E2: How to get paid faster - with Ali Hussain

The number one reason people don't get paid on time is they don't invoice on time.

You know, you need to solve everything. You need to solve the end to end process. What do you think is the biggest bottleneck and and the the weakest link in that process?

The number one reason most businesses have to hire a ton of people, pay a ton of professional services, try to duct tape their CRM to their ERP, it's the contracts.

If you break down the contract to cash, what you're saying is contract to invoice, invoice to cash, people think that the problem is in the latter, and it's more often than not in the former.

Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

You're listening to the 10x Finance Podcast. Quick, candid conversations with the people shaping modern finance.

Hosted by Albert Gozzi.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the 10x Finance Podcast, where we dive into what separates good from great finance teams. I'm your host, Albert Ghosse, co founder and CEO of Aleph, and I'm joined by Ali Hussein, who is co founder and CEO of TAPS, an AI powered revenue automation tool. Today, we'll be diving into how to get paid faster.

Ali, it's great to have you. Are you ready to jump in?

Absolutely, Albert. Thanks so much for having me and super excited to have this very timely discussion. Always a pleasure.

Thanks for being here. Maybe just to set the stage, Ali, about collections.

How does the collections process evolve over the last five, ten years? Is different in today's day and age?

Yeah. I think that the most interesting thing, Albert, is if I look back how most companies did this five years ago, and even today, I think it is the most status quo of most of finance. Meaning, five years ago, the process was as painful as, say, spend management or AP, where you had to grab a piece of unstructured data. Like in spend, it used to be a receipt or a vendor agreement. In revenue, it's often a contract, an MSA, or an order form. I think we've seen how much advancements have happened on the spend side with a ton of automation, AI, and modern software. In revenue and collections, it's effectively for most companies the same as five years ago.

Grab a contract from Salesforce, a human reads it, they transcribe it and build an invoice into typically an ERP module, and they send it. They do a bunch of follow ups. They look for payment in their payment processor like a Stripe, or they log into their bank account and look for pending credits. They mark them as paid, and they go upon their days. So for most organizations, the actual technological change five years ago to now is pretty status quo, and that's something that's the reason why we're so excited to build around this space.

And Aleph, why do you think that's the case? Because I can definitely see what you're saying, right? Every part of the Office of the CFO has established companies. There's not a clear winner in this space. And, of course, TAPS is emerging to be that. Why do you think it's the case? Why is it so hard?

Yeah. Really look, in a lot of areas, I think we are yet to see AI value.

This is one of the areas where I generally believe there's been a true reset period now. And and the reason is is if you actually think about most businesses, the way they do their commercial kind of agreements with their customers is very different. They have different contract types within not only the business, each of their customers, they have different contracts. They have different products, different pricing, different terms like renewal clauses and SLAs.

They have different discounts. And so why I think there's been no innovation in the last five years, even as we've seen advancements in so many other areas, even pre COVID or pre AI, is that fundamentally, this is a very much a data problem. And the way to automate this upstream data around contracts, usage, key commercial context, which we would call the commercial graph, was just not plausible until late twenty twenty three and early twenty twenty four. And so I don't think it's because people haven't recognized that there's a problem.

They haven't been able to wrap their head around what's a better way to handle this because the concept of AI is so so revolutionary for us in this moment.

So so what you're saying is that in this problem space, there's such a long tail of things that you need to account for that it's just not it's not possible to solve it without AI coming to the rescue or playing a big part.

Exactly. The way I always parallel path it is like, I mean, if you take a business like Rippling, Parker Conrad would have said he built this amazing and rich employ graph.

Counterargument I would make is the employ graph, though really important information, is far more simplistic and consistent business to business. Whereas the customer graph or the commercial graph, as we call it at tabs, is way too rich, diverse, and dynamic, where it just wouldn't be plausible to automate with structured data fields, which is how most SaaS was built over the last decade. And so AI has become this amazing enabler to actually be able to codify and structure this data in a way that we can actually automate things around revenue such as billing and collections, which was your original question.

Makes sense. And I think you were laying out nicely kind of like some of the process of everything that needs to happen from the contract to interpreting it, to billing, to following up.

What do you think is the biggest Where do you think the bottleneck You know, you need to solve everything. You need to solve the end to end process. What do you think is the biggest bottleneck and the weakest link in that process?

Yeah. It's really interesting. When we started the company, we were so caught up with all of the areas you could use AI and build better software and services. And everyone was like, have to send different invoice types and you have to maybe do phone calls and phone agents and offer all types of fintech and payments and factoring.

