Name: The CFO Tech Stack: Must-Have Solutions for Financial Leaders
Uploaded: 2025-10-28T16:16:07.770Z
Duration: 49 min 19 s
Description: The CFO Tech Stack: Must-Have Solutions for Financial Leaders

Transcript for "The CFO Tech Stack: Must-Have Solutions for Financial Leaders": Hi, everybody. Alright. We're gonna give folks a minute to join here. Hope everybody is having a good Tuesday. Alright. Give everybody a couple more seconds just to let folks trickle in. And with that, I think we are good to get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to, the twenty twenty five CFO's Tech Stack webinar, where we discuss your must have solutions for finance leaders. Today, we'll unpack the essential technologies every finance leader needs to drive smarter, faster, and more controlled operations. We'll show how AI automation and connected systems are reshaping finance and where Emburse fits in that transformation. My name is Taylor Decorte. I'm on the North Americans team here at Emburse and your host for today's event. Just a few housekeeping items before we get started. This session is being recorded. A copy of the recording will be emailed to you twenty four hours after the event ends. We've gone ahead and curated some additional resources for you, so be sure to check those out. You can find those in the documents tab in the engagement area to your right. At Emburse, we also encourage that you ask questions throughout our webinars and engage with your fellow peers in attendance. You can do so in that same engagement area using the chat tab and the q and a tab. And with that, we always like to start our webinars, with a poll question. So I'm gonna go ahead and open our poll question here. We really wanna know from you all which area of your finance tech stack is your top priority, as we close out 2025 and go into 2026. So I'm gonna open that poll. You should now see a poll tab in, the engagement area there if you go ahead and start submitting your votes. And And I'm gonna start sharing some of these results as they're coming in. We'll give everybody a minute to get their votes in. A couple people are still joining, so go ahead. Be sure to submit those. Looks like AI and analytics is taking that lead along with integrations. Very popular. AI is definitely a big topic. We've discussed quite a bit here at Emburse. Happy to see integrations are on here too. We're gonna talk about why all of those are important in today's webinar. And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and close out our poll for today. Thank you to those that did participate. And at this point, I'm excited to introduce our speakers. So I'm gonna have Holly and Guy join me here as well. Holly Brosam is our vice president of services here at Imperson, and Guy Larcom is our product marketing manager. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and hand it over to Holly to dive into today's webinar. Oh, Holly, you need to come on stage. Hell, Skye details. Thank you for that. There we go. Alright. Oh, so thank you very much, Taylor. Good to have everyone here on the the webinar with us today. We're excited, to be presenting to you all. So to get us started, let's talk about the future of finance. And the CFO's role has shifted from back office reporting to frontline strategy, and finance leaders today have to ensure accuracy, manage risk, optimize cash flow, and deliver insights that guide growth, all while doing more with less. I'm sure that many of us can relate to that, and and the right tech stack makes that possible. So finance is evolving fast. Leaders like you are already on the path. You're modernizing systems, automating workflows, and bringing closer policy closer to action. But the next phase isn't about catching up. It's about using intelligence to lead forward. Because when finance leads, the business follows. Today's environment demands more than ever. Legacy systems aren't just outdated. They're fragmented. Processes that worked five years ago now hold you back. Rigid platforms can't deliver the agility that today requires. And what you need now is an infrastructure that adapts, giving clarity to lead, agility to grow, and control to navigate what's next. The finance function is shifting from process execution, to insight generation. AI and automation aren't replacing finance teams. They're amplifying them. The real challenge is choosing solutions that integrate seamlessly and scale intelligently without adding complexity. Move on to the next slide here. So let's talk about some insight through integration. So most finance teams are juggling too many disconnected tools. And ERPs, spreadsheets, reporting platforms, manual workflows, all of that fragmentation waste time. It limits visibility and delays decision making. The solution isn't more software. It's integration and intelligence. CFOs in 2025 are prioritizing scalability and return on technology investments. Every tool in your stack should either increase efficiency, deliver real time visibility, or improve decision making. That's the standard we'll use to evaluate the six components of a modern finance ecosystem. These six components represent the must have financial and expense management tools for 2025, And together, they create a connected ecosystem where automation, intelligence, and measurable ROI replace manual work and disconnected processes. First is your ERP and accounting system, the backbone of everything. This is where accuracy, control, and reporting begin. The key is how easily it connects to the rest of your ecosystem. Secondly, travel expense and procurement automation. This is where most organizations still lose time and money. Automating these workflows gives finance real time visibility and spend while maintaining a seamless employee experience. And third, accounts payable and payments automation. This component accelerates invoice processing, strengthens cash flow control, and