in their own process improvement
*[49:41] The complexities of the consultative process
Sponsor
The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com
Links
Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn
Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
Narrator: Hello and welcome to The Invisible Vault.
This is a special episode featuring an interview with Thomas Gavaghan, the Vice President of Global Pre-Sales at Kyriba. Tom is a solutions architect. He has multi-billion-dollar companies relying on his guidance so they can achieve their KPIs. Tom has helped more than 12,000 clients identify, target and solve for financial technology challenges. So those clients can get better visibility on their cash flow and achieve their goals.
So as a special episode, instead of our usual segments, Tom and our host Daniel Shaffer, will be discussing two key topics: Payments and Visibility. Together, they’ll reflect on what previous guests have said about the topics. We’ll hear from Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, Laurie Krebs, SVP and CFO at Red Hat, Danielle Murcray, CFO at AttackIQ, and Benjamin Seal, VP of Treasury Services at Cenveo. And Tom will share his expertise, insights and current trends in the industry.
But before we get into it, here’s a brief word from our sponsor.
So please enjoy this interview between your host, Daniel Shaffer, and Thomas Gavaghan, Vice President of Global Sales at Kyriba.
Daniel Shaffer: Welcome to the Invisible Vault. My name's Daniel Shaffer, and I'm the host and the executive producer of the podcast for Kyriba. Today, I have a special guest His name is Tom Gavaghan and I've had the pleasure of working with Tom at Kyriba for many years. Tom is an expert in many things. One of them is data. Another is numbers and the final expertise I've found with Tom is his ability to solve problems for clients to really architect solutions that enable them to find ways to leverage the Kyriba technology and unlock value for their company.
Welcome to the Invisible Vault, Tom.
Thomas Gavaghan: Thanks Daniel. I really appreciate letting me join here.
Daniel Shaffer: We've had some really interesting guests on the Invisible Vault. And today I wanted to reflect back on some of their advice and guidance on what's troubling them in the market and how they've solved the problems to help their company grow and accelerate through the challenging times that we've seen in the past year and a half, two years. And you yourself have a unique history in dealing with problems on a daily basis, and really finding ways to show new and existing clients, how to better use Kyriba to solve those problems. But before we get into that, we'd really like to know a little bit about you, Tom, can you tell us about yourself? How'd you get into this business?
Thomas Gavaghan: Appreciate that, Daniel. Yeah, sure. So right now I lead our global pre-sales team at Kyriba I've spent my entire career on the technology vendor space. So I've been here for eight years. And I've worked in our pre-sales organization, for the entirety of that time. And then sometimes they often the question is, well, what is pre-sales right? Well pre-sales is ultimately consulting and solutioning our product to our customers or prospective customers. So we have solution engineers, we have technical sales and so on that we're really working with the market to understand what needs are out there and design our solution to do that. And I think that from my experience, again, I've always been on the technology side. I started just doing general, like support moved into implementing a product and moved into premier product manager and like developing and building the product. And now I've done pre-sales for a lengthy amount of time. So, you know, from a technology perspective, I really have a good grasp in terms of how you build a product, how you implement a project, how do you support the product? And ultimately how you you sell that technology. Today, we work with thousands of banks, customers anybody in our ecosystem every year to understand what they're going through in their technology migration or their technology involvement and figure out how Kyriba fits and where we can offer solutions for the things that they're trying to achieve.
Daniel Shaffer: I'm so glad you made that comment about being more of a consultant for prospects and clients. The reason why I mentioned that, and I think it's worth repeating, that this is the ultimate puzzle. And I know that you shared with me that you enjoy solving complex problems math, or a word puzzles. And that in this instance, what you're really trying to accomplish is finding the right solution to help a particular client with a problem that they're having either that affects their specific industry, or that is just globally impacting liquidity in the management of liquidity worldwide. Can you tell me a little bit about your clients? Who are the types of clients that you've worked with? I mean, you've been doing this for a long time.
Thomas Gavaghan: Wow. Yeah. So one thing is, I think it's important is that no two companies are the same. No two industries are the same, right? Each of them have their different nuances and their challenges at an industrial level. And then at an individual corporate level, each company has their own goals, objectives, challenges, competition, things that they're dealing with. Right? So there is not a no, you know, everything's always going to be different in that regard. I forget the exact number, daniel, but at one point I had done a count and this was a couple of years ago. I had worked on myself with 1,249 companies in terms of procuring Kyriba like, you know, their process of understanding what Kyriba does and how it can fit what they need and so on. I don't know where that number sits today in 2022. But it gives you good experience. And that's, that is global as well when we look at the client base or we look at the landscape, right? Like I had mentioned, no two organizations, or are the same and one of the things that we like to do, and one of the things that we're challenged with, like, you know, to your point, I guess I do like puzzles in a way. I'm not a jigsaw puzzle fan, I would say, but, you know, puzzles in general or challenges or things that I'm naturally just drawn to. it is different here than say a puzzle is a puzzle. Usually you have a framework of what you're trying to do or try to get to, and you have the pieces to build it. What we're trying to do is actually do both at the same time, which is figure out what the picture is, and then put the pieces into it. Because nobody just comes to you and says, Hey, here's the exact thing that I need. Here's the exact thing that you're supposed to give me. We need to go in and actually learn a lot about what their current processes are, what challenges they're trying to overcome. And those challenges could be operational. They could be financial, they could be both. And where then does financial technology like Kyriba fit in order to kind of support that?
