If you’re a finance leader aiming to improve efficiency, boost accuracy, and strengthen your company’s financial strategy, it’s time to explore expense management automation.

This blog guides you to understanding the core concepts, benefits, and implementation strategies for automated expense reporting and tracking.

Whether leading a growing startup or overseeing a larger finance department, you’ll find actionable insights to help update and streamline your expense management workflows.

Here’s what we cover:

Understanding expense management automation

Before exploring the features and benefits of automation, it’s important to start with the basics: what is expense management automation?

Expense management automation uses software tools to handle the entire process of submitting, approving, reimbursing, and tracking business expenses—without manual work.

These systems replace spreadsheets, paper receipts, and email chains with streamlined, cloud-based platforms that manage everything more efficiently.

Key features of expense management automation

1. Smart receipt scanning: AI-powered tools, including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), automatically extract key details—such as dates, amounts, and vendor names—from receipts. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and makes sure you achieve greater accuracy from the start.

2. Automatic policy checks: your company expense policies are enforced automatically, with non-compliant submissions flagged in real time. This reduces oversight needs and helps maintain consistency across teams.

3. Real-time insights: interactive dashboards provide clear, up-to-date visualizations of expenses by category, department, or individual, helping your finance team stay informed and proactive.

4. Streamlined approvals: automated workflows send expense reports to the appropriate approvers based on pre-set rules, improving turnaround time and reducing back-and-forth communication.

5. Quick expense capture: users can upload receipts on the go using a mobile app, with the system automatically generating expense reports. This simplifies the process for your employees and increases on-time submissions.

6. Seamless system integration: the platform connects with your existing accounting, payroll, and ERP systems, ensuring all expense data flows smoothly across your financial infrastructure.

Benefits of automated expense management

Switching to automated expense management transforms how your organization manages spending. Here are the key benefits it brings to your business operations:

1. Enhanced compliance

Automated tools reduce the risk of policy violations by applying consistent rules and flagging any outliers. This helps prevent errors and ensures accountability across departments.

2. Improved operational efficiency

By removing repetitive manual tasks, automation lightens the workload for finance teams and speeds up the reporting cycle. Everyone—from employees to approvers—saves time and energy.

3. Smarter, data-driven decisions

With timely, accurate insights into where and how money is being spent, you can make more informed budgeting decisions and uncover opportunities for cost savings.

4. Actionable financial insights

Automation provides clean, up-to-date data without the need for end-of-month spreadsheets. This gives you the visibility needed to make informed decisions on the fly and keep financial strategies aligned with business goals.

5. Cost-saving opportunities

Analyzing spending patterns across teams, vendors, and categories can reveal inefficiencies—such as frequent out-of-policy submissions or unusually high travel costs. These insights help you implement cost-control measures or renegotiate vendor agreements.

6. More accurate budgeting and forecasting

Historical expense data uncovers trends that improve forecasting and budget accuracy. With access to real-time updates, your finance team can adjust plans proactively, ensuring resources are allocated wisely and overspending is minimized.

7. Better employee experience

When expenses are easy to submit and reimbursements are fast, employees are more likely to comply and feel valued. This fosters a more positive workplace and encourages consistent reporting habits.

8. Greater accessibility

Cloud-based expense management platforms offer intuitive dashboards and mobile access, allowing your team members to submit expenses anytime, anywhere. This benefit is especially valuable for remote teams and traveling staff, ensuring timely submissions and improved adoption across the organization.

From paper to digital: Modernizing your expense management process

Still relying on printed receipts, stapled reports, and overflowing filing cabinets? If so, it’s time to modernize your process and go paperless.

Here’s how traditional and automated expense management compare:

Traditional expense management

• Employees print and complete physical forms.

• Paper receipts are attached manually.

• Reports are submitted to managers for handwritten approval.

• The finance team enters data into spreadsheets by hand.

• Errors and discrepancies are caught during reconciliation.

Automated expense management

• Employees snap a photo and upload receipts via a mobile app.

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology fills in report details automatically
  Approvals are routed digitally—no paperwork needed.

• Expense data flows directly into your accounting system in real time.

