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3 episodes with emburse
3 episodes with emburse
2 episodes with emburse
2 episodes with emburse
2 episodes with emburse
2 episodes with emburse
3 episodes with emburse
4 episodes with emburse
How close are we to expense reports that create themselves? In this crossover episode recorded live at Emburse in Motion, Blake Oliver explores real-world AI implementation with Adriana Carpenter, CFO of Emburse, and Olga Pavlova from PizzaExpress. Discover how PizzaExpress manages 350+ restaurant locations using AI to automatically flag policy violations and detect hidden SaaS subscriptions buried in expense reports. You'll learn specific strategies for vendor consolidation that deliver immediate cost savings, plus hear Adriana's vision for AI agents that guide employees through policy compliance in real time. From keyword detection that prevents VAT errors to mobile-first expense reporting that's "quarters away, not years away," this episode reveals practical automation wins you can implement today.Meet Our Guests:Adriana CarpenterCFO, EmburseLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriana-carpenter-487507a/Learn more about Embursehttps://www.emburse.com/company/about-emburseOlga Pavlova-Grebliauske FCCALinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olga-pavlova-grebliauske-fcca-8a625470/Need CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring The Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribeApple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcastsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcastSpotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/SpotifyPodchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaserStitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/StitcherOvercast: http://cloudacctpod.link/OvercastClassifiedsWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page
Send us a textEn este episodio de Life on Mars, nos acompaña Marc Oliveras, CTO con una trayectoria tan diversa como inspiradora: de fundar su propia startup a liderar tecnología en empresas como Tiendeo, Bumble y Emburse.Marc ha vivido el viaje completo: emprendimiento, mundo corporativo y consultoría. Y en esta charla con Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit, reflexiona sobre todo lo aprendido en el camino.Hablamos de:♦️Cómo ha evolucionado el rol del CTO (¡y lo que no te cuentan!)♦️Por qué la tecnología debe hablar el idioma del negocio♦️Cómo construir y motivar equipos tech de alto rendimiento♦️Las diferencias reales (y los choques culturales) entre startups y grandes corporacionesUna conversación directa, sin postureo, sobre lo que significa liderar tecnología hoy.Support the show
It's YOUR time to #EdUpIn this episode, recorded LIVE from Ellucian LIVE 2025 in Orlando, Florida,YOUR guest is Rodrigo Cotelo, Senior Solutions Consultant II, EmburseYOUR host is Dr. Chris Moloney, Principal Strategic Specialist, EllucianHow is Emburse transforming expense management in higher education?What innovative "reshop" technology is saving institutions money on travel?Why is the "changing of the guard" accelerating technology adoption?How does AI streamline expense approvals & detect potential fraud?What role does visibility play in efficient financial operations?Topics include:Streamlining T&E expenditure processesSaving 3% or more on travel costs through reshop technologyReducing expense report time from hours to minutesAI-powered receipt analysis & fraud detectionModernizing change management for shorter attention spansListen in to #EdUpDo YOU want to accelerate YOUR professional development?Do YOU want to get exclusive early access to ad-free episodes, extended episodes, bonus episodes, original content, invites to special events, & more?Then BECOME AN #EdUp PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER TODAY - $19.99/month or $199.99/year (Save 17%)!Want YOUR org to cover costs? Email: EdUp@edupexperience.comThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - Elvin Freytes & Dr. Joe Sallustio● Join YOUR EdUp community at The EdUp Experience!We make education YOUR business!
In this episode of Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder, Dave visits with Claire Milligan, CEO and co-founder of Aimably, to explore the complexities of private equity ownership. Claire shares her personal journey in the private equity landscape, highlighting the unique challenges and opportunities companies encounter when transitioning from venture capital to private equity. Throughout the conversation, Claire provides practical insights into value creation under private equity ownership. She discusses crucial strategies for managing cloud costs and the delicate balance between pursuing growth and ensuring profitability. Claire emphasizes the importance of financial literacy and understanding key performance metrics as essential tools for thriving in a private equity environment. In addition, Claire offers a fresh perspective on safeguarding teams amidst the evolving dynamics of private equity. She underscores the significance of adapting leadership strategies to foster success in this competitive arena. Whether you're a business owner navigating growth phases or an aspiring leader in the tech industry, this episode offers actionable advice to navigate the intricate demands of private equity ownership. Tune in to gain valuable insights and strategies from Claire Milligan and Aimably's journey. Subscribe to Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with your network and leave a review—it helps more business owners and advisors discover the show! About Claire Milligan: Claire Milligan thrives on distilling complex problems down to their core issues — and turning these pragmatic findings into groundbreaking solutions. She started her career as a software designer and worked her way up to leading business unit strategy at Emburse, a company backed by private equity. Now, as the CEO and Co-Founder of Aimably, she helps technology companies save money by making better decisions about their cloud spending. With her mix of technical know-how, business experience, and a passion for helping others, she brings valuable insights to any conversation about business growth and smart spending. About the Host: Dave Bookbinder is known as an expert in business valuation and he is the person that business owners and entrepreneurs reach out to when they need to know what their most important assets are worth. Known as a collaborative adviser, Dave has served thousands of client companies of all sizes and industries. Dave is the author of two #1 best-selling books about the impact of human capital (PEOPLE!) on the valuation of a business enterprise called The NEW ROI: Return On Individuals & The NEW ROI: Going Behind The Numbers. He's on a mission to change the conversation about how the accounting world recognizes the value of people's contributions to a business enterprise, and to quantify what every CEO on the planet claims: “Our people are this company's most valuable asset.” Dave's book, A Valuation Toolbox for Business Owners and Their Advisors: Things Every Business Owner Should Know, was recognized as a top new release in Business and Valuation and is designed to provide practical insights and tools to help understand what really drives business value, how to prepare for an exit, and just make better decisions. He's also the host of the highly rated Behind The Numbers With Dave Bookbinder business podcast which is enjoyed in more than 100 countries.
In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with serial entrepreneur Steve Reynolds for his perspectives on innovation in corporate travel tech. As CSO of Embers Inc., Steve shares his journey developing TripBam, an early pioneer utilizing algorithms and robotics to optimize hotel rates. He explains TripBam's strategic transformation from consumer to enterprise software, strengthening the company and positioning it for seamless integration under Embers. Steve offers valuable lessons on championing passion within high-performing teams. The importance of actively engaging customers and development staff to creativity solve problems is emphasized. We discuss the challenges of maintaining innovation at scale versus smaller startups. Steve's experiences navigating acquisitions and a turbulent industry offer cautionary advice. A theme emerges—embracing flexibility positions leaders to overcome challenges and achieve lasting impact. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I spoke with Steve Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer at Emburse Inc., about his journey in corporate travel technology and entrepreneurship. Steve discussed the origins and evolution of TripBam, a platform he founded that uses algorithms and robotics for hotel rate monitoring, which eventually pivoted from a consumer-focused to a B2B model. Steve shared insights on navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the strategic decisions that helped TripBam emerge stronger, including cost optimizations and product enhancements. We explored the importance of fostering a passionate and innovative team, highlighting the value of listening to customers and involving development teams directly in problem-solving. Steve explained the critical difference between passionate programmers and those who are merely formally trained, and how assembling a team that shares the company's vision and offering equity can drive success. The episode delved into strategies for managing company growth and financial stability, such as quick decision-making in right-sizing staff and optimizing operational costs through cloud environments. We discussed the benefits of subscription-based pricing models over transaction-based ones, particularly during economic downturns, and how this approach helped maintain cash flow during the pandemic. Steve reflected on the evolution of workplace environments and leadership styles, noting the shift from rigid, traditional settings to more flexible, results-oriented cultures. We talked about the challenges of maintaining innovation in large companies, contrasting startup environments with big company mindsets, and the importance of hiring the right people for each setting. Finally, Steve shared his thoughts on the future of the travel industry and the innovative approaches that have set new standards in modern practices. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Emburse GUESTS Steve ReynoldsAbout Steve TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Steve Reynolds, chief Strategy Officer for Emburse Inc. Steve has built his career in corporate travel technology and in starting various companies over the four-decade career. Steve looks for opportunities to be disruptive. Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you and appreciate you taking the time. Steve: You bet Chris Glad to be here. Chris: So you know there's a lot that I'd love to get into with you. I know that you know currently you're with a company called M-Burst Travel, but that you started a company before that called TripBam. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, those companies and what they do. What is the business they're known for? Steve: Okay, and just to back up a little bit further, I guess what you could call a serial entrepreneur. Tripbam was my third or fourth venture kind of lost count, but I've been in the corporate travel tech space for 40 some odd years. And TripBam when we started 10 years ago, we recognized that hotel rates change a lot more often than people actually realize. If you were to create some robotics that went out and grabbed the rate at a particular hotel for a certain date in the future, you'd see that rate changes just about every hour and what we found is if you just keep watching it, eventually it's going to drop, especially as you get closer to check-in. So we created some algorithms, robotics, whatever you want to call it that said okay, I've got a rate of $2.99 at the Grand Hyatt in New York. I'm arriving on the first and departing on the third. I want you to just let me know when it drops and if it does, I want you to rebook it for me If everything is the same room, same bed, same cancel policy, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we did. We originally invented it for the consumer market. We put out a website and we got mentions in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and so on. But sort of my corporate travel buddies called up and said, hey, Steve, we really need you to apply this to corporate travel. And they started writing some pretty significant checks. We followed the money, we pivoted and went all B2B at that point. And so the company grew 40% year over year for the first six years, cashflow positive within just a couple of months. I mean it was great. It was great. And then COVID came along and kind of took our knees out from under us for a bit. Chris: COVID kind of wiped out the fundamental business model for at least a little bit. Steve: At least for a little bit. But fortunately a lot of our customers were paying us subscription fees rather than transaction fees, so we were to stay afloat. We got through COVID and we actually came out on the backside of COVID in a much stronger position, both financially and you name it, because we were able to do a lot of just cost improvements, right-sizing the organization. We kind of got a little bit ahead of our skis, I think, in some areas and created some new products, just all kinds of things, pushed everything out to the cloud and such that dramatically reduced our costs and just were firing all cylinders. Chris: And then we worked out a deal with Emburse in July last year to buy the company. Okay, how does I guess what TripBand does fit within the Emburse excuse me, overall, maybe suite of products or company strategy. Steve: Yeah. So Emburse provides travel and expense to the largest of companies, to the smallest of companies, and what I mean by that? Everybody. When you go, you have kind of a booking tool to start with. Most folks are familiar with Concur. We have our own. The reservation gets created. It then needs to be watched, monitored, audited, improved upon. That's kind of where we fit in. So before the money is spent we actually see if we can actually do better than what the traveler did on their own. Travelers are not going to check the hotel rate every day. They're not going to check their airfare every hour. They're not potentially going to book the preferred property within a particular city. We fix all that before the money's actually spent. We then push all that to mobile. So you've got a companion app in your pocket where the traveler gets a ton of destination content specific to that company. So I'm going to New York, I'm staying at headquarters, what hotel should I stay in? I need to go take a client to dinner, what restaurants do you recommend? All kinds of other stuff, including safety and security perspective and so on. Then the data is all captured and fed into an expense report so that your expense report if the traveler is compliant. It's kind of pre-created and pre-approved, so the traveler in a lot of cases doesn't have to do anything and if they're compliant all the way throughout, they could actually kind of be paid as soon as their plane hits the ground. Then it all feeds into reporting and analytics so that we can improve your travel program, identify additional savings opportunities, find some fraud issues, detect all kinds of other stuff that might be a problem. We also offer a card product if you don't have one, and that's kind of the travel plus expense ecosystem that we provide. Chris: That's fascinating. I obviously wasn't aware that something like that existed, but I can see how large companies with a lot of employees traveling could see the benefit and realize a lot of savings from those services. Steve: Yeah, when you combine travel with expense, some kind of magic happens in that we have enough data and insight to be able to start pre-filling out that expense report. Otherwise, all we're counting on is card transactions and receipts, and that's really not going to do the trick. But if we can get that card information augmented with the receipt scanning and everything else that we do now, we can really do a nice job of pre-filling out that expense report. So really all you have to do is add mileage, hit, click and you're submitted. Chris: So you mentioned that you've been in this industry for 40 plus years. I'm curious how did you first get started in the corporate travel tech space 40 years ago? Steve: It was just by happenstance, I guess you could say. I was originally started as a programmer for Texas Instruments, got accepted into their executive program, which meant I could go off and get an MBA and then come back to TI, but quickly realized that the consulting firms were paying a lot more. So I ended up with Ernst Winnie, at the time with Ernst Young and my first assignment was with a travel agency in Houston, Texas, called LifeGo Travel, which doesn't