reduces risk by eliminating manual touch points from invoice to payments. Four, analytics, forecasting, and intelligence. This is where the real value emerges. When your data is unified, you can forecast accurately, identify savings, and make smarter strategic decisions. The fifth component, fraud prevention and compliance. And with built in controls, proactive alerts, and AI driven review, CFOs can protect company funds while ensuring every transaction aligns with policy. And finally, integration and scalability. And this is what ties it all together. The modern stack isn't about having more tools. It's about connecting the right ones so the information flows intelligently and scales with your business. Over the next few slides, Guy will dive into each of these components in more depth and explore how they work together to create an intelligent, efficient finance ecosystem. Awesome. Thank you, Holly. That was a perfect introduction to what we're gonna dig into now. So I think it's awesome, like, the the setup of these these six pieces is really crucial. And just as Holly noted, we're gonna start right with that core piece, what everything has to feed into ultimately, which is your ERP or accounting platform. It's a source of truth. There's a ton of these out there. You know, everything from Sage, which has a number of different ERPs for different industries, different sized businesses, Sage Intacct is one of their biggest ones, NetSuite is really similar there, Ellucian is one that we see a lot in higher ed and some similar industries, QuickBooks, SMB, ERP, SAP, Oracle. There's other names that I could throw out there, Acumatica. We've probably all heard of them. There's tons of different ERPs, but they're really that core piece. Right? It's the foundation of accuracy for all of our data, for our compliance, for our reporting, and everything needs to ultimately integrate into this. So that's really our multiplier, kind of the thing that we're considering. All the data, some point that we're collecting from people traveling, spending, vendors sending us invoices, inventory that we're getting, POs that we're sending out, all of that has to end, make its kind of final destination getting parked in the ERP where we can get that full view and full tracking of our of our business. So what we've done at Emburse, one of the most one of the most critical, elements of being in spend management, travel and expense, everything, is to have direct direct integrations via APIs into ERPs. Now there's a number of ways that you can integrate in here, of course. There's APIs are one way, there's connectors which are API based, different ways to build that sort of out of the box connectors, and we can even do this via flat file. And you'll see all of that depending on what a business or organization prioritizes and what their needs are ultimately. But some of these direct data syncs really are valuable when you can get immediate ROI without adding another layer of software. What that ultimately means is faster reconciliation, cleaner audits, one version of truth, a complete picture of your entire organization, and really the ease the best opportunity to make strategic decisions for the business going forward. What vendors do we need to go with? Do we need to make a change here? Do we need to change strategy with how we're spending or comply or or or what our thresholds are in a certain city or area, or how did a project turn out. It's really key that all of this can can integrate into that ERPP. So that's really our our baseline foundational element. And the biggest thing here is that whatever systems you do end up putting into that into that the finance office stack, they should integrate in some really, clean, seamless way with your ERP. So automation integration are key, and in t and e, they unlock cost savings, compliance, employee satisfaction, all at once. With tools so what we built at Emburse is a complete stack that really works with your ERP and and gives you all of the opportunities here. Now every single one of these pieces, it's really an understanding of your organization, what's being prioritized, what your needs are, how you do business, all of that kind of stuff. But with tools like these, some of the ones here that we'll that we'll talk about include EmburseBooks, that's a booking tool for for managed travel, a reshop tool, so that's actually getting a getting a better price on all of your shop all of your, travel that you that your employees are that your employees are doing, folio, things like AI powered receipt capture, mobile friendly expense management so that employees that are out on the road are able to capture all of their expenses easily, quickly without too much extra effort on their part, but also better data integrity when these things are arriving at approvers, inboxes, or in the finance office when you need to be reporting. All of that ultimately is gonna give CFOs, the best visibility and employees are gonna get a frictionless experience. That's really what we wanna get to here. Make it easy for employees so they're gonna adopt and do everything that you would you would want them to do. That ultimately gives CFOs, controllers, accountants, everyone in the finance office the best view and the best opportunity to make strategic decisions and not get bogged down sort of day to day looking over everything, readjusting allocations, determining what the purpose of an invoice or a expense or a certain trip was. If we can get all that ahead of time, you're gonna get the best view. So that's really what all this makes up into a complete, travel expense and really spend solution for an organization. So let's get to that first one to start. Flexible travel booking is where all of this kind of starts. And now not every organization is using a man or has a managed travel program today, but it's definitely something to consider. And And what's