When you think about a puzzle, right? You think about like a jigsaw puzzle. What do you have? You have a box with a picture on it. You have the pieces inside of it. And your goal was just to those pieces and match that picture. One of the things I think is different in financial technology and in our environment, in our space, which we're in, we don't know what that picture is. Right? We need to understand first, what's that picture look like? What's the landscape look like of an organization. We have the pieces and we have so many of them, but we have to then figure out how to put them together to kind of match what the customers ultimately looking to do.
Daniel Shaffer: So there's a lot of different ways that this comes together. Can you tell me about some of the common characteristics that you might find in putting this puzzle together?
Thomas Gavaghan: Yeah, I think at a top level, there are those common characteristics, then the nuance is underneath of that. But when you're talking out in the market, it doesn't matter if you're talking to an organization in Singapore or in India or in the United States. You know, there are overarching kind of themes that are going to exist that we're being approached for and very topical ones these days as well, that are just getting more and more visibility. One of the things is just this naturally what we're seeing in the market, just this real big focus in payments better ways to do payments, alternative ways to do payments different and optimal ways to make those payments. And then additionally is just generally, you know, visibility of liquidity. And that's very timely right now we're in an environment where our interest rate environment is going to be going up and it's going to be going up quickly. Organizations are going to be tasked with dealing with that and trying to manage that environment. Is it will impact their capital markets activities that they're doing. So there's a heightened kind of sense of getting to that, visibility that everybody's trying and really to strive for right now.
Daniel Shaffer: I'm going to come back to those in just a moment, Tom. I'd like to hear a little bit more about your background. How did you get into consultative problem solving to help people learn how to use financial technology? It's a very complex technology and software. There's a lot of high level stakes on this. I mean, you're talking about multi-billion dollar companies are relying on your guidance in order for them to achieve their KPIs. How did you get to the point where you were in a position to provide guidance with companies? Tell us a little bit about before Kyriba.
Thomas Gavaghan: It's an interesting topic and something that I could talk for awhile on, but I'll be very brief about it. It's one of these things that I'm trying to be more evangelical about it myself, because quite frankly, when you're in school and going through all of your education, the world in which we work in right now is not something you know about. I did not know about what we do, and that there's these technology companies out there and that there's these roles like we have now, these consultative type roles, you know? So, I would say it was just general, like I just kind of started at the beginning of my career, after university at a small technology company and went through like acquisition changes, things like that. At the end of the day, the roles I've had in my career have always been, in this world of working with, you know, either banks, financial institutions, brokerage firms, proprietary trading firms, corporations, government entities, or so on. It has always been about designing solutions to fit their needs, right. This figuring out how to address the problems they have. I always was facing it from, implementation perspective, you know, pretty much that puzzle has already been figured out, right. The picture has been figured out and I was just putting the pieces together. Whereas like, what I'm doing now is really trying to take that picture that we have to then put the puzzle pieces into and we have to do both, right. So it's a very unique role. And it's something that I think is pretty exciting. It's very dynamic in what we do as we get a little bit of both the business side, as well as the technology side. Just very energizing.
Daniel Shaffer: That's really exciting. And it does seem like you have a lot of burden that rests on your shoulders, but it's just another day of work for you. So hats off to you in getting energized by the enormous amount of stress of solving a problem for a multi-billion dollar company. Can you tell us a little bit about the industries that you work with and kind of size and volume of a company, just to give us a sense of what type of consulting you've provided?