exist anymore. The owner of that company hired us to come in and build some technology. It really put him on the map and he got tired of paying the bills and seeing the hourly checks that we were charging. And so he approached and said, hey, you know, do you want to come work for us? And I'm like, well, that never thought about working for a travel agency. That doesn't sound all that exciting. But he said look what if we created a company, We'll spin it off and we'll give you some equity. And I'm like, okay, now you're talking. So we left, we started up a company called Competitive Technologies and all of it was bought by American Express Travel two years later. Chris: Oh, wow. So unquestionably you had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit going way back then to see an opportunity. Put you in it. Steve: And a lot of it is just kind of, I guess, my personal. I don't do well at big companies. I really struggle because I get so frustrated at just the lack of progress or the lack of innovation or the speed at which things happen, so I tend to sort of find an excuse to hit the exit button, usually within a year or two. Chris: Right. So you said something in that response that I want to talk to you about, and that's innovation. I think that's there's such a common theme, I think, with entrepreneurs about. You know, and innovation can mean so many things. What do you think that you've done, as you've built several companies, as you mentioned, to create or foster and nurture a spirit and environment of innovation? Steve: You know a lot of it is just becoming a really good listener to the buyer, to whoever the customer is. And then when they say things, there are certain kernels that are aspects of what they say that you just go oh, wait a minute, okay, can we go back to that? That sounds important. You know this level of frustration. Why does that frustrate you? And if you have engineering and development in the room when those things are said, oftentimes some real magic starts to happen and we just the creativity, the innovation just comes out naturally as wow, we can solve that problem. That's not that hard, you know, let's go do that. So that's on the B2B side. That's kind of the formula, that conversation. Something falls out as far as a new feature, product, something like that, that we can start working on the B2C side. Chris: Go ahead. Well, it sounds like there's a function there of asking the right questions and really listening. Steve: Well, and just most big companies or companies they try to protect the dev engineering. They're like oh, we're not going to let you talk to customers. You guys sit over here in the back room and we'll come to you with sort of a priority or roadmap of what we think is needed. And I feel like that's just the wrong way to do it. You've got to get the dev and the engineers and the programmers in the room to hear the story, otherwise you get this telephone tag of what actually gets built isn't quite what the customer wants or was even asking for. And for most companies that's really hard. I don't know why, but they just. It's like we can't allow that to happen, but that's just not the way I operate. Chris: Well, I mean, it makes sense that people you're asking to solve the problem probably need to hear what the problem is firsthand, right? Steve: Exactly. And then it's oftentimes the dev guys are like they're coming up with much more creative solutions. If you just hand them a requirement sheet or spec sheet, they're like, oh okay, this is going to take a month. But when they're involved with the client and they actually hear what the true problem is, oftentimes they're like, oh, I can knock this out overnight, I'll have a solution to you by tomorrow. It's just a night and day sort of sense of urgency or sort of the emotion around creating the solution. They're bought in. At that point, when they hear it directly from the client, they can be the hero. Chris: Well, when you think about kind of that and getting the right developers and the right kind of team together, what have you found to be successful as far as what to look for in building the right team and then keeping the team together? Steve: Yeah. So fortunately for me I mean through all of these different companies that I've started I've been able to kind of get the band back together multiple times. A because I, you know, I'm a big believer in sharing the equity. You know, let's get everybody, if not equity, at least options, so that when there is an exit, everybody benefits, and they've all seen that so far today, knock on wood, I haven't had an unsuccessful exit where we've had to, you know, turn out the lights or whatever. My shareholders have all made money, you know, typically around 5x to 10x on their investment, which has been great. So it's easy to get the bad back together. But what I also have found out is there are certain programmers that are passionate about programming and others that are just taught programming, and there's a night and day difference on the result. If they're passionate about it, the results come out quick. I get creative solutions that nobody would think of. They're usually extremely low cost and it's just so much better than if I have someone that's college taught. I'm doing this because it's a paycheck and I took this degree because that's what somebody told me to and I was good enough to get a B in college on all my programming courses, but at the end of the day, if their heart's not in it and they're spending their time, you know, just on the side weekends and nights learning new stuff, they're not going to be very good. So give me one or two of those that are passionate and I'll put them against 10 to 20 of those that are school taught and will kick their ass every time. Chris: So yeah, well again, I think that transcends all industries and disciplines, the key being passion. Right, I think you, as the leader, are the one that has to start with the passion and then find people that share that passion to get to where you're talking about, where there's that flow within the organization. Steve: Yeah, I think development's a little bit different. I mean, you're not going to find anybody super excited about accounting or I don't know the other aspects of it, but with development there's guys that just get so into it. You know they're programming on the side. They get into hackathons, they want to prove that you know they're smarter than the guy next to them and just constantly looking for the next challenge and just coming up with those creative solutions. I don't know of any other discipline that really has that level of it, but there might be. I mean, I could be wrong. Chris: So, just going back and maybe not the first venture where you and the travel agency in Houston started, but maybe I'm just curious to know as you began some of these startups, maybe sharing some of the lessons learned through some of the challenges you found in starting that venture, whether it be raising capital as an example, or any other challenges that may come about, but I think that capital raise can be one in the startup that some entrepreneurs find daunting and maybe can't solve and never get anything off the ground. Steve: Yeah Well, I think, first off, just wait as long as possible to raise capital. You know most of them kind of build an MVP which just kind of barely works and then go out and try to raise money on it. And whenever you go down that path you just end up way undervaluing what you have. And I know people get in certain situations where they just need to have a check, you know, or it's you know, lights out. But if you can wait until you actually have a client actually generating revenue, actually having positive cash flow, whatever, and then you can show someone, look, we just need to add fuel to the fire here. This is not about keeping the lights on, this is about generating growth You're going to have a dramatically better outcome. The other thing I found out is when you take the big check too early, you start making really stupid decisions. You start hiring attorneys that are expensive, you hire a CFO before you need it, you have a head of HR, all kinds of stuff and overhead that's just not necessary and over time it makes you less and less nimble because you're so worried about payroll, you know, and less focused on just delivering a product that has a you know, a bunch of value. Keep your day job, keep working nights and weekends, wait as long as possible. I mean, I always said, look, cash is like oxygen. If you run out you're going to die. So hang on to it with both hands first. I mean beg, borrow and steal from friends and family and whatever to just get stuff. If you need a contract, go out on the web and search for a capolar plate contract. It'll be good enough to get you started. Or find someone that's a buddy, that's a lawyer, that's willing to do some pro bono work in return, maybe for a little bit of equity stuff like that. Just hang on to that cash as much as you can, for as long as you can. Chris: Well, I think there's a lot there that someone can learn from. Obviously, speaking as a chairman of a law firm, I can't endorse legal Zoom for the startup, but I understand your point. We talk to clients a lot about especially know, especially in the startup phase. Maybe you know helping them get going, but you know and being smart about how they spend their money. But make it an investment in getting at least a sound structure and they may not need right the full-blown set of legal documents, but I can promise you I've seen people start on legal Zoom and wish they hadn't, you know, a couple of years later when things were getting a little tight. But I understand your point there. But conserving cash is important to get off the ground. Steve: Yeah, I mean you don't need to come right out of the gate being in an Inc. You know and incorporated in Delaware and pay all the fees, whatever to make that happen. I mean, just start out as a low-cost LLC and then, when you're ready to sort of raise capital and become a real company, you know you use part of that capital to convert at that time. Chris: So you had mentioned earlier, you know just, I guess, going back to kind of trip BAM COVID having, at least initially, a pretty profound impact but then turning it into a positive, and I'm kind of want to take you back to that time and you maybe dig in a little bit deeper. I think it's a beautiful lesson of something where you know a lot of people just throwing up their hands because travel stopped, et cetera, which decimates your business specifically to you. But then you said we actually learned from that and became a better, stronger company because of it. And you've mentioned right-sizing, the organization stuff. But could you share a little more detail and some stories from that our listeners can learn from if and when their business faces something similar? Steve: Yeah, I think, first off, being fairly quick. You know you can always hire people back, you know. But if you keep them on the payroll and you start burning up cash just way too fast or you're starting to trend towards in the red, you just got to pull the trigger. Nobody wants to, nobody likes to do it, but it's really nobody's fault. It's just something as an executive or CEO you have to do, or a founder. So that's one. Second is, as companies grow, you kind of make stupid mistakes along the way. You get kind of inefficient. You don't anticipate the level of growth that might have been reality. So going back and saying, all right, take a step back, let's catch our breath. You know, what should we have done to kind of handle the scale better? And so, for example, just moving everything to a cloud environment, you know, putting it out to bid, switching from one cloud provider to another, whatever it is, you know you can just generate or reduce your costs dramatically. You know, rather quickly, if you just focus the time on it. Everybody gets so white hot, focused on growth and the next client and the revenue they forget to look at the rear view mirror about. You know there was a lot of costs we could have taken out, you know, which could generate even more cash going forward. Advert: Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at BoyerMiller. com and thanks for listening to the show. So we pulled the trigger pretty quick. We right-sized the staff. We had a pretty good and, fortunately for us, this is the other. We kind of lucked into this. Our customers, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to pay a subscription fee rather than maybe a percentage of the savings or a transaction fee, to where what they were going to spend would fluctuate month over month. By paying a subscription fee, they could budget it and they were going to get a better return on investment. So we did most of our deals that way and thank God we did, because when COVID and everything went into toilet in April of 2020, we still had cash coming in the door. So we were actually stayed cashflow positive because we kind of right-sized the staff fairly quickly. And then, coming out of COVID, as the revenue started to ramp back up and our sales started to continue, we were just on a much better platform that would scale after it because it was just all right-sized and efficient and whatever, and at the same time we added new products. So we had a two-year kind of all right, just keep the lights on, market will come back around. We added an air reshopping solution. We added a bunch of analytics to audit contracts and to benchmark performance, so that we had a whole bunch more to sell coming out of COVID than going in, and so that caused another year of kind of explosive growth as a result. Chris: That's great. So, yeah, obviously part of that is give some deep thought to how you price what your product right. So that subscription-based versus transaction for you sounds like a very. Maybe it didn't seem as meaningful at the time you made it, but it turned out to be. Steve: You know that's a tough one If the ROI of your product is pretty clear, like reshopping. If you've got a rate of $2.99, I drop it to $ to $250. I've got $49 per night in savings If you pay me a couple of bucks. Okay, here's the ROI. And we could run some pilots and all kinds of stuff to prove that out. So that makes it really simple and we try to hit look, I need a ROI that when they take it to their boss the guy that's doing the budgets, you know, won't cause all kinds of frustration and concern. So four to one is usually the minimum. A lot of our customers, the larger ones, are getting eight to one, 10 to one, you know. So you could say like you've probably underpriced it. But that's okay, you know we'll claw back some of that. You know, over time when it's a product that's the ROI is a bit fuzzier. You just got to somehow convince the client that this is the potential savings. They're going to guesstimate and then from there work backwards to a price which kind of gets you back to that four to one ROI. So if I think I'm going to save you five bucks a transaction, I'm probably going to charge you a dollar to $1.50 is what I'm going to aim for. Again, to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate for Relagate. Again to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate. Chris: So part of that goes, I think, in building that customer base, really focusing on strong relationships. Talk a little bit about that and what you've done, because it sounds like over the course of the various businesses, you've done a good job of creating some very good partnerships and alliances. What are some of the things you think that have helped you foster that and keep those for so many years? Steve: I think one is you know you got to under promise and over deliver. So if they're going to sign up, you know, don't make them look bad or stupid to their boss. The other one is identifying the influencers in the market. So I'm sure every industry has some individuals that are kind of on the bleeding edge, willing to try new things. And if they do and it works, they've got the microphone or the megaphone to tell a whole bunch of others. So fortunately for me, I've been able to identify who those influencers are. I've got a reputation for just delivering as promised. So when they sign up they have confidence and then they tell their peers and a lot of our sales in the large enterprise market are peer-to-peer networking. It's not from email campaigns or other stuff that we do. Chris: The kind of part of that, the old adage of just do what you say you committed to do when you said you committed to do it right. Steve: It's just delivering as promised. Don't sell me a can of goods and all this great wonderful thing. And then when the reality is just not there, you know, don't make them look stupid. You know that's the key one. I mean, these are after 40 years they become. We have some pretty tight relationships with these folks and I want them to keep their job and we want them all promoted and moving on to the next big role, because when that happens