been really interesting to see in the industry is that this has gone managed travel sort of went from something that a really large organization had because they wanted to make sure people, you know, were within the right policies, were were were honestly safe on the road. They had full a full picture of where everyone's going, all of that kind of stuff. They have, you know, different negotiated rates. The opportunities within managed travel, because the costs have come down, because a lot of the the ways to manage it across the full spectrum have have adjusted, It's become something that organizations in the mid market and even the small the small and medium sized business space are able to, are able to take advantage of, which has really been great. So there's lots of opportunities. We've seen it across the industry. And booking is the first piece here. Right? It's often it's kind of often an overlooked step for the reasons I just noted, but it really sets the tone for everything else. With Emburse, the best one of the one of our biggest, one of the things that is most valuable to our customers is that you have options. We actually have a a booking tool called EmburseBook. It's a modern tool. It's got a great interface. It helps you make sure that everybody is booking in compliance, that you're getting savings, you'll get sustainability information on flights and hotels. And whether you're booking air, car, hotel, or rail, you can always stick with your current setup. So we integrate across the ecosystem with GDS, NDC, LCC, and direct direct connect content, which means better fares, policy enforcement in real time, and full data capture for your organization. So, ultimately, you're not missing visibility when bookings happen outside the system, and that's definitely gonna happen because adoption of a managed travel program is sort of the the never ending challenge for every organization. So the more easy you can make it for your employees to do what you're asking for them, better prices you get, better visibility that you get, the more opportunities you get to make decisions. Like reshop, which we're gonna talk about, reshop, expense, and ESG tracking, you're actually building a smarter travel program from the start. So that's why this is really a great way to sort of couch everything is at this first point at which employee is interacting with the program, making decisions, is with the booking. So ultimately, the choice is yours. No matter how your travelers book, you'll gain the insight, control, and automation to manage your spend better. So once travel is booked, you need to capture insights so that you can take advantage of the opportunities that are gonna be offered to your organization. Emburse reshop is one way to do this. What Reimburse ReShop does is it constantly looks for better fares and rates, and it can even recommend an alternate alternate hotel when it makes sense for a booking. So what I'm getting at here is say your employee, you know, they have a trip coming up two months from now, say it's in December or January, they book airfare, they book hotel. What ReShop will do is actually watch that inventory. It'll understand, you know, what is the hotel that that has been booked here, what type of hotel, what are the amenities, and it'll actually watch the inventory that's in the GDS or wherever the inventory came from. And if it finds a better price, it can rebook it immediately at, you know, $50 savings or a percentage savings rate. And if you do that at scale, you actually can save a lot of money on the on on your your corporate travel program. The the larger the program, obviously, the greater the savings, great opportunity for lowering cost, raising ROI, and really proving the value of a managed travel program. The next piece here is Folio. And what Folio does is it takes hotel and car receipts and automatically extracts and itemizes the data and fills it in for your end users. Ultimately, this eliminates, manual entry and, you know, we've seen a minimum of 95% accuracy almost all the time. It's higher than that. And what this is really great about is that when you have a, you know, different hotel folios, across all different properties, different locations, there's all different taxes, charges, room room charges, you know, different, you know, what's it called? Excuse me. Local city taxes, but, room service, things like that. You can break these out into line items, and you'll need to for the accounting piece. But this way, you're not leaving on your users to figure out how to do it. They do it on their own. They're able to everything get or they don't they don't do it automatically. Everything makes it in, and ultimately, you get a better picture here. The beauty of this too is that because we're using AI to do this Folio piece, we can actually successfully, transcribe and extract the data from almost any folio. All different hotels have and different brands have their different formats, different setups, you know, the headers here in one in one look or it's different in another, but from Hilton to Marriott, we're able to go across all of that and really get all of the data in, which creates clear benefits. Time savings for your users and for your approvers who don't have to go in there and make sure it should this be itemized. I don't even know. What elements do I need to pull off of this? What is what is accounting gonna ask for? Helps the approver and then also helps the accounting office, of course, when they're not asking for those pieces when it arrives there. This gives smarter policy checks with access to those itemized lines also. So you can know, like, hey. You're not supposed to be getting room service based on where you're traveling, or you already had a per diem, or you know what's going through it. So you can really apply policy at a much more granular level and just get a better understanding of what kind of