Automating the Future of Finance and Accounting

AHEAD was recently selected to perform exclusive services under contract with a major leader in financial automation software for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). The client was dedicated to the mission of automating the future of financial management and accounting software. A network of over 7.1 million SMB clients and supply chain members relies on the client for the future of financial automation and AI solutions that help simplify and control their finances, so they can confidently manage their own businesses and downstream customers.

However, a few years ago, the client’s leadership experienced growing pains and began to take note of related internal concerns and wider economic trends. They had existing customer sites, new office sites, acquired sites, partner sites, and vendors all over the United States and as far away as Australia. They found themselves at risk of experiencing an outage that might impact any location worldwide because they did not have a dedicated global maintenance and support operation capable of monitoring network services 24x7x365.

Leaders Face Customer Challenges Head-On

Before engaging with AHEAD, the client identified the following challenges stemming from their core IT infrastructure and operations to date:

• How do we develop our platform capabilities?
• How do we increase adoption by our existing customers?
• How do we continue to acquire new customers?
• How do we support our growing network of members?
• How do we expand internationally?

The Partnership Journey with AHEAD

Driven by a strong customer-focused passion that starts with their CEO and extends throughout the entire company culture, client leadership embraced the challenges and needs of their customers. Coupling that energy with AHEAD sparked a truly transformative multi-year engagement that has already yielded back-office efficiency to all the client’s nearly half a million SMB customers.

On their journey to partner with AHEAD, executive leadership made some discoveries:

• The client recognized they needed a more robust managed services provider (MSP) capable of serving as their worldwide network operations center (NOC). They did not want to build and staff more infrastructure internally and began looking at other service providers. A central question was “which of our approved vendors can provide this service and did we enjoy working with them in the past?” They came straight to AHEAD.
• Already a well-established cloud solutions provider and experienced MSP, AHEAD demonstrated they were vigorously engaged in expanding the set of capabilities the client could in turn offer to their accounting clients.
• Client teams wanted to work with experts integrating leading technology platforms into holistic, AI-enabled solutions, not just for the primary client, but worldwide for all their market clients. Leadership knew that AHEAD already served businesses in complex, often heavily regulated environments such as healthcare, insurance, financial services, and utilities.
• The client wanted to focus on engaging with a partner who could lead the way and AHEAD emerged as a strategic innovative leader who anticipates the needs of its customers.

The initial support from AHEAD was outstanding and much appreciated. Client feedback indicated that the AHEAD team was very patient and collaborated well to document the entire client solution. The client reported that uptime was high and the volume of incidents was low; however, if someday a specific type of outage did occur, their teams felt that AHEAD provided all the information they would need, including documentation for each piece of equipment, details about its purpose, who would need access, KPIs, and runbook steps. As one project participant recalled, “they did an amazing job doing all of that.”

Leadership stressed how AHEAD took the time to meet with key stakeholders on a regular basis. AHEAD continuously and proactively monitored network performance to help staff who experienced problems in the past. Where pockets of network connectivity were poor in certain buildings, AHEAD made significant improvements.

AHEAD worked hard to earn client trust with a major multi-site Cisco networking implementation project. When the contract went out for bids, the client expressed appreciation for AHEAD’s due diligence and steady persistence. Instead of simple agreement with every detail, the client noted that AHEAD challenged assumptions. The client expressed relief because that was what they ultimately needed and weren’t getting from other vendors to move forward.

Stable Platforms, Steady Products, Stellar Results

After winning the client’s Cisco contract, other work naturally fell in place, and soon AHEAD was the clear winner for MSP, NOC/SOC, and ongoing support for other network access points. Wasting no time, AHEAD leadership implemented the following principles and achieved the following winning results:

• Hyper-focus your strategy on the needs of the client: In this case, AHEAD was supporting the finance and accounting needs of small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Today, AHEAD’s client handles transactions in all fifty states and 130 countries worldwide, has more than 2,500 employees, and has been growing steadily, pursuing a total addressable market in global B2B payment volume of over $135 trillion.[1]
• Leverage automation and AI to free up valuable staff time: The client and AHEAD capitalized on the emerging utilization of financial automation and AI to improve performance. They empowered teams to focus on strategic initiatives that drive innovation and growth even in challenging times. AHEAD applied these powerful technologies to help the client implement best practices to boost efficiency, minimize errors, and reduce costs. Today, in partnership with AHEAD, the client provides its customers with a robust offering of available platforms including iOS and Android mobile apps, domestic and international payments, virtual cards, secure multi-factor authentication (MFA), developer integration and API servers, process workflows, and a responsive Support Center featuring online customer documentation and an automated ticket system. Platform users have enjoyed 100 percent uptime over the past 12 months.
• Invest in what all customers ultimately want in the digital era: AHEAD and its client delivered innovation, automation, partnership, engagement, smooth adoption, retention, and reliability. With an expanding portfolio of innovative products, the client company has experienced 14% year-over-year growth, annualized revenues of $1.4 billion, and a 56% CAGR.

After all this growth and operational efficiency resulting from 24x7x365 monitoring and event management provided by AHEAD, a VP of Technology let us know that the client’s executive leadership team enjoys the peace of mind provided by the entire team at AHEAD and remains pleasantly happy with the support they received.