Implementing automated expense tracking

While expense reporting focuses on capturing and reimbursing costs, automated expense tracking is all about continuously monitoring spending. These systems track expenditures in real time, giving you clear visibility and enabling more proactive financial management.

With this real-time insight, you can manage cash flow more effectively, identify unusual spending patterns early, and stay on top of your budget.

Key considerations for choosing a tracking solution

• Integration capabilities: make sure your expense tracking software integrates smoothly with your existing accounting systems and ERP tools.

• User accessibility: a complex or outdated interface can hinder adoption. Choose platforms that offer intuitive dashboards, mobile apps, and easy navigation to support widespread use across the organization.

• Customization: your business has unique needs. Make sure to choose a solution that allows you to configure rules, workflows, and reporting structures based on your policies and needs.

Ultimately, the right solution should act like an extension of your finance team—working behind the scenes while giving you total control and transparency.

Strategic steps to implement expense management automation

Rolling out a new system can feel overwhelming, but the following strategy will help ensure a smooth transition and long-term success.

Step 1: Assess current processes

Begin by identifying pain points in your current expense management workflow. Are employees submitting reports late? Is reconciliation taking too long? Are policy violations common? These insights will help shape your automation goals.

Step 2: Define clear objectives

What do you want to achieve with automation? Your goals might include:

• Reducing expense report processing time by 50%.

• Improving policy compliance rates.

• Increasing visibility into department-level spending.

Setting clear KPIs allows you to track progress and measure the return on your investment.

Step 3: Select the right software

No single solution works for every business. Evaluate software options based on features, integration capabilities, scalability, and customer support to find the best fit for your organization.

Step 4: Develop a rollout plan

Implement the new system in phases. Start with a pilot program in one department to gather feedback and fine-tune the process before expanding to the whole company.

Step 5: Train stakeholders

Successful adoption depends on proper training. Provide clear resources, live webinars, and hands-on workshops to ensure all users—from employees to approvers—feel confident and supported.

Additional factors to look for when choosing expense management software

Beyond features and benefits, the success of your automation strategy also depends on choosing a solution that fits your organization’s specific needs. Here are four key factors to consider:

1. User-friendly interface

Ease of use is essential for widespread adoption. Look for software with clean, intuitive design, mobile functionality, and simple navigation. When the platform is easy to use, employees are more likely to submit expenses on time, and finance teams can work more efficiently.

2. Customizability and Scalability

Your business is unique, and your expense solution should be too. Choose software that allows you to customize policies, approval workflows, and reporting formats. It should also scale with your business as it grows—supporting more users, departments, and complex organizational needs over time.

3. Robust security and data privacy

Financial data is sensitive, so make sure the software follows industry-standard security protocols. Look for features like data encryption, role-based access controls, regular audits, and compliance with regulations.

4. Responsive customer support

No matter how intuitive the system is, questions and issues can arise. Reliable customer support—through live chat, phone, email, or a dedicated account manager—can make a big difference in your team’s experience and ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Final thoughts

Today’s finance leaders need strategic solutions that can keep up with rapid change and growing complexity. Embracing automated expense reporting and tracking is a powerful step in that direction.

Whether you’re managing a lean finance team or overseeing large-scale operations, automation gives you the tools to focus on what matters most—driving growth and making informed business decisions.

Ready to simplify your expense process? Explore our time and expense management software to see how it can help your team save time, reduce errors, and make smarter financial decisions.

Learn more with Sage.

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Infographic

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The tool finance teams use for success is Excel. Even after 35 years, it is still the tool of
choice for finance departments. A trusted solution, Excel is not going away any time soon.

Excel does present challenges, however. It’s easy for users to introduce errors into spread-
sheets by applying an incorrect formula to a cell or by copying and pasting incorrect cells.

Changes to spreadsheets tend to populate across an organization with little data governance,
or require a significant amount of time to validate every time a change is made. Since Excel
spreadsheets are primarily desktop-based, they are at risk for data loss or ransomware
attacks.

Download the Fact Sheet

The post GLSense: Integrated Financial Reporting for Excel Users appeared first on ERP Today.

To help the office of the CFO understand how to best leverage their ERP to drive value and innovation, ERPToday recently sat down with Michael Ross, Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Trintech.