they just take us with them and we just keep getting bigger and bigger. Chris: So you mentioned that about kind of keeping this, your words, the band back together. You've been able to do that, hiring some of the right people and incentivizing the right way. Any insights into. You know what people could think about when they're looking at their team one, trying to, I guess, evaluate whether they have the right people and then finding the right ways to incentivize them to kind of keep that core group together. Steve: To me it's if they feel like they're a part of a team and they understand the value they're providing to the customer and they see that customer's appreciation. You know they're in the conversation with the client, you know, and that's easy to do at a small company, because who else are they going to talk to? Right, you got to bring the dev and engineering. But when you start layering and bifurcating and have people you know in engineering back there in the back room, kind of stuff that don't talk to clients, that's when it gets a lot harder. But when you get them into the conversation and that sense of this is my company, this is my reputation. I'm a part of something here, you know, that's growing and doing well and whatever. It's not that hard, it's really not that difficult at all. It's just everybody wants to be appreciated and feel like they're, you know, part of a team. So that's the formula, right, I mean I could throw money at them. But I ask my employees I mean I am not the guy that's writing big checks to hire people right? I'm like look, we're going to pay a reasonable salary. You know this is not, you're not going to be broke, but you know we're in it for the long term game, and so we want to keep the cash in the company so that we don't have to go do another capital raise which is going to dilute all of us, and so your equity just keeps getting smaller, you know, over time, and the guys that actually make the money, or the investors this needs to be a collaborative team effort so they get that. Chris: I think that transparent communications is key right. So they again they understand their role on the team, they understand what the goal of the organization is and how they can help further that. Steve: You know it's always been kind of fire slow, fire quick as well. You know the people, everybody makes hiring mistakes. It happens all the time. And you know when you hire someone within like a couple of days you're like this is not feeling right. You know, don't let it just sit, don't let it be two years later when you actually kind of work them out. You have to kind of pull the trigger fairly quick because it messes up the whole culture of the company. Oftentimes, especially at a small company, it can create some real problems. Chris: Yeah, I mean that may be the most sage advice and, I think, maybe the most consistent that I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners. It's been my own experience too, that that kind of fire, you know, don't be slow to fire when you know you made a mistake and it's the hardest, maybe one of the hardest ones to do because you're dealing with people. I spoke to someone yesterday and they were like hired, someone had some uncertainty and literally what I learned was to trust my gut because on day one that they started in a conversation went oh my God, this is a huge mistake. Tried to play it out, tried to make it work and guess what? It didn't. Steve: Yeah, the thing is I don't believe resumes anymore and I don't believe LinkedIn pages at all, especially when it comes to higher dev and engineering. It's just anybody can put whatever language they want and say they've got a ton of experience. You've got to figure out a way to validate Most of our hires. There's kind of referrals and peer-to-peer sort of networking. If I find someone, I can usually find someone they know, especially in the Dallas market where we are, that's worked with them at a prior company. That sort of thing and do some back-channel checking is what really pays off for us. And we know the rock stars. We know the rock stars. We know the rock stars, but they're not that hard to kind of pick out. It's the ones that are kind of questionable. That you know. You just got to do your homework and don't count on the resume. Chris: That's a really good point. It's a hard thing to do, though, and it may be easier in programmers. But, to you know, I totally agree with resumes, and profiles can be, you know, massaged, but it's sifting through and kind of through the smoke to really get to what's behind the curtain. Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean. And Zoom calls, I mean people hire on Zoom calls or whatever. Like dude, you got to get them in the office face to face, go to lunch, have a couple of face to face interactions before you actually bring this person on board. You know, make them pass a coding test or something. You know something tangible. Don't just look, they're very nice people. You know they all have a. You know look great on a phone call or Zoom call, whatever, but that doesn't cut it. Chris: Yeah, I mean no substitute for personal interaction and seeing how people show up. Right. Steve: Yeah, the other thing is, since we're, you know, on a startup mode where everybody's looking at kind of the potential for equity, I'm like, look, if you're as great as you are, why don't you come on board for a month on a contract basis? Let's see how it works out, you know, and we'll go from there All right, and you really get a feel for someone and how well they're going to. We try it, we like to try it, before we buy. Let's put it that way. That's one way to do it. Chris: just talk about you know specific kind of leadership styles and and how you would describe your leadership style, and maybe how you would describe it today versus maybe 20 years ago as you you were emerging as a leader, and how you think it's changed oh, my god, it's night and day. Steve: so first company way back when. Maybe it comes as a surprise or not, but it was a coat and tie environment. Okay, guys, we've got to put on the ties and whatever. That was just so stupid. Checking office hours and all that crap and tracking vacation time just seems so silly. Now, if you can get the job done, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care where you do the work, I don't care if you have to take vacation on a pretty regular basis for whatever reason. I don't care if you're going off and disappearing to watch your kid play soccer, I do not care anymore. Just here's the job. Here's kind of an expectation. You know, as long as I understand, you're trying hard to get it done as quick as possible. We are good. You know, it's kind of a thing. So all that other stuff was just noise. That was just stupid, anyway it's. I mean back when I started in this, I mean programming and development and all that and the whole tech world was fairly new, so nobody knew what they were doing or how to manage these folks and it evolved over time, but fairly quickly. I mean, by company two, ties were gone. By company three, office was gone. I mean I've been virtual for 25 years. Unfortunately, we had offices but we just I think they were a waste of money but we did it for optics more than anything. Chris: Yeah, so it sounds like more kind of a traditional and somewhat of a command and control, starting out to now a little more, much more flexible and providing autonomy as long as people deliver on the expectations that they're communicated with. Steve: Which comes down to you just hire the right people, right, if you can get kind of get that sense for what the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see, if you can get kind of get that sense for what are the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see that you've got you spent 20 years at a really big company, you are not going to do well at a startup. I could guarantee you You're used to other people doing work for you. You know you're just kind of the sit back in your office and sort of you know, tell folks what to do. That ain't going to happen. You need to get your hands dirty. You might have to write code. You got to do PowerPoints, you got to do Word docs all that stuff yourself. Big company folks just tend to lose that ability, let's say, or it's beneath them and that's not going to work. Chris: Yeah, I mean it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality, right, it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality right, it's about getting a job done, no matter what it takes. Steve: And I think that drives me crazy at a big company because, you know, unfortunately for others, I tend to poke my nose into others' lanes and I get told a lot Steve, stay in your lane. Nothing bugs me more, you know, than to hear that. But that's the big company way. Chris: So you've gone through a few companies and you're now, I guess, inside of a larger company. Now Are you finding it easy to kind of have that mentality of flexible leadership and innovative environment? Steve: In the new company? Yes, I would have to say no, it's kind of as I expected. You know, with other acquisitions you start. You know, this kind of here's how it happens. However, embers, I believe, is trying hard to carve out a role where I can exist, let's put it that way. So my title right now is Chief Strategy Officer, and it's a bit nebulous, kind of by design. I can sort of make it what I want and as a result of being chief strategy officer, I can get outside of my lane and people can question it. I'm like everybody needs strategy. That's my title, I'm going to get in your lane, kind of stuff you know. So I tend to kind of bounce around to lots of different projects, objectives so on. I kind of help make sure that it's cohesive, you know, across this travel and expense story, you know. But at the same time I don't have a lot of direct reports, which is great. That usually doesn't go too well either. So so far, so good. Chris: Fingers crossed, that's great, yeah, we we kind of covered kind of the challenges of COVID If you think back prior to that, any other challenges along the way with the first two or three companies, everybody, yeah, yeah, I think people some of those are the best lessons we learned or some of the challenges we go through. I'm just curious to know any kind of lessons from a challenge that you could share with the listeners that might help them when they face something similar. Steve: Oh my God. I mean everybody's made mistakes and if they got lucky along the way and if they don't admit that they're lying, I mean some of the bigger ones. 9-11, we had a solution that was processing about 80% of all corporate travel reservations made in the US. 9-11 hit and we went to zero within about 24 hours, so that was kind of a gut check. Fortunately, travel bounced back fairly quickly, but it made us take a step back and realize how nimble we were If something like that were going to happen again. So that's one, and you know, and there's all the kind of day-to-day stuff. I mean there's fraud, there's employee HR issues that happen. You know there's. I'm not going to get into details on that, but you know you just kind of all right, let's deal with this. You know, don't just look the other way and take care of it. I think the latest I mean the big one right now is just, you know, the whole third party hacking and getting into your network and holding you hostage, stuff like that. You know that's made everybody just super anxious and nervous and to the point where companies are kind of shutting down their network so much that individuals can't do the job. You know, which is causing concern and it's what else are you going to do? I mean, if some employee can click on a link and bring down your network, do? Chris: you just turn off email. You're right, it's creating such a challenge. Everybody, all companies, are being attacked every day from all kinds of angles, and it just takes one and but you also? You can't operate out of fear and you can't let it stop you from doing your business. Steve: Well, they say there's two kinds of companies out there. There's those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. So just kind of keep that in mind and I think it's fairly true. I think, you know, it's just almost too easy to get into someone's network and poke around and kind of see what's going on these days. Chris: It's so scary, but I thought you were going to say those who have been hacked and those that will be hacked, but I guess already have you, just don't know it. Well, see, I really loved hearing your story. It's a fascinating industry, and one that you don't really hear much about, but you definitely. It sounds like for 40 years you've been crushing it at it, so congratulations to that. Well, thanks for that. Steve: But also the one thing people don't know about corporate travel is that it sits on a backbone of legacy technology that's probably 40 years old. That has not changed. The GDSs are antiquated, the travel agency systems are antiquated. It's not that hard to come up with something innovative and new in this environment. So I just got lucky to where I got into it and I'm like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems and it just kept evolving from there. Like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems, and it just kept evolving from there. Chris: Yeah, that's really. You know so many entrepreneurs I've talked to. It's what you just said solving the customer or client's problem. Because what I said earlier, it goes back to asking the questions and listening and then trying to solve that problem. Steve: So many great ideas that come from that across so many industries. Yeah, and just to set up a little process to where you talk with your customers on a regular basis or a group of clients or people you trust and it just happens naturally, it's really not that difficult. Chris: Well, let's turn to a little bit on the lighter side before we wrap this up. I always like to ask people like yourself what was your first job? Steve: oh, my first job, let's see. Uh, I worked at a pet store at junior high. Well, actually first job was mowing yards, right? So everybody every kid did that just to get my allowance money. Then I worked at a pet store in junior high for a short period but fairly quickly realized waiting tables made a lot more money. So I told a guy I was 18, when actually I was 16, and they never really checked. They hired me as a waiter. I was actually kind of a part-time bartender, so I was serving liquor in Houston the strawberry patch I'll probably get them in trouble back when I was 16 years old and just made a ton of money as a, you know, a high schooler. So that was kind of the first. And then, you know, got into computers and writing code at a very early age. I was part of a program at Shell where they gave us mainframe time to go in and kind of play around and then went off to Baylor for computer science and then went to TI and then went to A&M for grad school. Very good, very good. Chris: So okay. So, being a native Texan, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Steve: That is not a fair question, because both are pretty dang awesome, but, being in Texas, I think we've got some of the best barbecue on the planet. So Pecan Lodge here in Dallas is, I think, kind of the best, and there's a lot of Tex-Mex, though that's really good as well, yeah, I agree on all points. Chris: I haven't heard of Pecan Lodge before, so I'll have to check that one out. Steve: Yeah, it's in Deep Ellum, so next time you fly in, go in out of Love Field, and it's not too far, it's a 10-minute drive from there. Chris: Deal Noted. And then last thing is you know you've made early in the career, probably never did this and maybe have done since. But if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Steve: I actually got a 30 day sabbatical. So a guy hired me or not hired me, but when he brought me on board to run a company he said hey, you know, I threw in there. Just, I read it in a magazine that it was the hot thing for techies to ask for, so I threw it in there and they accepted it. I guess they thought I'd never make it to my five-year anniversary. Anyway, I did and I took the kids and family, went all the way throughout through Europe. So we went to Italy, paris, france, austria, switzerland, whatever you know, just really unplugged for that 30 days. Actually it was a 90 day sabbatical. That's what I took. Wow, so I got a little bit more time. Yeah, it was great, it was great. So if that were to happen today, I'd probably look to do something similar, but nowadays if I want to take 90 days, I probably could just got to ask for it. Chris: Very good, very good. Well, steve, thanks again for taking the time to come on and love hearing your story and all the innovation you brought to the travel industry. Steve: All right. Well, thanks for having me, chris, I really enjoyed it. Good conversation. Chris: Thanks, well, we'll talk soon. Steve: Okay, you bet. Special Guest: Steve Reynolds.