spending is happening across all of your all of your travel. This creates less effort and more accuracy. And now as I was just mentioning, Emburse AI is taking Folio even further. So the speed is one of the biggest things here. Extraction extraction happens as fast as a regular receipt. Mobility is really big here. So you can upload any way you want. It could be emailed in, it could be a mobile. So a lot of times we'll get the Folio emailed to us after we leave the hotel. You can just forward that into, the Emburse email address and what'll happen is that'll end up in the user's account. It'll be itemized. They can take care of it that way. But if they get a printout, they can also just snap a picture and that will work. Excuse me for one moment. Sorry. And ultimately, the accuracy I was talking about. This is really adaptable to any hotel format anywhere in the world, and this drives efficiency. So as new fields like check-in and check out dates get added, plus bulk edit for quick adjustments if, like, something like business purpose or some of the common fields across a receipt like this need to be updated, a user can do that really easily. So this is really, really laying down the foundation for everything that goes through the process. So next, one of the big, additions that we've made to our portfolio and to the experience for our users is that in January, we launched a new unified experience across mobile and desktop for our Emburse portfolio. The new experience offers approvers and submitters a mobile first suite for expense, invoice, and travel. So that's really that full spectrum, from pre approvals to on trip itinerary management to export to expense report submission. The new experience makes expense tracking simple for employees and efficient for accounting offices. Something we're always trying to make sure is improving, getting faster and getting better. Because that's this the interesting thing about travel and spend management like this is it touches so much of the business. Right? We're relying on our end users to do to to do their part so that the people, all of us in the accounting office, can make the best decisions and not be doing some of the tedious rework that otherwise can happen. So this new experience makes expense tracking simple for employees, efficient for accounting officers. Sorry, I just said that. Mobile first, enterprise ready. Multiple page receipts are something that this can capture really easily, PDF uploads, and there's even offline access. So what we mean by that is you can capture receipts, you know, you're on your flight, you don't have mobile, you don't have WiFi that day on it. You can actually capture your receipts and those will get uploaded once the once the once the device is then connected to WiFi or Internet once again. So that offline access is really helpful, you know. Why not use the why not use the the the airplane ride for something can something, productive like that that you don't wanna be doing on your own time later. We also provide approvals for expenses, invoices, and POs on the go. So that's another easy thing that people can be doing. They can take care of these things, you know, riding a train from in once they get to a city, take care of some of these things that are otherwise a bit tedious, get in the way of, like, the real work that they wanna be doing. And finally, within this single mobile app, you can manage your itinerary on a trip and submit expense reports. But the man the itinerary management is really cool. So as an employee books their trips, they can get all of it into the mobile app, and they can actually see, you know, when's my flight? Where's my where's my car ride coming from? Did I book an Uber already? And then where's my hotel? And if there are any changes, delays to their flights, the the app captures that and can tell them, you know, what gate do they need to be at? Are they delayed? And sometimes, interestingly, because the data that we're connected into isn't just from the airline, it's actually from, some of the central, repositories for this data, we should get the update a little bit before the airline even ends up sharing it. So not a guarantee all the time, but it's definitely a really convenient way to get your users using one space. It gets them even more comfortable with their expense app and gets everything in one area for them. So really helpful. And really soon, we're gonna have a, the Emburse Book and Reshop integration, which is gonna make it really easy for users to accept when there's a a new a new a new price for a hotel or airfare and help you get savings even better. So this piece right here is really critical. I think it lays a lot of the the key pieces for your, end users to really follow your policies and adopt your platform, as you get into it. So with that, let's move into the accounts payable section. And accounts payable can definitely be one of the more manual and error prone areas of finance. And when we talk about automating AP, it's not just about speed and velocity velocity, it's about strategic financial agility. With Emburse Invoice, everything from invoice intake, so that's the capture, you know, invoice arrives, whether it's email or, you know, a physical a physical p or a physical, physically mailed, invoice, or any other way that that somebody wants to submit it. Inverse Invoice really covers everything from that invoice piece to approval, routing, and payment payment execution, which can happen automatically. But AI driven matching, we can ensure that invoices align with your POs and the goods receipts instantly. And that's really critical. Right? You need to know that what you requested and what you ordered matches to what with what you're being billed for and with what you received. So the beauty of this also is not only can you make sure those match, but often you know there might be a little bit of difference. There might be