Thomas Gavaghan: Yeah it's so vast, Daniel. One thing that I always tell our organization, Size of a company does not dictate complexity, I think sometimes in technology selling business type arrangements, right. You just equate, okay, the biggest companies are the most complicated. And maybe in certain functional areas, they are, but maybe not actually in finance. And so why I bring that up is because day to day we work, literally on every, industry, I would say that we are interacting with, I mean, today alone, I was on conversations with banks, right, who are looking to further partner with Kyriba. You know, that's a big trend right now with banks trying to partner with fintechs and, you know, evolve that way. And today I was met with another company to a hundred million dollars in revenue. It's going to be different, right? So, there's a lot of contributing factors that I think go into solutions and the need for solutions, right? Revenue does not dictate that, especially for liquidity and provide, right? Risk management, liquidity payments, things like that. There's other things to be factored in there. One of those is going to be international presence. You know, It's just an evolutionary thing that we have seen and we're going to continue to see. Companies of all sizes are just naturally international in their supply chain and how they get material or resources and how they sell their product. Right. And with that then becomes just a lot of nuance and a lot of complexity that they have to manage and they have to deal with. The smaller companies specifically they are hyper-growth maybe right. And they're really in a lot of different regions and maybe they have a couple of people in this one country. So therefore. What do they have to do? They have to have banking relationships. They have to make payroll there. They have to have systems there. And so on. Boom complexity. Right. And these are the things that companies are dealing with. And then they, at one point have to go and they say, we have to try to optimize some of these things that we've kind of cultivated over our growth and deal with. So, you know, what I do see right now though, is in terms of like overall activity in the market, banking activity is just picking up. What that is banks looking to work with technology providers like a Kyriba perhaps in terms of how can they, partner with the technology firms? I think for a long time there was like a friction there, right? But I think that there is now kind of more evolving into a partnership, which is, Hey, we kind of need you and you need us. And it's opening up lot of opportunities and a lot of doors for, you know, banks and fintechs to kind of partner together. What I would also see right now is a lot of activity in like the, what we call our financial services space. The private equity asset management, hedge fund space. These companies very active right now. You've seen the past couple 18 months Of just all of the various M&A activity, these companies are very busy. They have tremendous amount of cash and a lot of operational complexities that they're looking to deal with. So we do see kind of a lot going on there and then naturally just insurance in general. A lot of M&A activity and a lot of growth in these different insurance companies coming, up left, and right, that are meeting immediate need for technology. You think about what an insurance company does, right? How much cash that they have to mobilize on a day-to-day basis, right? You pay your premium in and they pay their claims payments out. And there's so much processing that goes on in that and optimal, use case for technology in the fintech space.
One of the things that I do and where I sit is I you know, lead our consulting team and work with them and I get to see what they're doing, right. And this is how I know where our time is being spent by, you know, group by geography, by types of, industries that we're working in. 42% of our time right now is being spent on industries or companies that are underneath of a billion dollars of revenue. That's that mid market, if you will. I think that's a Testament to something, right? These are companies that originally in think if you look back, they would be the ones that aren't looking for solutions. We're too small. We're not there yet. Right. And that's something we've seen as ourselves, I've been here for 8 years, but you know, it was met with those conversations often, and now it's like, they're banging down the doors, right? They know that these solutions are out there. They know there's opportunity for them out there and what they provide. And we're seeing it, right. We're seeing a huge upswing in that market, if you will, which is just, you know, these growing companies are seeking out technology more and more.
Daniel Shaffer: Well, you mentioned that one of the types of customers, if you were to group these customers together, is a high growth or fast growth company. And we know just on the heels of the kind of first COVID milestone if we can say that where business started again there was also alongside of that, a record breaking number of IPO's and venture capital money that flooded the market. So, as you're saying, these hyper-growth companies are taking advantage of this fresh cash and this new interest in companies investing in the future of a lot of different industries. And that sounds like you're seeing some of that at the mid-market level.
Thomas Gavaghan: Absolutely. It's in that, level that you're seeing a lot of that activity, a lot of that business, cash moving around there. Now, that said, that has been the world that we've lived in for the past couple of years now. It's crazy to think that. Change is coming, right? The interest rate environment is changing, right? The strings are going to tighten. And now just as equally important is how do we control that, right? Where we had this excess cash. And we were able to mobilize it, say, and do these various investments in working capital initiatives. Whatever that might be. Now we have to think of the strings up, right? Because it's not going to be as easy to go out and borrow, or it might be as easy, but it's going to cost us more. And you know, these are the types of decisions that companies are going to face.
Daniel Shaffer: Well, that's a really interesting background. I'm so thankful that you can share that with us. You know, recently we've had some really interesting guests on the Invisible Vault and they all had kind of a unique point of view on some of those challenges and complexities that you just highlighted were what you deal with on a daily basis. In just a recent episode with Reed Luhtanen, who's the Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council. Reed was talking about the significance of real-time payments and just how real-time payments are creating new opportunities, but also new challenges. Can you tell us a little bit in your experience, Tom, about your thoughts on real-time payments?
Thomas Gavaghan: Yeah, sure. That was an interesting topic. And also somebody who's really close to it where they sit, in that council. This is a very hot topic. It's been for a few years, but now I think it's really kind of getting the traction as the banks and the tech firms and all of really kind of stepped it up. Before I came to Korea, I really was working as mainly risk management, FX, foreign exchange trading, things like that. That was my original background. Payments were magic to me at the end of the day. Right. I didn't know the intricacies of what happened. I knew I went into my bank portal and I could pay my electric bill. Right. I didn't know how it happened. And it wasn't until I worked here that I realized how much depth and complexity there is in making money move around the world, right? You go back to the evolution, right? There was no safe payment system. You would just take money out of your hand and you somehow have to give it to somebody else. Then there was checks, right? And I can do those types of things. And then you end up kind of electronically moving money in different ways and through different channels and over different time horizons. And now we're at a status of real time. Right. And how quickly we can move that money. Right. And that's, I think one of the driving forces in that evolution is being able to do things in a more rapid way, not having to take money out and go into hand delivered to you. There are the mechanisms to move that money electronically and the quicker I can do it, the better for both of us, right. Because those systems and those platforms and the processes, right. There's a lot of room for error, right. And a lot of uncertainty of what's happening inside of the system itself, right. The payment system itself, I can make my payment electronically, but, you know, depending upon the type of payment it's got to go through different channels and through the banks and it could fail. Right. And as somebody who's sending them money, I don't have that certainty and that somebody is expecting the money, i I share in that uncertainty. Am I going to get paid, right? My experience as a consumer level is that when I make a payment if I go out to dinner, for example, and for some reason that payment is in a pending mode for two or three days, I have a certain amount of anxiety. Did it go through, did it get lost? And I'm wondering what I can plan in the next two days after that. If that payment is still pending, when is it going to go through? And so I would imagine on a corporate level where you're dealing with thousands of payments, that kind of visibility instantaneously to settle a payment, enables someone to make a different decision about what they can do with their liquidity.