Ben Parker shared his professional journey and insights on the evolution of expense management, emphasizing the need to balance controlling and insight into spend. Ben also revealed that his father, a successful salesman, was his hero due to his dedication and integrity. Ed concluded the interview by providing contact details for Ben. Ben Parker is the Director of Strategic Alliances at Emburse. Ben leads the strategic direction for all referrals and bookings growth for ERP & VAR Partners. Ben has more than 20 years of experience in the ERP, risk management, and spend management technology industries. He joined Emburse in 2013 and led the business development efforts for Travel before becoming ERP Strategic Alliances Manager in 2020. Prior to Emburse, Ben worked in the Government Sector for Tyler Technologies and prior to that focused on Risk Management efforts at Pulte Homes in Scottsdale, AZ.
Ben Parker shared his professional journey and insights on the evolution of expense management, emphasizing the need to balance controlling and insight into spend. Ben also revealed that his father, a successful salesman, was his hero due to his dedication and integrity. Ed concluded the interview by providing contact details for Ben. Ben Parker is the Director of Strategic Alliances at Emburse. Ben leads the strategic direction for all referrals and bookings growth for ERP & VAR Partners. Ben has more than 20 years of experience in the ERP, risk management, and spend management technology industries. He joined Emburse in 2013 and led the business development efforts for Travel before becoming ERP Strategic Alliances Manager in 2020. Prior to Emburse, Ben worked in the Government Sector for Tyler Technologies and prior to that focused on Risk Management efforts at Pulte Homes in Scottsdale, AZ.
Joining Laura on this week's episode of ‘Speaking to Influence' is Johann Wrede, Chief Experience Officer at Emburse. Johann shares how he manages group dynamics among key stakeholders to keep them from hijacking meetings with their own agendas so that his plan stays intact. In this episode you will learn: What a great customer experience is really about. What exactly a Chief Experience Officer does, and why more C-Suites should think about adding one to take collaboration of departments to integration. How Johann was able to bridge the divide between his expertise on the technical side and his creativity when it came to talking to customers through sales. How Johann went about getting prepared to be assertive in a meeting with other executives in order to keep everyone focused and achieve his objectives and ensure his meeting didn't get hijacked by other stakeholders' agendas. The approach of a ‘Yes we can do it, here's what I need' perspective during negotiations, and how you can use it to show you are collaborative as well as to highlight alternative options. 24 Hour Challenge: Go to every person you run into in your business and ask them how the work they do impacts the customer experience. About Johann: As the first-ever Chief Experience Officer at Emburse, Johann is responsible for leading a cross-functional marketing and customer success organization, with the goal of delivering a world-class customer experience from first awareness through subscription renewal. Over the course of the last 25 years, Johann has written, implemented, sold and marketed a variety of customer database, CRM and customer experience (CX) products. An evangelist for customer experience, he has spoken to keynote and media audiences in 18 different countries. Prior to Emburse, Johann served as Chief Marketing Officer at Xactly Corporation. Before joining Xactly, he held several executive leadership positions within SAP Global Marketing, including the first-ever Creative Director for SAP. You can connect with Johann in the following ways: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannwrede/ Web: www.emburse.com You can connect with Dr. Laura Sicola in the following ways: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlaurasicola LinkedIn Business Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/laurasicola-inc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VocalImpactProductions Facebook: Dr. Laura Sicola Twitter: @LauraSicola Instagram: @drlaurasicola Website: https://laurasicola.com Laura's Online Course: virtualinfluence.today See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In today's world, marketing and customer experience go hand in hand. At least, that's what Johann Wrede believes. On this episode, Johann, the Chief Experience Officer at Emburse, takes us into how he has blended the marketing and customer experience teams and the success they have had as a result. Plus, he explains why we have to get out of the mindset that we have to do more with less and instead start thinking only about how we can constantly be doing better. Tune in to learn:What it means to be the CXO (2:30)Stop thinking you need to “do more with less” (6:55)Blending the CMO and CXO roles (9:30)Looking through the customer lens (13:10)Opportunities within the world of customer experience (16:00)Creating integrated workflows (21:20)The future of the CXO (36:50)How AI can help create more harmony in your marketing (41:53)Mission.org is a media studio producing content for world-class clients. Learn more at http://www.mission.org.
Today, we're taking a look back on our most recent season. We've heard from some incredible minds in the Revenue Operations space, and one of our favorite parts of every conversation is hearing how guests define “RevOps.” Each definition is a little different, and each definition brings something new to the RevOps table. Let's take a quick look back at some of those conversations. How do our guests define RevOps? Why is RevOps important? And what do you need to know to make your RevOps team successful?Guests featured:Michelle Torrey-Teunissen, Chief Revenue Officer at 6clicksTodd Thomas, Chief Revenue Officer at Aiden AutoScott Hoffman, Chief Revenue Officer of GFT USAKiva Kolstein, President and Chief Revenue Officer at AlphaSense, Inc.Brian Tully, Chief Revenue Officer at GoldcastJamie Anderson, Chief Revenue Officer of EmburseCharles Lu, VP of Operations at LexCheckSaima Rashid, Senior Vice President of Revenue Analytics at 6senseJason Rushforth, Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Americas at SugarCRMJohn Foong, CRO of Domain Group--Time Stamps(00:55) - Michelle Torrey-Teunissen, Chief Revenue Officer at 6clicks(01:56) - Todd Thomas, Chief Revenue Officer at Aiden Auto(04:09) - Scott Hoffman, Chief Revenue Officer of GFT USA(05:07) - Kiva Kolstein, President and Chief Revenue Officer at AlphaSense, Inc.(07:38) - Brian Tully, Chief Revenue Officer at Goldcast(09:49) - Jamie Anderson, Chief Revenue Officer of Emburse(12:29) - Charles Lu, VP of Operations at LexCheck(15:11) - Saima Rashid, Senior Vice President of Revenue Analytics at 6sense(18:15) - Jason Rushforth, Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Americas at SugarCRM(20:33) - John Foong, CRO of Domain Group—SponsorRise of RevOps is brought to you by Qualified. Qualified's Pipeline Cloud is the future of pipeline generation for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Learn more about the Pipeline Cloud on Qualified.com. —Links Connect with Jason on LinkedInCheck out QualifiedLearn more about Caspian Studios
IN THIS EPISODE...Get ready for a captivating conversation that explores the intersection of marketing, customer experience, and organizational transformation. Today's episode is a testament to the power of thinking differently, co-opting big ideas, and, most importantly, fostering a culture of collaboration and growth. Whether you are a seasoned executive, an aspiring leader, or an individual fascinated by the dynamics of C-suite roles, join us as we unravel the intricacies of leadership with Johann Wrede.Johann Wrede serves as the Chief Experience Officer (CMO + CCO) at Emburse, a global leader in spend optimization. With a strategic focus on ensuring every Emburse employee contributes to delivering a best-in-class customer experience, Johann plays a pivotal role in shaping the company's commitment to excellence. Moreover, Johann has built large followerships and successfully orchestrated organizational and operating model transformations to meet evolving business needs. His ability to cultivate high-performing teams and foster a culture of collaboration and personal growth has consistently delivered strong business results and attracted top-tier talent.------------Full show notes, links to resources mentioned, and other compelling episodes can be found at http://LeadYourGamePodcast.com. (Click the magnifying icon at the top right and type “Johann”)Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! ------------JUST FOR YOU: Increase your leadership acumen by identifying your personal Leadership Trigger. Take my free my free quiz and instantly receive your 5-page report. Need to up-level your workforce or execute strategic People initiatives? https://shockinglydifferent.com/contact or tweet @KaranRhodes.-------------ABOUT JOHANN WREDE:Johann Wrede is a dynamic and results-driven Chief Experience Officer (CMO + CCO) known for his enthusiasm for transformation, leadership, and value creation. As a seasoned executive with global P&L responsibility, Johann brings a unique blend of technical and business acumen to the table. With a rich background spanning various marketing disciplines, he has demonstrated his prowess in driving success across diverse customer segments, from enterprise and mid-market to SMBs and across industries.Johann's track record is marked by remarkable achievements, consistently delivering triple-digit YoY growth through strategic go-to-market execution and implementing modern, data-driven, multi-channel marketing strategies. Moreover, his expertise lies in crafting compelling marketing strategies that resonate with audiences throughout the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy. Known for his storytelling approach, Johann also excels in messaging and positioning, creating market differentiation, and inspiring engagement among target audiences.------------WHAT TO LISTEN FOR:WHAT TO LISTEN FOR:1. What do effective leadership, marketing, and customer experience entail for a C-suite leader?2. How can one influence a mindset shift in enterprise events?3. What are the critical marketing skills and leadership qualities that Johann finds essential?
