Spend management and procurement are an area ripe for innovation in an increasingly connected economy with increasingly complex needs. Yet, much of the field remains dominated by inefficient, opaque manual processes prone to human error, which impacts not only a company's bottom line but its overall culture of accountability as well. These were the frustrations that led PayEm's co-founder, artist-and-sculptor-turned-software-engineer Itamar Jobani, to develop the PayEm platform alongside Omer Rimoch in Tel Aviv, Israel.
PayEm emphasizes usability and customizability, enabling users to sculpt their own request to reconciliation process to fit their own business needs. It also works to move spend management and procurement away from a centralized top-down approach and toward a more dispersed employee-centric approach. Most recently, it has implemented an advanced algorithm that has streamlined its data classification abilities. This is part of the company's overall decision to lean hard into generative AI technologies as well, aiming to further integrate its capacities into its product line for a better user experience. PayEm hopes to automate as much of the spend management and procurement process as possible.
CEO Itamar Jobani spoke to Accounting Today about the company's recent accomplishments as well as its future plans.
How would you best describe what your company does?
Jobani: PayEm is the global spend management and procurement platform that automates the entire request to reconciliation process for finance and procurement teams. The PayEm platform is pre-integrated into customers' ERP, organically developed, and designed to meet their needs. Whether pre-approval, post-approval or no-approval, PayEm helps to create a "culture of accountability" by putting the necessary controls in place that optimize all methods in which employees spend money. Whether companies are replacing manual processes or consolidating legacy point solutions, PayEm gives finance and procurement teams complete visibility and control that drive process efficiencies, reduce risk, and lower operating costs that contribute to business growth.
What product of yours do you think should be better known among accountants?
Jobani: Accountants really like our Intake solution as the intake-to-PO process directly impacts a company's financial management and efficiency and thus helps to create a culture of accountability. With the customization capabilities for the form, workflows and approval flows, companies can streamline their entire operation.
By streamlining this process, accountants can improve several aspects of financial management, including:
- Cost control: Efficient intake-to-PO processes help businesses minimize unnecessary expenses and optimize procurement costs. Accountants can identify areas where cost savings can be achieved and ensure that the company stays within budget.
- Accurate financial reporting: A well-managed intake-to-PO process allows accountants to maintain accurate records of all transactions, ensuring that financial reports are precise and reliable. This is crucial for decision-making and regulatory compliance.
- Enhanced cash flow management: By monitoring the intake-to-PO process, accountants can track cash outflows related to procurement more accurately. This helps them manage cash flow effectively and avoid potential liquidity issues.
- Risk management: A streamlined intake-to-PO process reduces the risk of errors, fraud or non-compliance with internal and external regulations.
Accountants can thus safeguard the organization's financial health and reputation.
What was the last big initiative or project your company completed?
Jobani: Our most recent big initiative was leveraging the power of AI to drive our data classification processes, which enabled us to accurately and efficiently classify a wide range of data types such as images, receipts, invoices and more. Our advanced algorithms enable us to group these classifications into precise packets that are then further enhanced by assigning appropriate accounting labels, resulting in highly accurate and intelligent reconciliation.
By utilizing AI, we have been able to significantly enhance the efficiency, accuracy, and overall intelligence of our data classification and reconciliation processes.
What is the most exciting new thing you're working on?
Jobani: Continuing to leverage Gen AI to improve the client experience. Everything from better personalization to intaking employee requests to proactively tracking spending trends and forecasting budget risks. We want to use AI to better help companies be more intuitive of what is happening within their organizations.
What differentiates your company from others similar to it? What makes you different? Unique, even?
Jobani: We offer a customizable intake flow that expedites the request process. It gives more power to the end user (requesters) to submit a request while also helping to eliminate requisitions that shouldn't need to go to a procurement, finance and legal teams if they have these predetermined fields built out.
All employees within the company will have the ability to make requests in a quick and easy way while also giving the finance, procurement and legal teams all the data they must have to move forward with this request.
Our advantage is that with our platform a company can quickly and easily tailor the intake form to their specific needs while ensuring a streamlined and user friendly experience for their employees. Finance teams are then able to maintain full view of all requests through to reconciliations while keeping track of real-time and in-flight spend requests.
What is the biggest tech challenge facing accountants today?
Jobani: The rate of accounting technology is increasing rapidly, as more and more businesses are turning to technology to help them manage their finances. Gartner predicts that by 2024, over 45% of IT spending will be allocated to cloud-based technologies, including financial and accounting software. In keeping up with these emerging technologies accountants need to stay informed about new tools and solutions that can improve efficiency and accuracy in their work. As technology evolves, accountants need to acquire new skills and expertise to effectively utilize these tools. This is not only time-consuming but also challenging as adapting to new technologies often requires a shift in mindset and organizational culture. Accountants may face resistance from colleagues or encounter difficulties in transitioning to new ways of working.
If you could telepathically transmit one (non-marketing or sales) sentence into the head of every accountant in the world, what would that sentence be?
Jobani: Stay informed about new technology solutions and be open to incorporating them into your workflow; look to utilize digital tools to automate manual tasks, increase efficiency and gain better visibility into spend data so you can analyze spending patterns, identify cost-saving opportunities, and streamline your internal processes in real-time.
PayEm at a glance:
Founded: 2019
HQ: Tel Aviv, Israel
Employees: 100, worldwide
Website: https://www.payem.co/
Accountants served: 60% of all client POC's are accounting focused roles (Accountants, Clerk, Controller)
Number of products: 3
This has been part of our regular Vendor Spotlight series. To see previous Vendor Spotlights,