And sure, there's some value additive in all of that. The number one reason we have found in the tens of thousands of invoices we process a month, is the number one reason people don't get paid on time is they don't invoice on time. And so if you think about most businesses, they have a net thirty, and in their contracts, they have an invoice date and a due date. If you miss that contract to invoice period, within the first day of when that invoice is due, or invoices, the date is versus the due date, the time it will the likelihood it'll hit that net payment term is almost impossible.

So for most businesses, if they have days to pay that are more in the fifties and sixties, they often wanna blame the customer. They wanna blame their email sequences, and their dotting, and their deliverability, and their payment rails? Sure. But then foundational problem typically is is on a net thirty, they're sending the invoice on day fifteen, and the AP side is saying, you know what?

You don't have your house in order. I have fifty invoices I have to pay this month.

I'm not the user. I'm not the buyer of this product. I'm just frankly the AP department, and I have to manage who I'm gonna pay out. If you don't have your house in order, I'm gonna pick another vendor who's more on top of it. And so, Albert, that is like, out of all of the secret sauce, our number one, like, core metric is once a contract comes in, that invoice gets out within twenty four hours.

Makes sense, and, yeah, that resonates so much. Yeah. If you break down the contract to cash, what you're saying is contract to invoice, invoice to cash, people think that the problem is in the latter and it's more often than not in the former.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Is that something that, as you set out to start Tabs, was that your hypothesis, or is that something that you learned by working with your customers? Was it surprising, or was it what you expected?

Yeah. So when we started the business, one of the things, and credit some of our early investors for giving us just the space, we were we weren't sure. We knew that there was a broader revenue challenge in finance and mostly tied to the fact that there had not been major end of innovation in AR and rev rec relative to AP spend and procurement. But the actual root cause and where AI was going to enable things, we were quite open minded on.

And it was probably four months into our discovery journey where I was on with a controller, and he kinda turned around on the call and said, hey, Aleph, it has nothing to do with x or y. It's the contract, stupid. The number one reason most businesses have to hire a ton of people, pay a ton of professional services, try to duct tape their CRM to their ERP, it's the contracts. And so I think that planted a seed, and then we then, over hundreds of more calls in the subsequent months, both found design partners, but also really validated what does the contract stupid mean.

And we were able to unpack a lot of the insights I'm I'm happy to share with your listeners today.

Yeah. And and and it's crazy how, you know, you're in, a multiyear journey and and how can you trace it back to one specific conversation that you seem to remember quite a bit. I think it's the it's it's that one conversation that makes the other worth it where where it sets you in that direction.

Hundred percent. Like, I often some of the most interesting problems to solve are the most simple to understand, and I always credit some of the partners in their early journey that explained their challenges in such simple terms. It resonated so much.

So if we're to go back to the question of how to get paid faster, I think there's the obvious answer, which is you should implement TAPs and make your life easier. What are some other things that companies and and finance teams can do to, like, speed up that process?

Yeah. I I think a few things. One is there's, some proactive information just upfront. It's super helpful to have.

Often sales gets the deal done, never asks for who the right billing contact is. Incredibly important. Usually, the person signing the order form or the buyer of your product is not the person on the other hand who's going to pay. And so I think there's some like data hygiene upfront that lives in, often doesn't live in CRM, could be just simply added to an order form or a contract that could be drastically a quick win to make sure you get paid on time.

I think that's really important.

I think there's other, like, hygienic information that contracts can have, like clear renewal terms, tax, how tax is going to be treated. I think those also help. I think keeping the optional optionality to run non credit card payments if it's helpful. Like, those all of those, like, think more optionality and clarity is something that if you can upfront capture in the contract itself, it can make the entire journey so much easier.

Perfect. So you're saying it's a data, it's having the right data, having the right inputs, and if you have those, then the rest of the problems can be solved.

If you don't have the right underlying fundamental data, things are very, very hard and Just simple hygiene.

We're not asking to change your pricing. We're not changing to add new documentation. It's just those two or three small things.

If you can add as a part of the DocuSign or have your AE fill out a quick form and submit that in HubSpot or a platform like Tabs, it can just make everything over the life cycle of a customer so much easier. And it's not only for you as the vendor, but also for your customer. Your customer are generally they're good actors. They're excited about the product. They wanna pay you, etcetera. But like, if you're the buyer and you don't think you're the payer, and you think it's going to AP, you're not even opening up these invoice emails and reminders. Like you're just, in many cases, letting it go to spam and it creates so much waste in the world of AR.

Makes a lot of sense. Aleph, this has been great. And I think like the audience can have a very great tactical takeaways to get paid faster, which I think everyone will happy about. We like to end with this rapid fire set of questions. Are you ready to go there?

Let's do it. I'm excited.