a pricing difference that occurs, an inventory amount. And when you're doing that at scale at a really high volume, what you really need to be able to do is put in exception handling. So if there is a discrepancy along that, you can actually automatically route that invoice, the PO, goods receipts to the person who needs to take a look and figure out what the adjudication needs to be. Do we need to go back to the vendor and make a change? Or are we gonna be okay with this? What kind of write off do we have to go with? But that's that's really critical and something that not every platform offers is that rules based exception handling that can then get it to the right person to solve the problem. Otherwise, somebody has to go to a queue of these, make decisions, figure out where they need to go with everything, not a great situation. Now a great opportunity in AP also is that virtual cards help to streamline supplier payments. This also reduces fraud risk, and ultimately, when you're using a card for something like this, you can earn rebates on spend. So you get a little bit of savings on all of that vendor spend that you're making. When you put all this together, what is the result? You get faster. You get a faster cycle, you get better control, and you get full visibility into every dollar that's going out the door of your organization. That's critical. Right? We need to know that for our bottom line, for our reporting, whether that's to our board, to investors, shareholders, however, we really need to know that. We need to be able to make key decisions to where where we can find opportunities for savings or greater ROI. So we get through all of that. And what's the next piece? Well, immerse travel and expense analytics, provide forecasting and are the ultimate outcome of automation integration. But a lot of times, people struggle to connect data with meaningful business insights. Emburse analytics provides the visibility that CFOs and all of their accounting and finance offices need to turn spend data into strategic insights and decisions. What you can find here are opportunities where there's hidden savings, you can find supplier risk, and you can improve forecasting accuracy. So here's just a few of the key strategic questions that TD Analytics can help you answer. And one of them is just, is a lack of compliance costing us money? Are people making the wrong decisions? Are they going to the wrong hotels? Are people not using our negotiated rates? Is that making us spend more? You can actually see that within some of these analytics reports that we're able to help you set up and find within that. A really interesting one is you can see how does my spending compare to companies like mine. So within our travel and analytics platform, because we're pulling in all that data from different travel vendors and resources and TMCs, you can we can actually show you what does a company similar to your size, in a similar industry, spend on hotels or flights. And you can even align this to, you know, different locations or different brands of hotels. So understand, should we be going and negotiating a better price when our travelers go to Dallas, San Francisco, or Tulsa, Oklahoma? Who knows? But this is a really helpful vision or visual you can get. You can also find out once you've made those decisions and you've negotiated some contracts, our suppliers honoring our contract agreements. You know, you wanna know, like, are we getting that $200 a night rate? Are they charging us more when there's an event in town and their and prices seem to be higher? And we've agreed that they wouldn't do that. Am I overpaying for certain amenities? And you can see by what amount, so you can really kinda bring to the table what is it that you want to negotiate for and what is reasonable. When you gain a complete picture of spend with this in channel, out of channel breakdown, you can really see how it all compares across, you know, your peers, and you can quantify how much you are overspending versus those those negotiated rates. So we're really building this out. We're always looking for more opportunities to to deliver on the insights that we can provide to organizations and this is a really valuable thing, that you get and, you know, you build up everything we talked about leading up to this. You're able to get the best data here, you're able to make those decisions and just drive that ROI for your entire program. So now we gotta get into some even deeper elements of this, which is AI fraud detection. And AI fraud detection starts during the planning process. So an interesting thing, Forrester, we all know the analytic the, what do they call these? Analyst firm. They predict that AI fraud detection can help cut losses by 50% by twenty twenty six. The reality is that money is moving faster than people can through our apps, cards, approvals, you know, sometimes there's that rubber stamp approval that can happen, often before finance even gets to see it. So the money might go out the door before we really get to apply, you know, some amount of review or approval or look at it. Without some intelligence, the risk, you know, it seeps into every crack. It can. With ex with expense intelligence from Emburse, you can stop it before it happens, which takes us which shifts us from a reactive control stance to proactive foresight. So let's talk about what that looks like. What we have and what we're bringing to market on this is something called Emburse Assurance. And what Emburse Assurance does is it uses machine learning to detect non compliant compliance spend before approval, and in some cases, even before submission. Policies, compliance, audit, and fraud are top are have always been top of mind for finance leaders, but I think it's becoming bigger as AI provides new opportunities for fraud, and also new opportunities for us to catch it. And that's what we really wanna really