Bridging the Gap: Bringing Enterprise-Level Solutions to Small Businesses -- Ryan Belcher, Founder and CEO of Spendwise

GUEST BIO
Ryan Belcher is the Founder and CEO of Spendwise, a business spend management software company with over 500 customers managing billions of dollars in spending through its system. He has a consulting practice that specializes in providing executive financial services to businesses. Previously, Ryan was the Corporate Controller at FoxHollow Technologies Inc, a publicly traded medical device company, and worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an accounting and management consulting firm, in the assurance and business advisory practice.

EPISODE SUMMARY
Ryan Belcher, the CEO of Spendwise, highlights the importance of embracing change and technological advancements in the field of corporate finance. He emphasizes how technology has transformed the CFO's role in recent years, with a focus on understanding and implementing technological solutions to drive growth. 

Ryan notes that cloud-based solutions have leveled the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses, allowing them to compete more effectively with larger organizations. 

He believes that while AI and automation may take away some accounting jobs, the strategic and judgment aspects of the finance and accounting roles will still require human input. 

Transcript

 Welcome to the CFO Corner. I'm your host, Nick Ezzo. In the CFO Corner, we sit down with CFOs  and corporate finance professionals to hear about the innovative approaches and technology they use  to scale and grow their organizations. They share the challenges they're facing, along with  handling those routine, mundane, repetitive tasks. They give their takes on what they'd like to see  in the corporate finance function that can help CFOs and CEOs achieve a stress-free working life.
 I'm pleased to be joined by Ryan Belcher. Ryan is the founder and CEO of SpendWise,  a business spend management software company with over 500 customers managing billions of  dollars in spending through its system. He also has a consulting practice that specializes in  providing executive financial services to business. Previously, Ryan was the corporate controller at  Fox Hollow Technologies Incorporated, a publicly traded medical device company, and has worked for
 Price Waterhouse Coopers, an accounting and management consulting firm that we all know,  in the insurance and business advisory practice. Welcome, Ryan. Thanks, Nick. Great to be with you.  Well, first of all, can you tell us about your current role? Yeah. So, yeah, as you mentioned,
 I'm the founder and CEO of SpendWise. So SpendWise is online spend management software for business  and other organizations. So yeah, what our software does is it allows our users to manage the  procure-to-pay cycle, purchase requests, purchase orders, keeping track of what gets  received on purchase orders and sort of the spend management side of the business. And then, as you  mentioned, I do some consulting, finance and accounting consulting for startup and other businesses.
 So having worked alongside CFOs and actually providing solutions for the office of the CFO,  how do you think that the role of the CFO has changed in the last five or 10 years,  and where do you see it heading in the next five years? Yeah. So I think technology has been,
 I would say over the last, yeah, five, 10, and even beyond that has been a big part of the evolution  in the CFO's role. So I think just understanding technology more, figuring out where to invest  in technology and implementing technology. So I think that has been an area of change and I think  will continue to be an area of change. Work from home, I think is also an area, kind of just trying  to manage that remote workforce is another big change that we've seen over the last few years.
 Yeah. So when you think about technology and how the CFO has to be keen on technology,  that's the thing that in the past, they just had to know ones and zeros or  devets of credits, does everything tick and tie at the bottom of the balance sheet or the cash flow.
 But now they have to be versed in kind of all of the organization to be able to understand  like marketing and how they marketing spend and what is that going to do and ROI and things like  that. So what are some of the more disruptive technology trends that you've seen in the last  few years? Yeah. So I think one that I've seen sort of closed our spaces, spend management,
 or sorry, the payment card. So we've seen a lot of innovation there. I think it used to be the  case that you just go to American Express or maybe use the credit card that's available through your  bank and not a lot of online tools. And so I think there's been a lot of innovation there.
 And that's sort of something that we're working on right now. AI obviously has been in the news  a lot and is an area of innovation. I've experienced that a little bit sort of on the audit side.
 So companies I've worked for or worked with more on the consulting side of things who've been audited  by PWC or other accounting firms out there. Yeah, it just seems like there's more and more  automation coming into play there. And so I think AI has been and will continue to be a disruptive  force. Interesting. So let's talk a little bit about small businesses, medium businesses,
 large businesses, and with respect to technology. And it seems to me that nowadays there are  technical solutions, you know, technology, like for example, what your company offers,  that allows small and medium sized businesses to have that same kind of power and control that  large enterprises had. Is that the case? Yeah, absolutely. So I think cloud has helped a lot  with that. And so you do have, you know, everyone knows QuickBooks and maybe build.com. And so these