Alright. The first question is, what's one mistake that you see finance teams make over and over again?

Yeah. I think I'll give you two hot takes. One is this belief that they're gonna standardize their contracts. And I've seen this over and over.

A new finance leader comes in and says, look, this is all the founders who did this or my former CRO. I'm going to standardize contracts. And and I think I always believed that was false because as you go more up market, the buyer has more power in the agreement and says, look, I'm Verizon. You use my procurement contract.

I'm not gonna touch your MSA. And so I think contract standardization and this false belief that that's coming has been a great mistake. And I think the second is relying on CPQ indefinitely. I think like in a world of more AI and agentic products, pricing is going to change in a way we don't even understand.

And so the amount of just over tooling I'm seeing of CRM systems versus building systems that give you more flexibility, I feel like some folks are still laying on to the five year old rigid mechanisms to try to enable controls and automation. Those are just two things I often see. And I'm I'm like, man, like, how how do I thoughtfully walk people through where I see the world going?

So what you're saying is embrace the chaos, embrace the complexity.

A hundred percent. That doesn't mean there's not great systems to make this all more compliant and sustainable, but you must reimagine the way you did this many five years ago, because a lot of things have already changed in terms of the technologies available. But also, there's gonna be a lot of chaos as every company becomes an AI company.

What's one piece of advice you would give other finance leaders that are scaling their team?

Yeah, think a couple things. I think don't even if you have the budget, don't start with a headcount first mentality.

I think there are some amazing companies right now in the world that have built some of the most remarkable finance teams, but have augmented that with a lot of different ways they've thought about the roles, the technologies they use, their stack, like just other efficiencies. And so I think moving away from a people first to a more system and process first finance org, immensely helpful. So so I've been really excited about that.

Start with a process, start with a problem, and then work back whether you need people, tools, or something else.

Exactly. And often, I think creating and that doesn't mean there's not a core amount of people or specialization. You need like, I'm not saying forego that, but then after that, look for ways where processes and tools can be your first line of defense versus, oh, I need two more AR clerks or a billing specialist.

What's one trend in finance and accounting you believe will shape the next five years?

Yeah. I've talked about this a lot. I think we are heading to a more unbundled, like, finance stack. I think the exciting news is, like, the general finance spend is the largest enterprise application spend in the world.

I think in the US, we spend almost a hundred and fifty billion dollars on ERP, AP systems, FP and A tools, billing tools. And I think this world where you would get everything from one vendor and one system integrator is vastly flawed in the world we're headed. And so I generally believe we are headed to a more simple and hopefully modern GL that is surrounded with best of breed around particularly the big parts of finance, whether it's FP and A, AP spend procurement, revenue, payroll and benefits. I think the added teaser I'll put in there, Albert, is like, you may not fully know who's gonna be the winner today, but there's certain physics of the winners, the ones that are amazing teams thinking about technology the right way, explaining the way they use tools and and and technologies like AI in very simple ways versus confusing ways, and the ones who are starting to guide on what a more agentic world looks like versus just a AI native or enabled world.

And I think if you can build towards a more unbundled way, but then find best of breed versus like sixteen different point solutions, I think it's more like five or six vendors that will drive your entire tech stack, but also enable technologies that let you make out a much more lean human capital resourcing mechanism to drive your really hyper efficient and, performing finance team.

Perfect. Best of breed over one one single platform, one single bundle.

Hundred percent.

Final question as we're ready to wrap up. Who do you like to follow for finance news to stay up to date?

Yeah. I like to I think the best thing, and I'm not gonna because there's so many of them, and I don't wanna give one credit over the other. I think, like, I would just pick five or six of those best of breed platforms now. I think, like, obviously, there's some great finance podcasts, others that are really exciting to listen to.

But I think, like, on LinkedIn now, a lot of the great founders and team leads at a lot of these companies, whether it's an FP and A tool or or platform or someone in AP or even these new age GLs, their content on things like LinkedIn or their podcasts are getting really good. And it's not just like marketing for the product. It's a lot of just thought leadership. And so I tend to follow about fifteen or twenty builders in the space.

Some are competitors, some are completely tangential in things like pre, I don't know, like pre public, like controllership, and so but just the type of thought in ways they're talking about where the general domain is headed has been really excellent to follow on LinkedIn.

Makes a lot of sense. And one earlier guest of the podcast mentioned one such, Ali Hussein, as the answer to this question.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.

You've already been mentioned. Awesome. Aleph, this has been great. Thanks so much for taking the time.

Albert, always a pleasure. Thank you for creating these forums and excited, excited to listen to more of more of these episodes. Take care. Alright. Bye bye.

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