wanna pursue. The reality is users just aren't always even aware of policy. So So fraud isn't always nefarious. Sometimes it's mistaken. Or our users just adopt them more slowly when they change. They don't aren't aware of them. We're asking them to read, you know, all the emails we send out or a certain policy document. People just aren't always up to date on everything. So there's also data quality challenges within this, from transaction coding, receipt accuracy. All of that can create some downstream risk. And even with good systems, checks can be in the wrong place, leaving the inefficiencies or some of that back and forth for approvers and end users. And really the employee wants to get their money back, approvers wanna get back to doing whatever their normal job is, whether that's managing a team, making key decisions, not asking about, you know, why this this receipt needs to be itemized, or we need this information. As businesses evolve, policies are quickly becoming out of date or misaligned. And historically, compliance relied on, pre submit checks followed by post submit audits. The approach works, but there's really room for improvement, and Inverse Assurance is designed to complement our existing processes and imply a tell apply intelligent apply intelligence where it creates the most impact. Real life act so some real life applications here, or there are numerous runs and the stakes really couldn't be higher. Despite all the progress in finance tech, fraud and waste are everywhere. Just a few examples that have happened, Macy's lost a $152,000,000 in a scandal. Earlier this year, a professor was arrested for using 60,000 in use of university funds to pay for 19 personal trips. These are just the horror stories. I think for the most part, people do this by mistake. Not $60,000, but some of the issues here are by mistake. And they probably actually the volume adds up to more than these, but these are just the examples of something when somebody really makes a decision. Another one is just this past April, a travel agent plead guilty to $200,000 in fraudulent expenses including a completely fake trip for for a university basketball team. I don't know how people pull these off, honestly. And in our own proof of concept, we found the same issues again and again. You find duplicate first class tickets that get billed twice, sometimes fake ATM slips, file as client entertainment, or fake receipts, which can now be created with AI. We've seen headlines for that. Pet travel receipts being submitted for reimbursement. What we what all this just adds up to is we know that risk mitigation and ESG compliance are key drivers to AI adoption. Finance leaders today are expected to stay ahead of these evolving regulations, including ones like SOX compliance, GDPR, monitoring our in policy transactions. But we also don't wanna sacrifice innovation and user experience. So with that, I'm gonna pass it back to Holly to kinda give us a, the full picture here. Alright. Thanks, Zach. That was a lot of great information. And so now let's let's bring it back, together here. So all of these components become exponentially more powerful when they're connected. Inverses, open integrations with ERPs, BI tools, and payment systems unify your financial data into one connected ecosystem. That means faster reporting, fewer errors, and more flexibility as your organization grows or changes, and that is what modern CFOs are prioritizing, scalable infrastructure that gives them both control today and adaptability for tomorrow. To scale efficiently, your finance systems must work together. Start with your ERP as the foundation, as we've mentioned a couple of times in our session today, automate the operational processes, use analytics for decision support, and connect everything through open integrations. Emburse platforms sit at the center of this, unifying spend data across systems. So when you implement these strategies, you move beyond process automation and achieve true expense intelligence. CFOs need connected intelligent systems that streamline every part of finance, from travel and expense to accounts payable and payments. AI, automation, and integrations drive the efficiency and insight needed to manage proactively, not reactively. Evaluating your tech stack through ROI and scalability ensures every solution earns its place at the table and delivers measurable value. And when those elements work together, that's when expense intelligence takes shape. Giving your organization real time control, like flagging noncompliant hotel bookings the moment they're made. Empowered employees with compliant travel and expense options that still support personal preference. Organizational agility, enabling teams to rebook, redirect, or adapt spend instantly when business conditions change. And that's the future of finance leadership, not just managing the spend, but mastering it. So let's take a look at the customer impacts here. So from hindsight to foresight now, let's ground this on the outcomes. This isn't a theory. Our customers are already realizing the value. A global manufacturer saved $800,000 by identifying fraud before it hit finance. Slalom slashed twenty hours a week of manual work and hit 89% with the compliance. BASF gained three hundred and fifty plus hours a month back just in analytics prep. These aren't expense stories. They're intelligence stories, and they show what's possible when you have the right tools in place, And that's what happens when intelligence replaces hindsight. So as we look ahead to 2026, CFOs are entering a new era of digital finance, one defined by connected intelligence, not isolated tools. The trends we're seeing are very clear. Finance leaders are consolidating tech stacks, doubling down on automation and prioritizing platforms that deliver real time data for faster, more confident decisions. So how do you evaluate the technologies that will