It's easy to feel like you're on your own lonely marketing island. You're so focused on what you're doing that your process starts to feel stale. Wouldn't it be helpful to hear how other marketers are driving sales?Especially if those marketers are at companies like G2, Deel and Gigster; successful names in B2B that know what works, and are pushing the envelope for what B2B content could look like. That's what we're bringing to you this week. In this episode, we're wrapping up Season 3 by highlighting the winning content strategies from top B2B brands. You'll leave with new ideas and insights to use on your very next campaign. So all aboard, we're getting you off that lonely island on this episode of Remarkable.About our guestsKim Courvoisier, Senior Director of Content Marketing at LobGillian Jakob Kieser, Director of Content Marketing at CircleCIAnja Simic, Director of Content Marketing at DeelMartha Aviles, Vice President of Marketing at GigsterPalmer Houchins, VP and Head of Marketing at G2Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfoJohann Wrede, CEO at EmburseChris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at CelonisJérôme Robert, CMO and Chief of Staff at TenableWhat B2B Companies Can Learn From Season 3 of Remarkable:Provide some free, valuable content to your audience. It proves that your product is worth the investment and helps you establish domain authority. Gillian Jakob Kieser, Director of Content Marketing at CircleCI says, “When we were smaller, we were really banking on utility. So we invested a lot in single pieces of content that people would share because there was nothing better than it. So once you saw it, you would have to pass it on. An example is our team open sourced our entire competency matrix and wrote about how we developed it. And that's a document that is like five years old and it's an open Google doc. Every time I go on there, there's still like 12 Anonymous Raptors on there using the content. And that was worth it because they've become tools. And that's been a great marketing strategy.”Create content for people at different points in the buying process. Your content should look different for people who are just exploring their options vs. people who are ready to make a purchase. Anja Simic, Director of Content Marketing at Deel says, “The readiness to purchase is very important when you think about content marketing.” She says you can think of it like the marketing funnel. “Top of the funnel content is informational, it's educational. It's a lot of articles or listicles, and lighter content. Closer to the middle of the funnel, your content needs to be a bit more product heavy. It needs to talk about specific solutions, specific questions that your prospects may have. But not all of it has to be salesy and pushy, because they're just considering. They're exploring their options. And then the very bottom of the funnel is where you really push them over the edge. They're really thinking about it. They're considering your product, and know enough about it.”Make something different. Get away from the B2B content formula. Jérôme Robert, CMO and Chief of Staff at Tenable says the risk in making something outside-the-box is overstated. He says, “Notably in an industry where marketing, the marketing practices are very mature and very identical from one company to another, there's very, very little downside in standing out, in doing something that is entirely different.” He says, “Worst case scenario, it's not going to get a lot of engagement. But I don't think anyone would laugh at you or discard you as a company because you did something different. I think people respect the originality, the boldness, in doing something entirely different.”Quotes*”A lot of what we think about with content marketing is how do we show a bit more of the heart behind what we do? How do we make us not just a brand, but show that there's a real company and people behind that? If you are choosing a provider, you're actually going to choose those guys, you're going to bet on them.” - Chris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at Celonis*”Without trust, you can't do business. And today, buyers are really sophisticated. If we don't produce excellent content that genuinely seeks to inform, educate and help the customer, then they're just going to ignore it and they're going to go somewhere else. If you can create content that authentically seeks to inform and to add value, then you start to move into the trusted advisor quadrant.” - Johann Wrede, CEO at Emburse*”We are all bombarded with content every day. And so we try to cut through the noise and provide content that can help our audience do their jobs better. That's the overarching goal of everything that we create.” - Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfoTime Stamps[0:58] Introducing the Season 3 Roundup! Content strategies from…[1:22] Kim Courvoisier from Lob[2:38] Gillian Jakob Kieser of CircleCI[4:38] Anja Simic of Deel[7:17] Martha Aviles of Gigster[8:28] Palmer Houchins of G2[10:39] Meghan Barr of ZoomInfo[12:09] Johann Wrede of Emburse[16:44] Chris Sheen of Celonis[19:37] Jérôme Robert of TenableLinksListen to the full Season 3 episodes, featuring:Kim Courvoisier, Senior Director of Content Marketing at LobGillian Jakob Kieser, Director of Content Marketing at CircleCIAnja Simic, Director of Content Marketing at DeelMartha Aviles, Vice President of Marketing at GigsterPalmer Houchins, VP and Head of Marketing at G2Meghan Barr, VP of Brand, Content and Communications at ZoomInfoJohann Wrede, CEO at EmburseChris Sheen, Director of Content and Social at CelonisJérôme Robert, CMO and Chief of Staff at TenableAbout Remarkable!Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. In today's episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.
Imagine this: possessing the power to not only understand your customers' deepest desires but also plant ideas in their minds, making them believe it was their idea from the very start.It may sound like something straight out of a dream, but it may not be as far-fetched as it seems. See, the genius of Christopher Nolan's Inception conceals marketing insights if you look close enough. It's the marketing movie you never knew was about marketing.While we can't offer you a PASIV device to enter your customers' dreams, we can provide you with the tools to craft marketing strategies that work like inception - subtly influencing, inspiring, and engaging your audience.So in this episode, we're deciphering the intricate layers of marketing with the help of Emburse's Chief Experience Officer, Johann Wrede. Together, we discuss how to utilize emotions to ‘plant ideas' in your customers' heads, avoid fixating on initial customer expectations throughout the customer journey, and leave room for your customers to co-create their narrative to boost engagement. So grab your totem for this episode of Remarkable.About our guest, Johann WredeJohann Wrede is the Chief Experience Officer at Emburse. He is responsible for leading a cross-functional marketing and customer success organization, with the goal of delivering a world-class customer experience from first awareness through subscription renewal. Over the course of the last 25 years, Johann has written, implemented, sold and marketed a variety of customer database, CRM and customer experience (CX) products. An evangelist for customer experience, he has delivered keynotes and press interviews in 18 different countries, and written numerous articles on the topic.About EmburseEmburse is the global leader in spend optimization. Their expense, travel management, purchasing and accounts payable, and payments solutions are trusted by more than 12 million business professionals, including CFOs, finance teams, and travelers. More than 18,000 organizations in 120 countries, including FORTUNE 100 corporations, high-growth startups, public sector agencies, and nonprofits, count on their intelligent automation, sophisticated analytics, and unmatched spend control to streamline processes, increase spend visibility, enhance compliance, and deliver positive financial outcomes.About InceptionInception is a sci-fi action, mind-bending movie about a corporate spy who enters people's dreams to steal secrets from their subconscious. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the main character, Dominic, or Dom, Cobb, who is basically gifted with this ability that's made him extremely successful, but he's lost everything because of it. Namely, his marriage and children. His wife is played by Marion Cotillard. And so he's kind of haunted by her in his subconscious and she ends up sort of thwarting his every move. So anyway, he's given a chance to redeem himself by planting an idea in someone's mind, and having to go layers deep into their subconscious, which is of course, a nearly impossible task.The movie was released in 2010, and directed by Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, latest Batman series with Christian Bale AND Memento). Nolan also produced it along with Emma Thomas - his wife and producing partner - for Warner Bros. It also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Elliot Page as Ariadne, and Tom Hardy as Eames.What B2B Companies Can Learn From Inception:Utilize emotions to ‘plant ideas'. Emotions are your superpower to accessing the deepest corners of your customers' minds. People don't just buy; they invest for emotional reasons—this is an intrinsic part to our human nature. Johann says, “our whole mission is to plant ideas into customers' heads and convince them that it was their idea from the first. And the first time I saw [Inception], that is, it just jumped out at me and I thought, wow, that really sums up the marketing profession in a nutshell.”Don't fixate on initial customer expectations. Customers evolve, and so should your strategy. What matters most in the end is if they are happy. Just as Inception leaves us with an ambiguous ending, Cobb's happiness is undeniable. Whether it's a dream or reality, his happiness is the ultimate goal, mirroring how you should approach your customer journey. Johann emphasizes, “it doesn't actually matter if the value that they thought they were going to get is the value that they got. What's more important is that the value that they want right now is the value that they're getting right now. Are they happy with the result?”Leave room for your customers to co-create their narrative. This fuels customer engagement and is exactly what Christopher Nolan did when creating Inception. We witness this concept in two distinct ways: co-creation within the dream state, as the dream world is designed in a way that allows the subject to fill in details, and ambiguity in the ending, with Inception's enigmatic conclusion inviting audience speculation. Johann says, “All too often, we build these elaborate cities that we put our buyer into. And we orchestrate this narrative that is so complete and so full. And we try to be so precise in our language that we don't leave room for them to bring their own perception and perspective to it.”Quotes“One of my first sales mentors said to me, people buy for emotional reasons and then back it up with facts. That became really clear to me that what we needed to do as marketers was peel away those layers of the onion and get past the business person and down to the human, and speak to that person.” - Johann Wrede“If you can create content that authentically seeks to inform and to add value, then you start to move into the trusted advisor quadrant, which is where you really want to be. And the other piece of this puzzle is that we have to look at the content we create through the lens of the customer journey.” - Johann WredeTime Stamps[01:00] Introducing Chief Experience Officer at Emburse, Johann Wrede[1:34] Why are we talking about Inception?[3:34] Tell me more about Inception [13:48] What are some marketing lessons we can learn from Inception?[22:16] Marketing insights from Inception's mind-bending ending[32:02] How to identify needs and craft messages that resonate[45:53] How does Johann think about content marketing?[54:49] Johann's view on the ROI of content[57:49] Johann's favorite upcoming marketing campaigns at EmburseLinksWatch InceptionConnect with Johann on LinkedInLearn more about EmburseAbout Remarkable!Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. In today's episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.
In this episode, Mike Sasaki, VP of Customer Success at Emburse talks with Jay about scaling CS. Not simply from a growth perspective, but a more important impact on profitability focus. From areas of his business he has been able to scale effectively with strong results to other areas of consideration that have to be managed when scaling programs, Mike's practical examples and insights will help you take a look at scaling in a broader way. Connect with Mike -- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas to advance the state of customer success. We're on a mission to connect B2B SaaS customer success leaders so that we can learn from one another. Check out more at GainGrowRetain.com! Or follow our GGR LinkedIn page. GGR was co-founded by Jeff Breunsbach and Jay Nathan - be sure to follow for customer success content.
In this episode, Mike Sasaki, VP of Customer Success at Emburse talks with Jay about scaling CS. Not simply from a growth perspective, but a more important impact on profitability focus. From areas of his business he has been able to scale effectively with strong results to other areas of consideration that have to be managed when scaling programs, Mike's practical examples and insights will help you take a look at scaling in a broader way. Connect with Mike -- Gain Grow Retain exists to connect people, knowledge, and ideas to advance the state of customer success. We're on a mission to connect B2B SaaS customer success leaders so that we can learn from one another. Check out more at GainGrowRetain.com! Or follow our GGR LinkedIn page. GGR was co-founded by Jeff Breunsbach and Jay Nathan - be sure to follow for customer success content.
This episode features an interview with Jamie Anderson, Chief Revenue Officer of Emburse. Emburse is the global leader in spend optimization, with expense, travel management, and payments solutions. Jamie believes that revenue operations have been around for a long time, but we haven't always called it “RevOps.” He describes how investing in your RevOps team will result in a great ROI, and how to focus on what really matters when building your bottom line.Guest Bio:As Chief Revenue Officer, Jamie is responsible for setting the strategy and executing on the revenue goals for Emburse. He has over 25 years of experience in the enterprise applications software industry serving in a variety of roles from product development, through marketing, to sales. Jamie has held key executive leadership roles at SAP, hybris, Marketo (Adobe), and most recently Xactly Corp, where he served as CRO. Jamie holds a BSc in Computer Information Systems from Glasgow Caledonian University.Guest Quote:“Revenue operations, I actually believe, have been around for a long time. We just haven't called it rev ops. Some places have just called it pipeline management, cadence. I often say incidentally that the measure of the health of a company is looking at the pipeline and measuring the unweighted four rolling quarter pipeline coverage, the current quarter plus one weighted pipeline coverage. It gives you a very, very strong indication of a company's health.” - Jamie AndersonTime Stamps:1:32 - How Jamie views RevOps13:22 - The importance of specialization15:23 - What makes a horrible client experience21:58 - Making leaders better25:47 - Why RevOps has a great ROI29:26 - The tool shed34:46 - Quick hitsSponsor:Rise of RevOps is brought to you by Qualified. Qualified's Pipeline Cloud is the future of pipeline generation for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Learn more about the Pipeline Cloud on Qualified.com. Links:Connect with Jamie on LinkedInConnect with Ian Faison on LinkedinCheck out Emburse
Starting with our customer in mind sounds obvious, but it's unfortunately not our default. When we get stuck on the autopilot of our day-to-day roles, we begin with our inside-out mindset. But Johann Wrede, CXO of Emburse, believes an outside-in mindset can set your company apart. In this episode, Johann shares what gets unlocked when organizations think about the customer first, how to be an agent of customer-centric change in your company, and how to change your own mindset.
