The Payments Podcast by Bottomline

Episode Transcript

Bill Wardwell, Coupa
Owen McDonald & Paul McMeekin, Bottomline

INTRO with Owen McDonald  00:21
Welcome to the Paymode Edition of The Payments Podcast. I'm Bottomline Managing Editor Owen McDonald. This series of Paymode-themed podcasts looks at the hottest trends in business payments with Paul McMeekin, Vice President of Marketing at Bottomline, along with expert guests. In this episode, Paul welcomes Bill Wardwell, General Manager of payments, treasury, and supplier services at Coupa. They've got a lot to say about bringing better cash management and optionality to business payments. Here's Paul McMeekin and Bill Wardwell...

Paul McMeekin  00:55
Hi, and welcome to the Paymode podcast. My name is Paul McMeekin, and I'm delighted to have Bill Wardwell from Coupa join me today. Hi, Bill.

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  01:03
Hey Paul, nice to be with you today.

Paul McMeekin  01:05
Bill, can you describe a little bit about your role at Coupa before we dive into our conversation?

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  01:11
Sure, of course. So, here at Coupa, I'm the General Manager of the Payments, Treasury, and Supplier Services business. I lead teams across the customer life cycle that are responsible for sales, partnerships, implementations, customer delivery, and customer success.

Paul McMeekin  01:32
Bill, what prompted Coupa to look for a payments partner? And what value are you looking to get for your clients?

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  01:40
Paul, at Coupa, our vision is to build a network that builds the future of trade, which means we want to help our customers manage all their business spend in one unified platform, which offers them full visibility and control along with access to our network and helps them better connect with their supplier community. When it comes to payments in particular, this partnership really helped accelerate the work that we're doing in this space.

Our mission for clients is pretty simple: one integrated experience from purchase to payment with reduced risk, less manual effort, and more insights into how money is moving through their business. 
In our platform, we've created a really true, embedded payment experience. We offer customers the ability to make payments in various modalities [including] virtual cards, bank transfers, cross border payments, and we saw the ability to leverage the partnership with Bottomline and gain access to the Paymode B2B network as a real good extension and complement of those capabilities. 

We also have a history with Bottomline. We know the company. We know that you have deep expertise in secure, bank-grade payment execution and fraud prevention -- areas where you've been a market leader for many, many years. And you give our customers access to a large and growing network of suppliers that have already chosen your network as a key method for them to receive payments. And so, we just thought it was a great way to accelerate what we're doing from an embedded payment experience. And then also, too, Paul, as you know, I mean, it's bringing together two leaders in the space, right? Both of our organizations were recognized recently by IDC as leaders in embedded payment applications. So, it just brings together two organizations with really great capabilities and focused on payment optimization for customers.

Paul McMeekin  03:45
What outcomes were you looking to get from the partnership, and has that changed at all in the last 12 months or so? 

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  03:53
For Coupa, the partnership was really all about giving customers, our customers more optionality in their payment flows. It allows them to pay suppliers the way that suppliers want to get paid, while continuing to get the benefits of an embedded experience in the overall Coupa platform and network. And so from our perspective, working with Bottomline allowed us to create that seamless experience to access your network, a seamless experience that minimized change and disruption for our clients when adopting this new payment method, and this really helps our clients move more payments into a digital environment, reduce fraud and also monetize part of their payment flows in ways they could not have done that without this partnership. And that monetization opportunity can be a major value driver for our customers. Our platform provides tremendous ROI to customers across design, sourcing and procurement, and payment, and we see this as a natural way to build on that ROI and monetization opportunity for our customers. And you know, our customers are seeing the benefits: faster payment cycles, stronger supplier relationships, and giving them better visibility into cash flow.

Paul McMeekin  05:20
Okay, so if I was to paraphrase you there, Bill, you get the user interface that the Coupa clients are used to, Paymode's embedded into that experience, they don't have to go somewhere else - so they get the benefits of the network all within the user interface that they're used to, is that right?

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  05:35
Yeah, that's correct, Paul. You know, the way that the partnership unfolded and the work that we did to integrate our technology, our user interface, with the Bottomline network allowed just that seamless experience for the customers, and, you know, allow them basically, to add this as an option to pay their suppliers without really changing a lot, right? It was totally seamless. Doesn't require new technology. Didn't require a new integration. We were able to integrate this into the flows that they had. So, just a great experience for customers.

Paul McMeekin  06:10
Turning our focus to the future now. What does the future hold for this partnership?

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  06:16
We see the partnership of Coupa and Bottomline as part of a broader evolution in finance where transactional systems and networks become smarter, more automated, and more connected, right? Like, what we've been talking about here, how we've connected our technology to the Bottomline network. And so, from our perspective, this partnership, bringing the two companies together, is really about helping to build that future, one where finance teams don't need to just manage payments. They can optimize them in the context of their broader business goals and objectives. And for this partnership in particular, you mentioned we have lots of clients, you know, leveraging the partnership today. 

Our focus right now continues to be about scaling and expanding to more customers so they can benefit from the value of this partnership. You know, Coupa, on a global basis, we have over 3,100 customers. We've had great success in the past year. But we have a ton of opportunity to continue to bring the value of this partnership to customers. We also see in the future, great opportunity to continue to work with Bottomline and continuously work with Bottomline to jointly grow the amount of suppliers that can be paid through this model and seamlessly connect this to our platform, and to your network. And we think this will drive great outcomes for both buyers, and then also suppliers who want to be paid this way.

Paul McMeekin  07:42
And the last question: if you could give one piece of advice to CFOs or treasurers about the future of payments, what would it be?

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  07:52
So, from my perspective, Paul, payments are where sourcing, procurement, finance, and Treasury all converge. And when managed well across that entire life cycle, they can help customers unlock working capital, strengthen supplier relationships, optimize processes, reduce risk, and reduce costs. And so, from my standpoint, the best finance leaders are asking, "How can I automate more of these end to end processes? How can I gain better insight? How can I turn payments into a strategic value lever? 

And just a little bit of context, Paul. We recently did some work with CFO Dive to talk about insights and challenges from financial professionals. And you know, 88% of those finance executives agreed that onboarding suppliers for payment and procurement is a lot of manual data entry. They also said, a majority of them, 64%, that their companies would need to increase headcount in order to manage increasing their supplier base. And so, as you think about what we're doing here with Bottomline, but also the future of finance and treasury, the ability to automate throughout this entire cycle addresses some of those key challenges. 

So, you know, my big piece of advice is, you know, really, really embrace and think about payments to your suppliers as a key part of your total spend management process. And do that in partnership with your internal procurement organization and leaders. So you can unify your data, unify your workflows and your execution, and then build from there.

Paul McMeekin  09:36
And that's a wrap. Thank you for joining me today. Bill.

Bill Wardwell, Coupa  09:41
Great Paul, thanks a lot for the time

OUTRO with Owen McDonald  09:43
Reducing risk from parts to payment. Building a better B2B payment offering. Gaining access to a large and growing vendor community, embedded possibilities and the monetization of payments. It's all part of a seamless B2B payments ecosystem that continues to evolve. 

Thanks to Coopers Bill Wardwell and co-host Paul McMeekin. To our fantastic audience, thanks for listening. Catch us again on your favourite podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify. Bye for now.