carry your team forward? Focus on these five criteria, integration with ERP and existing systems. Data silos are the enemy of agility. Your solutions should connect natively with your ERP and analytics tools to create a single source of truth. Next, automation of manual error prone tasks. Every repetitive process is an opportunity for efficiency. Look for systems that reduce touch points and free your team for strategy. Third, real time visibility and analytics. Finance can no longer operate on month end reporting. You need continuous insight to make daily data driven decisions. Four, scalability and security. As your organization evolves, your tools must adapt. Cloud native modular platforms like Inverse ensure you can scale without losing control. And finally, measurable ROI and payback. Every system should prove its value through time saved, risk reduced, and dollars recovered, not just in year one, but year over year. Any tool that doesn't meet these criteria isn't modernization, it's maintenance. The next generation of finance technology should give you the real time control, predictive insight, and flexibility to evolve as business conditions change. That's the path to expense intelligence and the foundation for success in 2026 and beyond. And as we close out our session and our slides for today, so this conversation isn't just about technology. It's about setting your finance team up for success. Success in 2025 means giving your people the right foundation, 2025 and 2026. Connected systems, automated workflows, and intelligent insights that eliminate the noise. And let them focus on what really matters, strategic decisions. Expense intelligence is the outcome of that foundation. When your travel, expense, accounts payable, and payment processes work together through automation and AI, you give your teams clarity with real time visibility into every transaction. Confidence knowing compliance and accuracy are built in, capacity to shift from manual work to value creation. That's how finance teams thrive when tools empower people and not burden them. At Emburse, we're proud to help organizations build that environment where efficiency and insight fuel growth, and finance becomes a true strategic partner to the business. Thank you for joining us today and taking the time to explore how you can set your team up for success in 2026 and beyond. And with that, I think we still have a few minutes left for questions. Taylor? Yeah. Thank you, Guy and Holly. That was a very informative webinar, and I hope our audience agrees. Before And with that, I think we'll open we'll take a couple of questions here. So, first one, AI is is a popular topic. Right? We we talk quite a bit about it. And these days, what what's the most practical way to start using AI in finance currently? Holly, do you wanna take that, or would you like me to? Yeah. I'll I'll take that. Thanks. So I would say that the fastest path to value isn't building a giant AI road map. It's finding one or two everyday pain points that eat up time and testing the AI in those situations. Think about summarizing meeting notes, triaging support tickets, surfacing insights from customer feedback, start small, learn fast, and scale from proof to process. So the trick isn't really about adopting AI. It's about integrating it seamlessly into your workflows over time so that it becomes invisible, but indispensable. Absolutely. Guy, do you have anything you wanna add to there? I think Holly covered it really well. I would just even then point to some additional specific items. I mean, you wanna make sure, like, when we really get down to some of the nitty gritty that we've talked about today, it's like, you know, make sure that AI LMs are the basis of some of your fraud models or what's doing your document transcription, so for receipts, for invoices, those are really the implementation of AI into some of these workflows that doesn't take learning any sort of new skills or adding new processes, but really, increases the the the value of what you're doing there and and remove some of the workload. So just finding those those smaller opportunities because it can be overwhelming. I definitely see it across everything right now. Perfect. Thank you. And, I have two similar questions here, but we'll start with, for teams that are still, using manual expense approvals, what's the best place for them to start adding automation to their processes? So in this case, it's really adopting a, expense management tool. So if you're still moving through a manual process, finding a great platform that works for your needs, Emburse is definitely one. I'm not biased at all, obviously, but I can definitely say that this it's one of the better ones that, one of the it's the best one on the market. But just finding a tool that helps you to start make it so, you know, capturing receipts, capturing data is automated and then routing that through an approval process, whatever that means for your organization, whether that's through managers, project managers, or just straight from the employee to their manager to the accounting office. I think that's one of the best options. But that that's really the starting piece is just finding a way to get a little more control, apply a little bit more compliance policy over the over the, processes. Would you have anything to that, Holly? I think you summed it up perfectly, Guy. Yep. Agreed. Perfect. And we actually have, a question here going back to, Emburse Book and Reshop. Do we I don't know, Guy, if we have a timeline on this one, but, do we have an idea of when Emburse Book and Reshop will be integrated with the core Emburse app? Do we have any information we can provide you? Exact road map plan there. Unless, Holly, you have specific information. That's something I would need to check on. So we can take that down and probably send an email back out after that. But let's just make sure