Episode Summary:In this episode, Johann shares how he and his team are approaching spend management in a holistic way, the beauty of championing your clients, and how all marketing comes down to adding value. Johann also talks about strategies for shifting budget spend to incorporate additional high-converting formats and channels and the importance of focusing on strong content and adding value outside of demand gen interactions.Key Takeaways:Incorporating customer success into the buyer lifecycle journey helps to avoid internal breakdown through departmental silos.Learning how your potential customers interact with your brand before your sales team gets involved allows for deeper insights into the kind of content a business should be investing in and creating.The effectiveness of ads is diminishing and that ad spend should transition away from single use assets to resussable assets that can be repackaged in multiple ways.Quote(s):“What are the business processes that our buyers go through? What are their jobs like? What is their working environment? What does their day look like? Right? And then how do we give the salesperson the education on the topics that are relevant to those buyers that we can address so they can start asking questions and start sort of engaging in an open-ended way and that's kind of the problem, right? You can do all this automation on the website and you can create beautiful content, but if you're not thinking about how do I enable my sellers to understand that content journey and how to leverage the insights that are attached to that content to create dialogue, then it will fall short.”Episode Timestamps:*(8:40) - The Trust Tree: How and why Johann and his team are starting to “solution sell”*(29:44) - The Playbook: Engaging potential buyers before the sales team gets involved*(47:11) - Johann's Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Johann on LinkedInLearn more about EmburseLearn more about Caspian Studios
We welcome YOU back to America's leading higher education podcast, The EdUp Experience! It's YOUR time to #EdUp In this episode, YOUR guest is Robin Hanselman, VP of Strategic Markets Sales at Emburse YOUR host is Dr. Joe Sallustio & YOUR sponsors are Ellucian LIVE 2023 & Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era In Higher Education! This episode was recorded LIVE at Ellucian's #eLIVE23 conference in New Orleans! Listen in to #EdUp! Thank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp! Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - Elvin Freytes & Dr. Joe Sallustio ● Join YOUR EdUp community at The EdUp Experience! We make education YOUR business! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/edup/message
Renegade Thinkers Unite: #2 Podcast for CMOs & B2B Marketers
This is a Tuesday Tips episode where you will hear host Drew Neisser, CMOs, and other B2B experts share their hard-earned wisdom and fresh marketing insights in a bitesize format. Featuring: Grant Johnson of Emburse, Gabi Zijderveld of Smart Eye, Danielle Gotkis of Pecan AI, and Aaron Ballew of Split Software To see the video versions, follow Drew Neisser on LinkedIn or visit our YouTube channel—The Renegade Marketing Hub! And if you're a B2B CMO, check out our thriving community: https://cmohuddles.com/
Generating meaningful prospects for your pipeline doesn't come through shotgun marketing. It comes through smart strategies and full-team alignment. That's why Grant Johnson is so big on quarterly themes.Grant is the CMO at Emburse. He's all about meaningfully speeding up his pipeline velocity, and making smart choices to leave time for the best prospects. His themes are helping his team make focused decisions to get those prospects in the pipeline. From there, he's tracking and pushing only the best for maximum efficiency. Main Takeaways:How quarterly themes help align your teams and connect with your audienceHow he's measuring meaningful pipeline velocityThe free tool Grant's using to mature prospects into customersLinks:Stackbuilder.comDan's Top Tools:TableauPendoHighspotJoin us every week as we journey to the bleeding edge of the modern tech stack. You'll hear from real experts on how to nail your strategy, build a revenue machine and take your sales to the next level.
This week in the Rockstar CMO Marketing Studio, Jeff Clark, our resident strategic advisor and former Research Director at SiriusDecisions/Forrester is inspired by a webinar by Lux Research, "The Hidden Meanings Shaping Consumer Interest in Sustainability", with anthropologist Ujwal Arkalgud and talks about anthropology and feelings in marketing. Ian Truscott goes backstage with a previous guest and his former boss Grant Johnson, who is a serial CMO, currently the CMO of Emburse, he's held the top marketing job in a string of B2B companies, including Kofax, Pegasystems, SDL and Cylance. You can learn more about Grant from when he first appeared on the show in episode 32, and this time around, they discuss the 5 C's of being a CMO from his new project CMO Mentor. Finally, we wind down the week in the Rockstar virtual bar to join Robert Rose, Chief Trouble Maker at The Content Advisory, this week, Robert suggests we need a plan for our story, learn from Hollywood and get a showrunner to help bring that to our audience. Please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions on the topics we discuss. Enjoy! You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and all good podcasting platforms - or visit https://rockstarcmo.com The people: Ian Truscott on LinkedIn and Twitter Jeff Clark on LinkedIn and Twitter Grant Johnson on LinkedIn and Twitter Robert Rose on Twitter and LinkedIn Mentioned in this week's episode: Lux Research Hidden Meanings Shaping Consumer Interest in Sustainability" with anthropologist Ujwal Arkalgud Grant's company: Emburse Grant's 5 C's of being a CMO from his new project CMO Mentor Drew Neisser's interview on this show and his book, which describes the CATS Framework Robert's The Content Advisory Blog Robert's latest project: Experience Advisors Rockstar CMO: Rockstar CMO on the web, Twitter, and LinkedIn Previous episodes and all show notes: Rockstar CMO FM Track List: Piano Music is by Johnny Easton, shared under a creative commons license We'll be right back by Stienski & Mass Media – on YouTube Fame by David Bowie on Spotify or YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Learn more about how to stand out and why every contact matter by listening to this week's conversation with Grant Johnson of Emburse.Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing innovation consultancy that develops strategies and capabilities that help businesses grow faster. Today's episode was produced by Leanne Kilroy and hosted by Eric Fulwiler. Find Rival online at www.wearerival.com, LinkedIn, Twitter. Find Eric on LinkedIn and tweet him @efulwiler.Say hi at media@wearerival.com, we'd love to hear from you.
For business leaders, what's the right balance between competing and caring? Grant Johnson, the Chief Marketing Officer at the expense management company Emburse, claims that a “human connection” remains crucial for success. Tune in for some valuable marketing insights from Grant about leadership, empathy, and “humanizing work.”Tune in to learn:How much should you rely on metrics? (6:50) Grant's journey into marketing (11:15) Grant's advice on how to scale (20:50)Mentions:“The Five C's of Marketing with Emburse's Grant Johnson”: on the Marketing Today podcast.Grant's Company Bio on the Emburse Leadership PageMarketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMoments
This is a special episode focused on payments.How do you make faster payments securely? How do you lower the cost of payment processing? How do you enable different payment rails for a better customer experience? And how do you prevent inadvertent payments? We're getting inside the minds of top CFOs and Treasurers to find out how they're handling payments in this ever-changing financial landscape. We'll hear from Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, Katherine Edenbach, CFO at Emburse, Benjamin Seal, Vice President of Treasury Services at Cenveo, and more, including some bonus content from Michelle Richardson, SVP and CFO at Plaza Home Mortgages.Quotes*“We're in a world where we expect things to happen in real time. We expect when we do whatever it is we're doing, it's never fast enough. And so I think the banking system has relied on a very robust and very successful system of interconnectivity for the ACH network. But that does have a number of lags in it that fall short of consumer expectations and business expectations in terms of how fast things should happen in the 21st century economy.” - Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council*”The new generations that are coming in, they're all instant gratification. They're used to having apps for everything and being able to have a meal delivered within five minutes to their house. Having that generation come in and take over treasury and payments I think is going to really streamline and make things a lot faster.” - Michelle Richardson, SVP and CFO at Plaza Home Mortgages*”Our biggest area of risk management today is really around cyber security and phishing attempts. Making sure that our employees are well-educated and know how to identify phishing and establishing controls around where we know that those fraudsters might try to get in. So we have a number of controls around approving invoices and around outgoing payments, especially payments with new or different banking information or changes to invoice addresses. This year, we're also going to be adding a credit component to our card product. And obviously that will bring a whole different realm of potential risk management along with it. So we are anticipating that coming as we move through the year, but as of today, our biggest areas are really cybersecurity and phishing.” - Katherine Edenbach, CFO at EmburseTime Stamps*[1:55] Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council*[2:35] Kevin Permenter, Research Director at IDC*[4:17] Hamza Benamar, CFO at Kyriba*[5:37] Michelle Richardosoon, SVP and CFO at Plaza Home Mortgages*[9:40] Niklas Bergentoft, Principal at Deloitte & Touche LLP*[12:30] Katherine Edenbach, CFO at Emburse*[13:33] Benjamin Seal, Vice President of Treasury Services at Cenveo*[15:35] Thomas Gavaghan, Vice President of Global Presales at KyribaSponsorThe 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.comLinksConnect with:Reed Luhtanen, Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments CouncilKevin Permenter, Research Director at IDCHamza Benamar, CFO at KyribaMichelle Richardson, SVP and CFO at Plaza Home MortgagesNiklas Bergentoft, Principal at Deloitte & Touche LLPKatherine Edenbach, CFO at EmburseBenjamin Seal, Vice President of Treasury Services at CenveoThomas Gavaghan, Vice President of Global Presales at KyribaDaniel Shaffer, Executive Producer and Host of the Invisible Vault
This episode features an interview with Danielle Tabor, Chief People Officer at Emburse. Danielle has over 15 years of human resources experience in the biomedical, architecture, and financial industries. She also holds a Bachelor's in Psychology and a minor in Education from Clark University. In this episode, Amanda sits down with Danielle to discuss work-from-home burnout, HR's ability to adapt, and the importance of an equitable employee experience.-------------------“I really think the future of work is all about employee experience. Everything shifted with the pandemic. And as leaders, what we need to understand is what employees truly need and how we can realistically meet those needs. So, we need to consider the whole employee here. There are basic needs that must be met. At absolute minimum: stability. People don't need to have anxiety about whether or not their job is stable. They need a healthy income, they need healthy benefits. But we also need to start thinking about family, community, social and environmental impact. It just expands. Previously, it used to be Human Resources that was focused on policy, procedure, compliance. Those things are obviously still incredibly important and they need to be focused on as well, but it goes so far beyond that. Where we really need to win over the hearts of our people if we want an engaged workforce. That's going to be incredibly important as we go forward. And it's challenging, it's not obvious all the time. And so, we need to be open-minded and we need to be able to adapt.” – Danielle Tabor-------------------Episode Timestamps:*(01:42): Danielle's background*(02:48): Danielle's role as Chief People Officer at Emburse*(03:23): Segment: Story Time*(03:39: How Emburse shifted during the pandemic*(09:26): Danielle's partnership with the internal comms team*(10:43): Segment: Getting Tactical*(12:46): Ensuring an equitable employee experience*(17:46): How Emburse is combating employee burnout*(20:47): How Danielle's degree in Education influences her job*(22:24): Segment: Asking For a Friend*(26:15): How Danielle is getting better at her job through feedback-------------------Links:Connect with Danielle on LinkedInEmburseAmanda's LinkedInwww.simpplr.com/podcast
Brett & Jack discuss how growing numbers of businesses are facing an employee retention crisis as they battle escalating workforce attrition and struggle to fill job vacancies. As the crisis grows in certain industries, more finance leaders are sounding the alarm on escalating business risk and dedicating more time to solving the current talent equation. Featuring the commentary and insights of workplace champions CFO Efrain Rivera of Paychex, CFO Anisha Sood of First Choice Health, CFO Will Johnson of Iterable, and CFO Adriana Carpenter of Emburse.