Yeah. I mean, in fairness, right, in your example, you've eaten your dinner, right? Like, so whether or not that payment happens, right. It's not going to ruin you. Right. Whereas with a corporation, these payments are so critical, right? If my electric Tricity payment doesn't go through and my plant shuts down, I have a very big supply chain problem. Right? So these are so mission critical and that's why there's so much risk behind them. Now, in where we sit now with real-time payments again we are seeing the growth and the evolution of that now as more and more banks are giving or providing those types of capabilities and those rails to use it. Real-time payments, I think right now are what you're seeing are value, smaller type payments in certain industries are going to be naturally drawn more towards them, like retail, insurance, things like that. But just like anything, like we think about the ACH's of the world, right? And how long that's been around and how that's evolved to allow for larger value and more timely, quicker payments that you're to see the same thing with RTP, you're going to see the value of the payments going up and up the world just gets more comfortable with that capability. And I think the driving need behind this has always been speed and optimization. But I think there's other outcomes that this is really also benefiting from that maybe, you know, weren't as heavily weighted, but I think corporations are going to realize that, and that's going to be that transparency, both from a payables and receivables perspective. Both sides of that equation, whoever's sending the money, whoever's receiving money wants to have transparency, right. They want to be able to see that and make sure it's accurate. Make sure that it's timely. Make sure that I know what do I have or what don't I have. And that's obviously a huge benefit
with real-time payments.
Daniel Shaffer: So Tom, one of the areas that Reed Luhtanen was really getting excited about was real-time payments. And it sounded kind of hypothetical. I mean, I know he's in charge of, and is the executive director for the U S faster payments council. So I think he's really ahead of the curve and looking for the future opportunities for payments. We all want real time to happen, but there's seems to be other ways to optimize payments and really improve the payments experience. Can you share with us any stories about how you've worked with a client and really help them through that journey?
Thomas Gavaghan: Yeah, I guess the first thing I would say is that real-time payments are here. I think they've been talked about, and we've been with it for a few years now. And at that point they were very something that you were really striving for was out in the future. And now they're here. And I think like anything in this space for what we work world that we live in, the people, we are risk averse. Right. And we are methodical, right. So it is a slower, but you're going to see quick and rapid adoption of these things. Like any of the other types of, cutting edge technologies that are out there. But time payments is a method, right? That's a, that's an avenue. It's an outlet that companies can leverage, but you cannot make every payment through real time payment today, right. Payment optimization, and what we really are seeing more and more, and there's a couple of driving factors behind that is How's a company. How can I better ensure that all of my payments are central. Our process timely that I'm not missing payments and I'm not late on my payments. And then I'm doing it in a most cost effective way. Payments, cost of money, right? They're getting clipped by the bank in terms of how, you know, because they're charging you for making those payments, you have internal costs in terms of the processing that goes into it. =You have technology costs that you're incurring and where those are being managed and you have additional human resources costs, and whoever's managing those technologies and keeping all of pieces stuck together. I think a lot of organizations that we talked about earlier, those that are growth and growing, and going through those changes that results in a technological nightmare sometimes, right? There's a lot of internal technologies that are held together through, bubblegum and shoestring. And now what we are seeing is, a technology migration of organizations looking to deploy their enterprise technologies. And that opens up these opportunity to reassess, where are we making payments through? Who's touching the banks and can we do it in a more optimal way? And that's been a massive , direction industry and the world is going towards because the world was run by big ERP players, basically from a technology perspective, those ERP players are migrating and providing now cloud-based offerings, right? Which is going to help in the overall longterm. It costs that these organizations occur, but now you have a lot of other technologies out there. They're not just the big, you know, the players anymore. There are so many other vendors out there that are making noise in the cloud that companies are able to tap into. And with that, again, are opportunities for organizations to assess their payment flow and look for opportunity to ultimately optimize.
so Daniel, one of the reasons why that is, is not just because of the optimization of centralization, but there's also some overarching things behind that as well by having this right. I can ensure as an organization, right? the more touch points I have, the more systems I have in place that are making payments and sending payments to the bank. Each outlet of that, right. Is an opportunity for fraud. It's an opportunity for someone to come in and infiltrate that connection, that system and do something perhaps in our various, whether it's internally done or externally done through hacking that is also a huge driving need is being able to better protect the payments that accompany is making. I say this all the time. in Kyriba and my, my role. I don't make any payments. I don't have that authority. I don't even know how we do it. I cannot make a payment on behalf of Kyriba. Have I been targeted? Absolutely. And I know everybody else has to in every organization because that's the world we live in. So it doesn't matter if you were in finance or you're in another part of the organization, maybe you're out in the field or in operations or something hackers criminals are trying to infiltrate and get access to those systems and make do it so, so easily. If you're not careful by putting the payments, centrally managing incentives, you know, singular type technology, or, you know, that pursuit will give companies better ability to monitor that flow, monitor those payments, protect their cash, protect their organization, protects the reputation that they have. So, you know, Tom, we're hearing a lot about the increase in payments fraud and the challenges that companies are having in managing, especially multinational companies that have subsidiaries all around the world. How are they coming to you to find a centralized solution around payments to reduce that risk?
