Certify, a T&E Veteran, Launches a Procure-to-Pay Solution

Known for its travel-and-expense software solution, Certify on Thursday announced that it is making its inaugural move into the procure-to-pay market, adding to its financial software to help companies’ accounts payable departments focus on spend management.

CEO Robert Neveu said in an email that the new cloud-based P2P product, called Certify Purchasing, can serve all sizes of business and that there’s room in the P2P market for competition.

“While the category for AP, PO and payments is well defined, there is a very large percentage of companies that have not adopted AP automation technology to streamline the process,” Neveu said. “Similar to expense reporting software, the majority of companies with less than 1,000 employees uses home-grown manual practices to address this process. We see ample opportunity to extend our offerings to meet the growing needs of this marketplace.”

Certify Purchasing is billed as a way to automate key accounts payable tasks like requisitions and vendor payments. The SaaS-offering works with desktop and mobile devices, “replacing paper-based and manual processes with automated workflows and budgetary controls,” said the announcement from Certify, which is based in Portland, Maine, and has offices in San Diego and London.

The announcement said Certify Purchasing’s benefits include reducing administrative costs and improving vendor relationships. And for internal personnel there’s this: “Line-of-business managers can define purchase-approval thresholds, tolerances, escalations and proxy configurations, streamlining the procure-to-pay process throughout the organization.”

Neveu said the move builds on the company’s travel-and-expense experience.

“Certify Purchasing provides us the opportunity to bring the proven business processes and intuitive interface of our T&E products to the wider procure-to-pay function,” Neveu said in a statement. “We want to continue to empower AP teams by giving them the tools they need to automate key processes and enjoy increasingly strategic roles within their organizations.”

On the company website, Certify Purchasing is described as a way for AP departments and finance teams to shed manual tasks. Its features are also touted to speed up approvals, reduce vendor late fees and provide a punch-out system that connects directly with preferred suppliers.

“The entire process is digitized from requisition to your vendors through payment and integration into your ERP,” the website says. “Approvals are immediate, budgets are aligned — and POs, invoices and receipts are seamlessly matched.”

Certify’s T&E customers include Circle K, Garmin, Geico, H&R Block, LogMeIn, Marketo, Mailchimp, McDonald’s, Pinterest, Red Bull, Shopify, Subway, SurveyMonkey, Toyota and Virgin Galactic, its website says.

“With over 15,000 corporate clients using our travel-and-expense technology platforms, we will certainly make the Certify Purchasing solution available to our current clients, and new customers as well,” Neveu said in an email.

Spend Matters’ benchmarking tool, SolutionMap, ranks at least 10 major P2P providers. So the sector already includes big players like Coupa, Ivalua, Oracle and Zycus. It will be interesting to see Certify join this market.