Brett & Jack discuss how growing numbers of businesses are facing an employee retention crisis as they battle escalating workforce attrition and struggle to fill job vacancies. As the crisis grows in certain industries, more finance leaders are sounding the alarm on escalating business risk and dedicating more time to solving the current talent equation. Featuring the commentary and insights of workplace champions CFO Efrain Rivera of Paychex, CFO Anisha Sood of First Choice Health, CFO Will Johnson of Iterable, and CFO Adriana Carpenter of Emburse.
Steve and Jack discuss how successful financial planning teams are always looking to get in deeper and bring new insights to the surface. Featuring commentary and FP&A insights from Planning Aces: CFO Adriana Carpenter of Emburse, CFO Kent Kelley of Unanet and CFO Brandon Maultasch of Moloco.
Steve and Jack discuss how successful financial planning teams are always looking to get in deeper and bring new insights to the surface. Featuring commentary and FP&A insights from Planning Aces: CFO Adriana Carpenter of Emburse, CFO Kent Kelley of Unanet and CFO Brandon Maultasch of Moloco.
As we seek to highlight the milestones that mark the path to the CFO office, one of our favorite queries is to ask finance leaders to recall from their career-building years the first time they presented to their company's board. For Adriana Carpenter, memories of that board gathering will forever call to mind ASC 606, the mazelike revenue standard that only a few years ago upended the placid temperament of many an accounting organization. “Make no mistake—this was really my first time, and I was delivering bad news,” recalls Adriana, who perhaps not unlike many of her CFO peers received her first “invitation” to address the board regarding a sticky issue, rather than to highlight the anatomy of a strategic win. “A majority of our revenue came from on-premises software subscriptions, and 606 dramatically changed the timing of revenue for these types of subscriptions,” continues Carpenter, who for 8 years served as chief accounting officer for Ping Identity, a developer of identity security software. For Ping, the timing issue meant that the company would be required to take a big cash hit on the eve of realizing its goal of selling shares to the public. “606 distorted our revenue and EBITDA numbers, which really forced us to figure out how to explain to investors what was really happening in the business,” comments Carpenter, who entered the boardroom that day with a portfolio of accounting experience that any board worth its salt would have savored. Carpenter had arrived at Ping 5 years earlier, just as the company had begun the tricky journey from being a perpetual revenue model to evolving into the subscription revenue mode. “Within that first year at Ping, I led the complete overhaul of our quote to cash process, which included everything from revamping how we were selling our software to helping to implement additional software modules to enable the business to scale,” remarks Carpenter, whose tenure as Ping's CAO involved navigating not only the differences between revenue models but also the differences between owners as Ping went from VC to private equity ownership. Then came 606's timing issue and Carpenter's invitation from the board. While milestones along the path to the CFO office frequently vary as far as time and place go, Carpenter's arrival inside the CFO office at Emburse within 3 years of having received Ping's boardroom invitation makes us think that perhaps timing is indeed everything. –Jack Sweeney
Renegade Thinkers Unite: #2 Podcast for CMOs & B2B Marketers
SaaS is a 145 billion dollar industry that touches almost every aspect of our work lives. Even this podcast is brought to you by SaaS—a collection of 7+ tools to record, publish, and house countless marketing insights. You'd be hard-pressed to find a successful software product right now that isn't either fully SaaS or migrating to it. There are 35,000 SaaS products from over 15,000 companies competing in over 740 vertical markets, which means there's a noteworthy number of CMOs out there navigating a competitive market with massive growth potential. To help us understand what makes SaaS marketing such a distinct challenge are CMOs Grant Johnson of Emburse, Ali McCarthy of Skience, and former CMO of Bynder, Andrew Hally (he's now CMO at Markforged). Tune in to hear how these CMOs have navigated the choppy waters of marketing SaaS and how they are using their past experiences to inform future decisions. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/
“Don't let the roadblocks get in the way when there are people who need you desperately.” Eric Friedrichsen, the CEO of Emburse, a B2B software provider, has navigated around risks and financial costs to meet the needs of tech contractors based in Ukraine. Part of that response includes the company's offer to relocate people and families to Spain, where Emburse's European headquarters is located. The company's executives are also personally funding housing costs for colleagues taking refuge in Poland. These choices haven't come without obstacles for Emburse. But as Friedrichsen explains, the benefits are moral, communal, and even quantifiable for the business.Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dlirtXSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
“Don't let the roadblocks get in the way when there are people who need you desperately.” Eric Friedrichsen, the CEO of Emburse, a B2B software provider, has navigated around risks and financial costs to meet the needs of tech contractors based in Ukraine. Part of that response includes the company's offer to relocate people and families to Spain, where Emburse's European headquarters is located. The company's executives are also personally funding housing costs for colleagues taking refuge in Poland. These choices haven't come without obstacles for Emburse. But as Friedrichsen explains, the benefits are moral, communal, and even quantifiable for the business.Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dlirtXSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
A complete accounting software solution almost always includes additional add-on products. For example, it is hard to accurately calculate sales tax, do budgeting, or have adequate reporting without third-party add-ons. This session provides guidance on some of the best add-ons in the market. If you have needs that your current solution does not meet, you may not need to change it. You may just need the right add-on! Attend this session to discover the best of best extensions for accounting software. In this session, we go into more depth into four Expense Reporting and Management add-ons: Expensify, Zoho Expense, Tallie by Emburse, and SAP Concur. We demonstrate how to use each of these tools. Learn which of these add-ons fit your needs best. Are you a CPA?? Are you a Financial Professional?? Earn CPE Credits for Today's Podcast. Check out https://cpe.cx/aa03/. Take a quick 5 question quiz and get your certificate today. Super Easy! Presented by Stephen M. Yoss, CPA, MS (https://yoss.io) Produced by Alicia Yoss & Alanna Regalbuto Graphics By Flaticon.com and Unsplash.com Music by Bensound.com Education and Compliance By K2 Enterprises (https://k2e.com) Copyright. All product names, logos, and brands are the property of their respective owners. All company, product, and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only. The use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement. Educational Use Only. The information presented in this presentation is for educational use only. The presenter will make specific recommendations, but the participant is highly recommended to do their own due diligence before making any investment decision.
Grant Johnson is the CMO at Emburse, a spend management company offering solutions that help organizations manage employee expenses, process invoices, and make payments. In this episode, Alan and Grant discuss his journey to become CMO at Emburse and his philosophy of five Cs for a CMOs playbook—culture, coaching, campaigns, category, and courage. Grant says that “the only constant in the market is change, and your ability to adapt to it is key to ongoing success.” Listen to the full interview to hear Grant's advice for emerging marketing leaders and how being clear, compelling, and consistent play a major role. In this episode, you'll learn: Category isn't restricted to your product The courage of conviction Adapting to the change Key Highlights: [01:22] Grant is a nationally ranked tennis player [03:00] Grant's career journey [05:34] Coming up with the five C's [07:34] Talking about culture [09:19] Where coaching is important [11:05] Coaching the coach vs. coaching the employee [12:15] How Grant thinks about campaigns [14:55] Thinking about category [18:12] Having the courage of conviction [19:56] Advice for first-time CMOs [23:53] An experience that defines Grant, makes him who he is today [25:10] Grant's advice to his younger self [26:48] What marketers should be learning more about [27:54] The brands and organizations Grant follows [29:06] The biggest threat and opportunity for marketers Resources Mentioned: Grant Johnson Emburse “emburse it” campaign Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore Escape Velocity, by Geoffrey A. Moore Dave Peterson Celonis Celonis raises $1B Play Bigger, book by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney CMO Manifesto, book by John Ellet Follow the podcast: Listen in iTunes (link: http://apple.co/2dbdAhV) Listen in Google Podcasts (link: http://bit.ly/2Rc2kVa) Listen in Spotify (Link: http://spoti.fi/2mCUGnC ) Connect with the Guest: Grant's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantejohnson Grant's Twitter: https://twitter.com/grantejohnson1 Emburse's Twitter: https://twitter.com/emburse Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart: http://twitter.com/abhart https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhart http://twitter.com/themktgtoday https://www.facebook.com/themktgtoday/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-today-with-alan-hart/ Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome back to Season 2, Episode 108 of the Asian Hustle Network Podcast! We are very excited to have Roger Gu on this week's show. We interview Asian entrepreneurs around the world to amplify their voices and empower Asians to pursue their dreams and goals. We believe that each person has a message and a unique story from their entrepreneurial journey that they can share with all of us. Check us out on Anchor, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, TuneIn, Spotify, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a positive 5-star review. This is our opportunity to use the voices of the Asian community and share these incredible stories with the world. We release a new episode every Wednesday and Saturday, so stay tuned! Roger was one of the cofounders of the ‘original' Emburse, a card technology startup that was acquired in mid-2019. He now leads card product strategy across the organization. Roger has fintech experience through his prior roles of leading merchant acceptance of bitcoin at Coinbase and corporate strategy at Visa. Roger holds degrees in Economics and Finance from Princeton University. He and his wife have a life goal to visit all 60 of the US' national parks. To stay connected within the AHN community, please join our AHN directory: bit.ly/AHNDirectory --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianhustlenetwork/support
A new era of work has forced companies to embrace the challenges and opportunities in more decentralized operations—uprooting long-standing beliefs in the process. Yet charting a path forward can leave too many unknowns without a cohesive framework to manage all types of spend. Join Katherine Edenbach, Chief Accounting Officer at Emburse, and VP of Product Marketing Barbara Doane as they introduce Emburse's Spend Optimization Model and explain how organizations can leverage it to help foster best-in-class finance operations.
Listen as Breaking Banks delivers more insights from Money 2020 when JP Nicols interviews Curt Queyrouze, CEO & President, TAB Bank. TAB has a unique origin story offering banking services to a highly specialized community. They were doing "mobile banking" before it was a thing.Next, Roger Gu, Co-Founder, GM of Cards and Rebecca Sheehan VP Solutions Strategy Travel & Mobility from Emburse share ways banks can better compete by offering virtual corporate cards to humanize and simplify expense reporting and proactively help customers manage spend.Finally, Phillip Ashley Klein, CEO & Co-Founder, FinLync addresses new opportunities within corporate financial services based on the understanding that treasurers and CFOS are consumers too! Discussing how real-time business data and cash visibility can immediately benefit customer credit limits and put working capital to good use for corporations.Enjoy the show! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYrBO0J5CHg
LifeBlood MAXIMIZE: We talked about spend management in organizations, how automation can help to humanize work, the value and importance of a purpose and values driven culture, how to make it happen at big and small orgs alike, and how to support you employees with Eric Friedrichsen, CEO of Emburse, a spend management company, helping orgs avoid employee burnout and retain talent. Listen to learn why becoming a life-long learner will serve you greatly, and how to inspire that characteristic in those you care about and work with! For the Difference Making Tip, scan ahead to 17:13. You can learn more about Eric at Emburse.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and subscribe as well. You can learn more about us at MoneyAlignmentAcademy.com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook or you'd like to be a guest on the show, contact George at Contact@GeorgeGrombacher.com.
Esta semana tenemos con nosotros a Joel Vicient, fundador de Captio. Hace 13 años Joel fundó Ongest, un negoció de gestión de documentación de gastos para pequeñas compañías y gestorías que nace en el segundo programa de incubación de seed rocket que consiguió escalar hasta 10.000€ de MRR. Con tres años de recorrido, a pesar de tener un crecimiento constante, Joel empezó a notar que no estaban escalando a la velocidad que querían. Así, en 2012 decidió hacer un pivot de segmento de mercado, utilizando la misma tecnología, pero enfocándose a vender a medianas y grandes empresas. Conoce en este episodio el proceso que tuvo que realizar Joel y su equipo para llevar a cabo este pivot bestial y conseguir levantar financiación, para llegar a los casi €5M de ARR y lograr vender la compañía a la multinacional Emburse. Quédate hasta el final de este episodio para conocer su experiencia y cómo ha podido ver dentro de Emburse los procesos de adquisición de compañías y built ups.