we get the exact info on that. Okay. Great. But we can't is it in the works? Do we have any information we can provide there? I believe that is on the road map. It's just oh, go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just gonna say, guys, same thing. It is definitely on the road map, but we need to confirm is the timing of it in 2026. Mhmm. Gotcha. Sorry. I was pushing for a little bit of an answer there. We could give some in number. Perfect. We have somebody who's using, Emburse Professional for their credit card management. How would moving to an Emburse credit card, change or improve that process? That's a great question and this is actually a really interesting decision that a lot of organizations can make. The nice so it's great because one of the things that we do offer is both the opportunity to bring in your credit card that might be issued by a bank or a treasury relationship that you have, and we also have Emburse Cards. Now, the cool thing is that one provides you that treasury relationship. You might get great rebates, different loan terms, all these different things from your bank by using their corporate card program. But sometimes, what you also need is something more efficient and easier way to make spending available to your employees without asking them to spend out of pocket. And embossed cards, really provide that opportunity. You can add rules to them, you know, you can add a spending limit, you can make sure if only certain merchants are available, you can give time like when how long a card works, you can also just turn it off when you need to. And so really the benefit is additional flexibility, the ability to move away from having to ask your employees always to spit out of pocket. Now there's also even a little nuance there. Sometimes employees want that, employees who travel a lot sometimes get a lot of rewards based on that, but the real the real benefit is that, you know, you get this better control, it's a little bit easier for employees, you can guide things faster, and then you also do get a rebate in the end if you spend, certain amounts. So that can also be a really helpful element as you take spending that would otherwise occur on, maybe an out of pocket card or, I mean, if you're getting if you already have your, the card. If the spending would have been on another corporate card, you're probably still getting rebates there, but it's another opportunity for that. So it adds flexibility, it'll add add some automation, you get a little bit better data, easier for your employees. There's a number of ways, but the real the real power is exactly what what that question is getting at, which is that you can have both that traditional corporate card feed and then also use Emburse cards, in in parallel. So that's a great opportunity. Perfect. Thanks, Guy. I think we'll take one more we'll do one more question here before we end today. Curious for for those with smaller or midsize finance teams, who don't maybe have the resources to overinvest in software, what are some ways that they can start investing and building their tech stack? Great question. I think it's, I mean, the biggest thing here is finding the right tools, finding the and and what that means so you're gonna need an accounting platform. I think there's some great ones for SMB, for midsize for midsize organizations. To not over invest, what you really wanna do is not just say, okay. I've heard all the values. I've heard all the things that I could be doing. You have to find the best opportunity within your organization to add automation. I'm gonna guess that's probably in some of the employee spending areas and approval processes and making sure that, you know, taking some things off the plate of your employees, but also making sure you grab their data and then making things easier for your accounting office. So ultimately, it's about discovering where are the biggest bottlenecks in our process today, the biggest challenges, the things that slow people down and take them away from anything strategic the most, Who's that who's experiencing that the most, and then finding the tools that are gonna most help them. So that might be your employees on the road need more time. Let's start getting some kind of expense management process there. Maybe it's maybe it's different. Maybe there's not a lot of travel going on, but you have an accounts payable office that's just underwater having to deal with so many invoices coming through, checking them all, so that might be the place to start. So it's really aligning, the tools that you invest in to the needs and challenges of your organization. And I think by asking those questions internally, a little bit of survey, a little bit of meeting with some of those key folks, you can find those opportunities. That's a great call out, Guy. And I think that, one of the things in Burst as well is we try and find solutions for companies of all sizes. So we work with small business, mid mid market and enterprise levels. And if you guys are interested in learning more about Emburse and the solutions, we have available for you, I would definitely check out, that resource set up time with an Emburse rep. We have a link to do so in that docs tab. Also want to call out in that document tab as well. Our next webinar is going to be November 18. We have an, an analyst rep from IDC joining us who has a lot of great, information and background, experience in fraud. So we'll be talking about expense fraud red flags and best practices to prevent fraud within your SPIN program. So definitely check out our next webinar and make sure to register for that one because it'll be a good one. And with that, I wanna thank everybody for their time today. Thank you, Holly and Guy, again. Excellent webinar. Appreciate you guys, joining us, and I hope everybody has a good rest of their day. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. Bye.