I'd say in general, the market is looking for something, but not sure exactly what they're looking for in this regard. I mean, if you ask any organization, Hey, do you want to better protect your company from fraud? Nobody's going to say now we're good. Right? But at the same time, I don't think that organizations really truly grasp perhaps what is out there to support that there is opportunities that I am in and I work with and sometimes the response has met with, oh, my banks take care of that. That's not good enough. Right. I like to equate it like this. When I go to bed at night, what do I do? I don't just lock my front door. Right. I left my front door and I lock my back door. I put my coat on and make sure that my house is secured. Right. I had, there's multiple points of security that I have in place to protect myself, protect my, belongings, my house. And so on by just saying, oh, my banks take care of it. That's the equivalent of just locking my front door, but not locking my back door. So their organization, they think are slowly understanding that they need to have processes, compliance, measurements and technology at multiple points in their evolution of, or in their technologies and in their flow of money that will help protect their company waiting until it gets to the bank is not good enough. Right. And you're going to see that not being a standard any longer more, and we're seeing that more and more. Cause sometimes you're also met with, oh, We do fraud checking at like the PO level at the purchase order level at the vendor level. Okay. There's a lot that happens between then and the time that money moves out. Right. There's a lot of other things that could infiltrate that. And a lot of maybe other humans touching it or systems touching that payment that could really be impacted. And so it's our philosophy and and it's being adopted more and more, the more the more security you have, the better you are going to be in the organization. Our technology has, we know this has saved companies, millions of dollars. It's actually cost identified, potentially identified real fraud that accompanies have been susceptible to. And it's been stopped dead in its tracks before it ever got to where was supposed to end up going. So, It is something that is on top of mine. But I do think that it's incumbent upon us as a technology evangelist and proponents of it to really, truly understand what is out there and different and in the best practice of how to actually protect your company.
Daniel Shaffer: Great. Let's talk a little bit about visibility. is it an overused word or are you finding that people are coming to you on a regular basis, Tom, to say, I just don't know where my cash is or we know where it is, but with only maybe 75% accuracy I asked this question because on a recent episode, we spoke with Laurie Krebs, who, as you probably know, is the CFO of Red Hat and has such a unique perspective on managing data. It was really interesting to hear her say that her company is always looking for a unique ways to visualize the key metrics. In order for them to be able to make a decision and understand how to guide the business. Is that a common response? Are you hearing similar questions and or requests for improvement of visibility from the prospects and clients you're working with?
Thomas Gavaghan: In my eight years here, Daniel, that's always been kind of a key focus from the market. But visibility is very nebulous term, in my opinion. In some organizations you talk about visibility. Yes. We have visibility. Okay. Explain more. Right. And we kind of, you can dig into it. Oh, and Friday, you know, by the end of the week we have these processes, we have our various regional subsidiaries we report in blah, blah, blah. And then by that time we have that visibility true. That's considered visibility on Friday. What about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Right. I would say in my time here, you do see, you know, companies are getting a better grasp of that in a more timely way. Certainly not real time, but that is, you know, where things are trending, Laurie's interview. And she's so impressive, with what they do there at Red Hat. But one of the key things she said was about visualization and that's where I see a lot of. big, focus going on in the market. So visibility to me is, yes, I know perhaps where my cash is right on Fridays. I have that full picture and I know how much cash I have here domestically in my current operations. I know how much I have sitting in these other regions in which I ultimately operate. But visualization right. Is now that next evolutionary phase of things, right? Because the immature visibility of getting number on a Friday is now you've got to go deeper. Right? What is inside of that number? Can I get it more real time? Can I get it more timely, you know, daily even real time. And what's inside of that number, not just tell me what's the balance of what I hold or what liquidity I have. What's going into these accounts, what's going out of these accounts. And with that information, now you're talking about massive amounts of data. And so that has forced an evolution that we see and that we're continuously investing in and bringing to the market is visualizing that data to, you know, these organizations that use a technology like a Kyriba or other solutions. responsible for processing a lot of transactions, right? You think about your own bank account that you have for your own personal use, right? And you think about all of the money that you have going in and out, right? Your money coming in for your company. You have your mortgage payment going out. You have dinner, a bill that you paid here. And so on that you now you just multiply that by a thousand for what the organization does, right. business does. And what organizations like Red hat can do, and others is now better make sense of that underlying data and identify trends, identify problems and prescribe and have prescription to what can solve those problems as well. But it ultimately requires advanced, modern age technology in order to, process what ultimately ends up being for an organization like red hat, I would assume millions and millions of transactions at a time that they need to analyze and make sense.