This episode features highlights from our first ten episodes focusing on the importance of data. We hear from Ann Dennison, CFO of Nasdaq, Jaye Connolly-Labelle, Chairman and CEO of RippleNami, Hamza Benamar, CFO of Kyriba, and more. Together, they bring you the most relevant insights to help you unlock the power of data in your own organization's finance department.Quotes“Finance professionals need to spend less time collecting data. They're valued more for how they can act on data than simply their ability to play scorekeeper. The types of people who are becoming CFOs now are those with more of a strategic mindset and less of a score keeping mindset.” - Eric Ball, Co-Founder and General Partner of Impact Capital Ventures“There's a lot of power in sitting on tons of data at the corporate level. How can we harness that power to help provide information to the business?” - Ann Dennison, CFO of Nasdaq“Data on a spreadsheet is meaningless. Data in a real-time dashboard is powerful. I can get an alert if there's ever anything wrong so that I'm in the know. You have to have your finger on the pulse and that is data-driven.” - Jaye Connolly-Labelle, Chairman and CEO of RippleNamiTime Stamps[2:12] Michael Dinkins, Dinkins Financial, on better data and decision making[3:52] Jennifer Ceran, Smartsheet, on new fintech solutions[4:22] Eric Ball, Impact Capital Ventures, on CFOs as a strategic player[5:30] Jaye Connolly-Labelle, RippleNami, on the importance of real-time data[7:11] Katherine Edenbach, Emburse, on driving strategy[7:52] Niklas Bergentoft, Deloitte & Touche, on the liquidity ecosystem[9:00] Wolfgang Koester, Kyriba, on being data-driven[10:26] Hamza Benamar, Kyriba, on using algorithms to help with decision making[12:14] Ann Dennison, Nasdaq, on harnessing data[14:05] Ross Tennenbaum, Avalara, on leveraging modern techSponsorThe 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.comLinksConnect with:Eric BallJennifer CeranMichael DinkinsJaye Connolly-LabelleNiklas BergentoftKatherine EdenbachWolfgang KoesterAnn DennisonHamza BenamarRoss Tennenbaum
Welcome back to the latest edition of “3-Minute Marketing”, where I talk with some of the smartest marketing leaders on the planet & uncover their most actionable tips, tactics & strategies. On today's episode, I catch up with Grant Johnson. He's been a tech CMO since 2009 & is currently leading the charge at Emburse, The post How Marketing Leaders Can Evolve from CMO to CGO (Chief Growth Orchestrator) with Grant Johnson appeared first on WebMechanix.
In an age of digital transformation, the role of CFO has become increasingly reliant on technology. Sunil Kayiti, CTO of Emburse, steps up to our mic to talk about his career trajectory toward IT leadership and insights about how technology intersects with CFO responsibilities.
As a seasoned Chief Marketing Officer with multiple successful exits, Grant Johnson currently leads global marketing for Emburse, overseeing marketing strategies, programs and tactics designed to increase market leadership, generate demand and enhance customer advocacy.Follow Grant on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantejohnson/Learn more about Emburse here: https://www.emburse.com/Follow and connect with the host, Connor Dube: https://www.linkedin.com/in/socialsellingexpert/Instagram: connor_dubeIf you're already thinking you need to find a more efficient way to conquer your monthly B2B content like blogs, newsletters, and social media – we'd like to show you how we can improve the quality, save you tons of time, and achieve better results! To learn more visit www.activeblogs.com
Emburse's CEO, Eric Friedrichsen, joins Coruzant Technologies for the Digital Executive podcast. He shares how they use their own products to continually evaluate and improve their software. Ultimately, providing value and the best customer experience for their customers.
From discovering culture to building relationships, humans have an innate drive to travel. As the world regains its footing, will business travel ever be the same? Join Nord Samuelson, President at Emburse, and Roadmap co-founder Jeroen van Velzen for a lively discussion on the future of travel.
Renegade Thinkers Unite: #2 Podcast for CMOs & B2B Marketers
It takes special care to brew a post-acquisition stew. B2B brands need to determine how to properly blend the newly acquired brand into the established mix without jeopardizing the integrity of the branded house, and without losing the equity and loyal customer base of its sub-brand. In today's episode, CMOs Grant Johnson of Emburse, Kevin Ruane of Precisely, and Joshua Leatherman of Service Express share how they've successfully consolidated newly acquired brands, reflecting on best practices and mistakes made around the B2B world as companies work to build branded house empires. Tune in for a ton of great tips for B2B brand consolidation, from how to measure the value of an acquired brand to how to protect SEO equity in the process. For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegade.com/podcasts/
En este capítulo nos acompaña Joel Vicient, SVP and General Manager del sud de Europa de Emburse, que con 25 años fundó su primera startup, Clico, una consultora tecnológica, tras detectar la necesidad de algunas pymes de contar con un director de informática. Recibió el premio del primer concurso nacional para jóvenes emprendedores ESADE Inspiring Young Entrepreneurs por la trayectoria de su empresa Ongest, proyecto que luego se convertiría en de negocio de Captio. Presentan David Tomás, CEO de Cyberclick y autor de “La empresa más feliz del mundo” y “Diario de un millennial”, y Edu Pascual, creador y productor de podcast.
This episode features an interview with Katherine Edenbach, CFO of Emburse, a billion dollar platform for business expenses and vendor payments. Katherine has an impressive career of over 20 years in accounting and finance. Before coming to Emburse, she was CFO of Certify, Inc., VP of finance at CashStar and served in various senior accounting and finance roles at Fairchild Semiconductor and WEX, Inc. On this episode, Katherine talks about the latest in fraud trends, the renewed importance of cash management amid the pandemic, and how accurate data leads to better decision making.Quotes“The CFO is no longer just managing finance and accounting. Really, it's taking that next step up and understanding how the numbers pull together and how you're going to drive strategy. Because obviously if you had bad data coming in, you could have a bad decision coming out. So it's important to understand accounting and finance, but the CFO also needs to have that strategic mindset.” “We are definitely a data-driven company. We have a significant amount of both structured data and raw data. And we've been working really hard to pull that data into more of a usable format. That means making that data consistent and easily accessible. Because inconsistent raw data could be interpreted incorrectly. Using new data analytics tools is helping us drive visibility into spend patterns and identify areas for improvement.”“Automating controls takes the onus off the finance team to sometimes be the bad guy or the enforcer. When you have the controls built into your systems already, there's no interpretation. It's the system that's enforcing the controls and people aren't getting involved at all.”SponsorThe 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.comFind Katherine on LinkedInFollow Bob on Twitter
Welcome to the BT360 Podcast: What's Up in Business Travel for Week 25 of 2021. This is a weekly podcast where we update you on what's up this week in the world of business travel. This podcast is great for those who need to know what's happening all in less than 15 minutes.Topics covered during this podcast -Southwest Airlines announces a new CEOSouthwest cancels & delays thousands of flightsSTR Report: U.S. Hotel recovery accelerates in MayFlorida wins Cruise lawsuitCanada lifts quarantine requirements for vaccinated travelersSpain drops vaccine requirement for AmericansCathay Pacific requiring crew vaccinationFrontier Airlines rescinds extra covid feeDelta Air Lines and Kenya Airways expand codeshareAmTrav, & Emburse join forcesTSA teaches flight attendants combatAirlines asking the government to send passengers to prisonFlight Centre Travel Group launches staff retention initiativeDelta's Sabre deal to change GDS landscapeVirgin Australia and Sabre agree to new dealAmexGBT expands BA and Iberia distribution agreementTune in every Monday morning to get your weekly update. We hope you will make this a regular part of your week and listen in while you on the move or sitting back and sipping your coffee. You can subscribe to this podcast by searching BusinessTravel360 on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, iHeart, Pandora or Spotify. You can always find more information at BusinessTravel360.com - Enjoy! Support the show (https://businesstravel360.com/podcast)
In this episode, your host, Sandy Fowler speaks with Emburse's Grant Johnson about customers being the center of a business, humanizing work, learning by doing, and more.Check out Emburse at https://www.emburse.com/.
Today's guest is John Brusk, Vice President of Data Science at Emburse. Founded in 2020, Emburse humanizes work by empowering business travelers, finance professionals and CFOs to eliminate manual, time-consuming tasks so they can focus on what matters most. Emburse brings together some of the world’s most powerful and trusted expense and AP automation solutions. Emburse's innovative offerings are trusted by more than 4.5 million users in more than 120 countries. Over 14,000 customers, from startups to global enterprises, rely on Emburse to make faster and smarter decisions. They empower business travelers to recapture lost nights and weekends spent doing tedious expense management, and help make users’ lives and their businesses better. His background and what attracted him to Emburse, How Emburse are modernizing expense management, The role of Data Science and Machine Learning at Emburse, Use cases of the problems they are solving in the field, Recent success & the benefits they bring to customers, and Plans for hiring into the data team
A surging digital revolution has changed the way we work. And after a tumultuous year, executives understand the need to lead with new strategies, tools, processes, and approaches that promote adaptable growth. Carrie Foster, CFO of Frontwave Credit Union, and Katherine Edenbach, CFO of Emburse, will share what's on their minds as they lead financial operations in a resurgent economy.
As head of corporate strategy and business development at Emburse, Omar Qari is responsible for global strategic partnerships and across all brands. Omar has more than 10 years of experience in B2B software. He joined Emburse in 2018 via the acquisition of Abacus, where he served as co-founder & CEO. Before his current role, he spent a year as GM of the Abacus business. Prior to Abacus, Omar spent five years in private equity, investing in financial technologies companies.
Eric Friedrichsen is the CEO at Emburse - who humanize work by empowering business travelers, finance professionals and CFOs to eliminate manual, time-consuming tasks. Emburse has 14,000 customers for their AP and expense management solutions - from start-ups to global blue chips like Grant Thornton, Telefónica, Lufthansa and Toyota. We explored Emburse's determination to create a culture of inclusion and diversity: "If we aren't part of solving the problem we are perpetuating the problem!" We discussed their core values "SEEIT": Sincerity, Empowerment, Empathy, Individuality, Teamwork and some of their specific D&I initiatives. For example, Emburse gave all employees a vacation & "personal reflection" day on Juneteenth – prompted by the George Floyd killing and concerns about systemic racism in society. We also examined what it means to be a “customer-led” company – rather than a sales-led or product-led company. And we discussed how Emburse was helping its employees cope with the stresses of 2020 - with an unlimited PTO policy and the rollout of Emburse Unplugged Days which are compulsory 1x a month for every employee and have even led to the growing reputation of their house band “The Bad Receipts”! For more insights into Emburse check out https://www.emburse.com and for guidance on hiring world class leaders for B2B Saas startups and scaleups head over to https://alpinasearch.com
John Mills joins us to discuss changes to Peloton class filtering.AOL (AOL?) is reporting on the next, next Peloton rival.Peloton runs into another obstacle with the class action lawsuit.Do we have a new instructor on the way? Instagram posts say we might.Peloton's financing partner Affirm is reporting just how much of their business is Peloton-driven.Dr. Jenn Mann - How past trauma affects exercise.Android users can finally share the fancy video clip to their Instagram Story.The beta testing of Sessions is over and Peloton is looking for your feedback.Tonal is offering $250 off this holiday season.Wall Street Journal is talking about how people are tired of waiting for their Peloton deliveries. Popsugar sits down with Cody Rigsby.Christine D'Ercole is on the Eat For Endurance podcast.Well And Good writes about which instructors are best for certain types of workouts.Emburse has a story about unusual work-from-home expenses including a Peloton.The boutique had a small drop this week that sold out in record time.Jenn Sherman's Cover-To-Cover series debuted last week.Leanne Hainsby started a new series - Work It Out.All this plus our interview with Jeff PearlmanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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