 are companies that sort of cater to those smaller businesses and they're at the price point and  sort of that where small businesses can afford them and are not too difficult to implement.
 And so, yeah, smaller businesses are able to automate certain parts of like the accounts payable,  accounts receivable process. Whereas in the past, it's been larger businesses, I would say on the  procure to pay side, that's actually why I started Spenwise. I wasn't seeing a lot of innovation.
 You did have, you know, companies out there like Ariba, Koopa that, you know, sort of served the  Fortune 500 and really large organizations. And so it was sort of this idea, hey, we're  experiencing the same problems, but we can't afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars,
 maybe millions of dollars implementing Spen Management System when we're using QuickBooks,  for example, for our accounting, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. But I think we've, yeah,  there has been a lot of innovation and yeah, it's been fun to be part of that.
 Yeah, it seems like it allows these small companies to scale and grow and really compete with some  of the larger companies. But I got to ask the question, you know, since we're talking about  technology, will robots take away accounting jobs? Yeah, that's a great question. I think  they will take away some accounting jobs and already have, I still think, you know, sort of some of the  more strategic elements of the finance and accounting role, you know, and sort of judgment
 elements. So it's kind of hard for a robot to maybe understand, hey, this, you know, if you're  selling widgets, hey, which ones are sort of going to be phased out, you know, which ones are  being scrapped and so forth. And so just, you know, coming up with estimates, and there's also a lot  of accounting rules coming out, it's hard for humans to keep up with all the different accounting  rules. And there's a lot of nuance in the rules. So I think there's, yeah, a lot of still a lot of
 opportunity ahead for humans in the finance and accounting profession. Yeah, I agree with you  totally. I think that the, what I'm hearing more these days is this combination of machines and  humans working together. So just for example, the regulations changing that you just mentioned,
 it's hard for a person to like keep all that in their head. But you could ask like an expert system,  you know, tell me about the new regulations or how does this, you know, affect my business or  whatever. And I think humans and machines working together, I think is the near term future that  we're looking at. I think that's right. And I think it speaks to sort of what, you know, CFOs and  other accounting and finance professionals will be doing in the future. Someone has to program the
 machine, someone has to make sure that, you know, the parameters or how you want the machine to work  are set up properly. And so I don't know, maybe in the future, machines will be setting up the machines.  But for now, it seems like, yeah, machines rely a lot on humans to get things right.
 Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about your auditing practice, your consulting side of things, because  I'm always, I always want to get to find out like, you know, everybody knows that there's errors in  financial data. To say that there are no errors at all would be putting your head in the sand. So  how do you as a CEO and how should CFOs and business leaders be thinking about, are there errors  lurking in my financial data? Yeah, that's a great question. And CFOs and controllers spend a lot of
 time reviewing financial results. And sort of, I know for me, at least there's a certain amount  of paranoia where it's like, gosh, I got to, you know, make sure everything's right. And you're  kind of making sure that everything ties out and, you know, doing some analytical analysis. And so  I think there's definitely opportunity for machines, robots, AI to help out with that. And just sort  of highlight, you know, sort of kind of in an audit function, highlight, okay, here's an area of risk,
 here's an area of focus. And so yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity there to kind of  save time and, and, you know, decrease some of the stress that comes with being responsible for  those numbers. Yeah, for sure. There's one thing that that that AI and machine learning is good at  is anomaly detection, and being able to sort through like terabytes of data to find hidden  trends and things that human beings would not be able to easily spot. Yeah, absolutely. And on our
 side of things, I think it's sort of, and this is something that we're interested in, sort of  looking at spending, and, you know, especially for larger organizations and just saying, hey,
 we've got, you know, all these thousands of thousands and thousands of transactions, which  ones are the ones that are that are risky, which ones, you know, should we be putting our attention  to and kind of let everything that's normal, when you want some review there, maybe some level of  audit, but, but yeah, sort of help you focus on, on where, where the risk is.
 Well, I'm going to leave you with the last word. So I'll just open it up for Ryan.  Anything you'd like to, any final thoughts you'd like to leave with our audience?  Yeah, I would just say embrace change. It's coming. You know, it's always been an important part of,
 of every profession, including accounting and finance. And so, yeah, embrace it, look for  technologies, look for ways to make things easier and better for your company and your employees.
 Well, I'd like to thank you, Ryan, for being here today on behalf of auditory of the CFO  Coroner team and my army of robots. Thanks and enjoy the rest of your day.  All right, great. Thanks a lot, Nick. Appreciate it.