You're seeing organizations go more from what I think is descriptive of describing me occurrence status, to being more predictive and being more prescriptive. It doesn't happen without access to that data. And without the ability to visualize that data, and that is. Where the market's moving to. So stop. Okay. I got an idea of where I'm at now. I can describe that and see that, but now I need to take that a step further, right. Which I was saying, which is, where are my problem areas? What can I do to prescribe what you know, to fix those? And then further kind of predict when those problems are going to arrive.
Daniel Shaffer: Absolutely. Danielle Murcray, who's the CFO of attack IQ, probably a company that's seeing a lot of new business these days as it protects the organization against the nefarious actors. Talked about the importance of visibility as it relates to data, which is what we're hearing from you right now. And that opportunity for Danielle is to leverage data and make better informed decisions and not make decisions in the dark. I know that you're just saying that companies are not only visualizing the current state and taking a snapshot, but they're also coming to you and saying, Tom, I need to understand where I am, but I also need to know with a little bit more confidence where I'm going. Can you touch on those types of questions, maybe provide a story or an anecdotal example of a company who really came to you with that as a problem.
Thomas Gavaghan: This is such a hot topic, Daniel. And working hard on, on this one specifically. It is a process though, right? It was, I talk about the foundation is data, right at the end of the day, like we talked about and all of those transactional related activities, right. And think about every single transaction that a company has or is doing and hitting their accounts is sitting inside of a technology like Careba, that information can be used. And then with modern technology, we can visualize, make sense of that information much more quickly. We don't need to sit there and run back processing SQL queries, crystal reports, and all of these other, you know, antiquated technologies to, you know, wait around and get that descriptive information. Now we're in a place where there's technologies in place. Again, give you insights further into what that data is telling us that access to that data now has expanded further, where you can leverage pools of information and using modern technology. Have those technologies learn off of that data. And what I'm talking about specifically is machine learning, artificial intelligence, and that is now where we're at. That's where the market's at in terms of harnessing that information, taking the data making sense of it and telling and visualizing it and tell me what's going on, but now putting a layer machine learning sitting on top of that. For our purposes, that's been a huge investment. That's what we've been working with our customers on that's the call from the market. like Danielle said is being able to use that information. I think she was talking about like prediction and cash prediction, if I recall that interview. And that's, so that's such a hot topic and it's also very topical about, at the start of COVID, this was like the first thing that customers were asking about, Hey, I'm very uncertain about my cash, right? Of what my business, how can I better predict that cashflow? Careba I think is in a very unique spot because we have tremendous amount of data, a customer to customer, and now with proprietary machine learning and data scientists teams we have now the ability to take a look at that information and using the machines to identify and predict what's going to happen in the future with that information. There's different mathematical models that are used and philosophies and schools of thought that, that go into that. But that is where we're at now. And it's really a fascinating thing to be a part of.
Daniel Shaffer: Absolutely. Danielle had a lot of great insights to share. And another guest that we had recently was Benjamin Seal. Who's the VP of Treasury Services for the Global Envelope Company Cenveo. And he had a lot of very unique perspectives on how to navigate this market. And he's been in the business for many years. One of the challenges that he found was fraud, as you, talked about in detail earlier in our conversation and just the evolution of technologies and the types of machine learning and AI that allows you to detect in the background that back door as you were saying, to have that constant digital protection against fraud, so that you're not just relying on the banks and he found that to be a major differentiator in his business because in his words, you just can't go any further in today's world with manual processes and not expect to have a really big problem. One of. the other areas that he found to be untenable was the ability to manage and measure the value of your company through Excel. I don't know if that's an issue that people are coming to you with Tom, but I'm just wondering as you're working with some of these mid-market companies. So a hundred million dollars sounds like a lot of annual revenue to me. Are they still working on Excel? And are you finding that the move from a product like Excel to kind of a digital transformation is important for our clients today?
Thomas Gavaghan: Yeah. So I'll admit something here. And I'm not, I'm ashamed to say it. I I'm a huge fan of Excel. I use it every day. Okay. So, that's the reality of the world we live in. And in any organization from the largest organization in the world, I'm certain that they use Excel for too, in some capacity in their finance team. But Excel, it cannot and should not be the source of record. And that's what we came from, I think. And that's what we're moving away from. Right. Excel was literally where, you know, those pictures, those value, like Ben said, right? your value sat on a spreadsheet. That's terrifying. it is a challenge though, Daniel, especially for people who've not used other solutions or technologies, and this is geographic, different markets when you look over in Europe. And the space that we're in, most of the market has used technologies like a Kyriba or something inside their ERP. And that's come from years of just different, regulatory demands, things like that. But they're not as tied to their Excel. Right. You look into other industries that are growth regions and things like that. their point of comparison is Excel. Again, I use it every day. It's super flexible, but it is not what I use for my key business needs and I need to do for Kyriba right. When I report up to my managers and things like that, that none of that information comes through Excel. It comes through our systems and that's how organizations need to look at their finance operation ultimately. But it's a little bit of a vice at the end of the day, right? Then we have to break people up. And it's a challenge because you know, you're familiar with you, like what, you know, and you love the flexibility of a solution like itself. , there's so much, better benefit in terms of automation, you know, integrity of the data security out of ability. So on and so forth, the list goes on and on in terms of, you know, that migration into, you know, running finance through, but not running finance through Excel, fully.
Daniel Shaffer: Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk about maybe any of the customers that you've had the chance to talk to recently or provide a guidance on really setting up the system after transitioning off of a XL product?
Thomas Gavaghan: One thing to share, actually, so there was, and this wasn't that recent, but I, one of our pursuits, right? we were working with a customer and we're working on what they're doing and how they're doing things. And you know, one of the things we do is, Hey, let's look at what your systems today, whether it's an existing treasury system or payment system or Excel, what do they do? They send over their workbooks, right? Their Excel workbooks, Literally wouldn't open on our machine like that. Every time he tried to open Excel would just crash crash, and a back to him. Hey, I think there's something wrong with your file. Literally it didn't, our computers did not have enough Ram in order to manage that their spreadsheet like, oh yeah, this happens all the time. We had to work with it. Like just giant red flag. Like that gave me immediate anxiety. Just thinking about like how scary that would be. Right. That file is that powerful and has that much information and it's, and it requires that much horsepower from from your machine to, to use. That's just right. problems. Right. So we do see that often, right? I am the type of person that if something that my team gives me their information and Excel, I spend most of my time validating the information like the calculations. Correct. Right. I maybe it's just who I am and I am a math and statistics kind of like nerd, but I'm going to spend time going through and be like, how'd you build this? Where did that come from? Okay. Links to this worksheet. Okay. Show me that. And that would go into that equation. I couldn't facilitate, I couldn't fathom, you know, running mission, critical liquidity type processes and payments and that type of key decision-making things that you might need off of a spreadsheet. I would be so dubious of what I'm looking at and not really kind of secure in it. And I think that's what a lot of people are doing. Right. And you always hear about it all. I don't know who, how that spreadsheet was done. It was here when I got here. Okay. Like that should be, you know, great major red.
Daniel Shaffer: There's so many challenges that you just brought up in such a short amount of time. I'm going to have to go back and listen again because. How vulnerable companies can be. On the one hand at the price of that flexibility is a little I guess I feel a little uncomfortable in hearing about it. But the good news is there's a lot of upside to making an investment in your company and taking away some of that risk. In fact, just, you know, thinking about Benjamin again from Cenveo, when they fully operationalized their finance and treasury teams, they were able to gain 90% productivity improvements. And I think that KPI alone just speaks volumes for the kind of value that companies are seeing. When they finally do take that big jump and start digitizing their processes. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those productivity or improvements that you've seen? maybe a few anecdotes that you might have?
Thomas Gavaghan: one of the things as an organization at Kyriba that we're really invested in. I mentioned I've been here for quite some time and we always, know that the system can offer a lot of efficiencies, optimization, things like that, but it wasn't until a few years ago that we introduced what we have and our company now called value engineering, where we're able to quantify that right. And little plug and shout out for those guys because they've done such an incredible amount of work over a very short amount of time. I think over a thousand customers that gets an impressive amount of data that they have worked with to to understand, you know, pre and post, right. what was the pre status? versus what the pro status says, and then also validating that on a go-forward basis, right? Because things do change. One of the things actually now, Daniel, that team is going to be doing is benchmarking. We have done and have so much information in that regard now that we can actually benchmark where you're at growth. and where you stack up relative to your peers being all Kyriba the clients are maybe also at a micro level where your industry or geography or whatever that might be. And I think that's going to really Help our customers really kind of adopt more technology at the end of the day. I always used to say, working with all these customers over the years, most of the time you're coming off a call and they go, wow, I need the system. Right. But oftentimes they'd be like, I don't know how to justify that. I don't know how to ask my boss or how to go get that. Right. And that's, such a massive kind of evolution for us to have. Help our customers help the market, you know, justify the investment into technology because of the yield they can get out of it. And that's both operational yield that they can get in terms of time saved and things like that, but also financial gain. And I think financial gain is something that oftentimes individuals, organizations don't actually put as much focus on. They're usually approaching technology providers in terms of, Hey, this process is kind of mundane. We're spending way too much time doing X or Y or Z. And yes, there are financial implications to addressing that from like a, you know, indirect way, but with technology at Kyriba, and we talked about like visibility, you know, that is one of those things that you end up with, right. Is, oh, wait, can get rid of all of these kinds of like various, you know, tasks and operational areas where there's might be operational issues. And so on. Oh, I just got a hundred percent cash visibility every single day. Do you know what that can do for my organization where I can borrow more tightly? I can invest more liberally. I can mobilize cash internally and not have to lend. That is a massive, you know, financial implication directly to companies top and bottom lines.
Daniel Shaffer: I like the passion that you're sharing for the work that you do on a daily basis and how it really ladders up to the value overall that the developers have put in to create this. Innovative award-winning in some cases, technology, and to really be a leader in this space where now there's a value engineering team to help assist with creating a business case and a business model that will enable these prospects to. Take their conversation to the highest levels and get a champion at their organization to sign off on a project. And then they get to come talk to you. So Tom, just wanting to hear a personal reflection. You said it was so rewarding to talk to these clients and the reward you shared was the reward that they achieved in in their digital transformation. Can you share a little bit about why that helps energize you on your day to day?
Thomas Gavaghan: first, I would say what actually energizes me is growing and coaching and having, and building that team of people who do that day to day and hearing feedback about them. I'd rather hear about how well somebody else is doing it and say something, oh you did that at the end of the day. But like when we look at this, right, companies have to understand, right, this is a process, right? You're on a migration. Right. And there's steps that happen within that. I'm lucky that I kind of have been in different seats of the technology side of things and bringing those things to market and have sat in those different seats when my stage of, you know, helping companies identify their problems and designing the solution to fix that problem, you know, to then actually implementing it right to you have the engineering side, which I take care of, then you have the architecting side, then you have the implementation side of it. And I think we're very fortunate to be able to kind of work with a very cohesive team and, system integrating. That help each of those different stages. in our, you know, annual and Kyriba live We're coming up, it's those types of events when you see your customers, when you work with them it's, it is very rewarding, right? Organizations are going to bring their problems and their problems are complicated. Right. and they're a part of solving that as well. It's not a quiz, right. They just don't go here, figure it out. They got to be a part of that too. And you oftentimes form these relationships with people of trying to figure that out together and trying to figure out like what they're doing and I'm trying to align with them now I'm on the same page as them. They gotta get on the same page as me and then together, we agree on what's going to happen going forward. And It's a very interesting. And rewarding role. I think presale is actually at the end of the day. I think it's one of the most interesting kind of jobs that's out there right now, quite frankly, but it does put you in this unique position to kind of form those relationships that lasts a very long time down the road.
Daniel Shaffer: As you're touching on a very complex consultative process. And you just mentioned a few different teams that you interact with in order for successful consultation to come to bear. And really be one that's valuable to a customer. So what, interested to know about Tom with this consultative experience, you're making it sound so complex. I know we talked earlier about a puzzle and not having the pieces or the picture. But at the end of the day, aren't you just doing a demo and showing people what it looks like so that they can get on board?
Thomas Gavaghan: It can strike a nerve there. Daniel. Yeah, no, that's not the case. I think that might've been the case maybe in the past, in terms of, again, business and technology type selling, being able to demonstrate our product is just a small part of what we are responsible for and tasked to do. And I think it's important that we're aligned with our market on that as well. I do all the time. Right. I, Hey, you know, I want to see the system w what parts, right? what do you need it for? why do you want to talk to us? And we have to unpack that because I could sit here and I could talk about Kyriba for literally days and open up the system and show it for literally days, but I need them to learn a little bit more about you and see them where that fits. And that's a huge part of what we do. We need to understand your current landscape. We need to understand what challenges you have. And we need to also understand what you're expecting to get to, right? What are the metrics that you're trying to achieve, or what's the objectives you're trying to ascertain, and then we can fit the solution to it, right? like I said, no two industries at the same, no two organizations that are the same no organization's problems are the same. They're going to be unique, with every single, you know, engagement and opportunity that we we ultimately work on and that, that does make the job entertaining because it's different. not just every day is different. Every single meeting is different. As you try to unpack that and find that. And I think, again, I think it's incumbent upon us as, you know, partners, technology partners, right. To help you and help the market in that evolution and guide them through it because a demo is just not going to get it right. You know, just seeing it, the product isn't going to make the light bulb go off. and it doesn't need to be Kyriba. But if you'd working with anything I would recommend provide the information, sit down, you know, and share that experience back and forth to help the partner better design and engineer that solution.
Daniel Shaffer: Tom. So glad you were able to share that and maybe relieve a little bit of the anx. Cause it sounded like I, I did touch on something that had a fair level of sensitivity for you, but let me just say that. I think after learning so much about what you do, even hearing more about it today you know, pre-sales is really seems like an off label for the group that you lead and a solutions engineer or a solutions architect, seems like a little bit more appropriate. There's so much in depth investigation that you guys do and you have such an incredible international team that has the capacity to not only. Understand the cultural nuances of the clients that you work with. But also the regional challenges that the solution that ultimately you're architecting will solve for those clients. So if we're up to me I would make that change right away.
Thomas Gavaghan: I appreciate that.
Daniel Shaffer: Tom has been a real pleasure talking to you and thank you so much for spending a little extra time with us today on the invisible vault. We look forward to staying in touch.
Thomas Gavaghan: Thank you so much, Daniel, for having me on, I look forward to maybe being invited back one day.
Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Invisible Vault. If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to subscribe, rate and review. And share it with someone who you think might enjoy it.
The Invisible Vault is powered by the team at Kyriba, The global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, empowering CFOs and their teams to transform how they activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. To learn more visit www.kyriba.com