Filling the Gaps

Ross highlighted how important it is to find the right partner to help guide the way in the financial close automation landscape. Though platforms like Oracle and Workday are powerful on their own, companies like Trintech help to “fill the gaps” by providing functionalities that these ERPs don’t inherently cover in detail, particularly in the complex area of Record to Report (R2R) activities.

“I’d say the office of the CFO and Financial Services was later to technology. We see that that is a market that is going through a transformation cycle, with new banking cores, new GLs, and new ERPs. We also see new compliance obligations really targeting financial services, with banks and capital markets. That really drives scale requirements. We’re seeing that as a space that we want to make more accessible to more customers because we see that scale for financial services just continuing to grow,” said Ross.

A key tool companies can rely on in this area is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Trintech is working to develop an in-house LLM with unique capabilities and the exploration of agentic AI models for tasks like matching, reconciliation, and journal entry automation. There are varying levels of AI readiness across industries, especially in heavily regulated sectors like financial services, so companies need flexible solutions that can adapt to different compliance environments.

Finding the Right Solutions

The most effective solutions are not one-size-fits-all. By offering platforms like Cadency for large enterprises and Adra for mid-sized organizations, Trintech caters to a wider range of organizational needs and complexities.

“We believe fundamentally that there are different segments and industries that need unique capabilities, right. Trintech is a great example; we run Adra. If we ran Cadency, it would be like driving a Mack truck when we need a Porsche. If you’re a Fortune 10 company, Cadency is a great choice. They’re both great cars, but every car has a great buyer,” said Ross.

Ross also highlighted Trintech’s vertical market focus, particularly in financial services and retail. The company is investing in solutions tailored to the unique needs and scale requirements of these industries, including leveraging technology gained through acquisitions to enhance banking-specific capabilities. This targeted approach emphasizes the importance of specialized solutions in addressing complex reconciliation and close challenges within specific sectors.

If you look three to five years out, everything will evolve around your view of data and AI. If you are AI centric, it all comes back to your data. You need to think about how to get the data clean and crisp.

While Trintech remains open to opportunistic inorganic growth, Ross emphasizes the strong focus on organic growth driven by the significant opportunities to improve financial close processes for existing and potential customers across their target ERP and vertical markets.

In his advice to a prospect navigating digital transformation in the office of the CFO, Ross stresses the critical importance of understanding their business readiness for AI and the need to ensure data quality. Though tools like those that Trintech provides can play a vital role in achieving financial reporting accuracy and controls, but companies must ensure that their data is AI-ready.

“If you look three to five years out, everything will evolve around your view of data and AI. If you are at a you are AI centric, it all comes back to your data. You need to think about how to get the data clean and crisp, whether it’s for tools like Cadency for financial access and controls or other tools. This is one of the areas where we’re starting to have customers come to us because they realize they need to get their data in order to use AI. And we’re a tool that helps with financial reporting accuracy and controls,” said Ross.

What This Means for ERP Insiders

Filling the Gaps in ERP Functionality
White ERP platforms like have powerful for financial management functionalities, they often lack detailed coverage for important activities like Record to Report (R2R). Companies must seek out partners like Trintech to fill these gaps with automation solutions for reconciliation, transaction matching, journal entry automation, and compliance reporting. The financial services sector, in particular, faces growing complexity with new compliance obligations and evolving banking structures. Trintech’s solutions help finance teams handle these challenges and scale effectively.

Leveraging AI is challenging, but likely will prove to be a worthwhile investment. The role of AI in financial close processes is slowly expanding. AI adoption varies across industries, but has been slower in highly regulated sectors like financial services, making flexible and adaptable AI-driven solutions essential. Ross advised companies to ensure their data quality is AI-ready to maximize the benefits of automation and improve financial reporting accuracy. Trintech is developing its own RN LLM and exploring agentic AI models to automate complex tasks like reconciliation and journal entry management.

Tailored Solutions for Different Business Needs. Trintech offers specialized solutions based on business size and complexity. Cadency is designed for large enterprises, while Adra caters to mid-sized organizations. Ross compared the two to a Mack truck and a Porsche—both effective, but suited for different needs. Trintech also focuses on specific verticals like financial services and retail, providing targeted solutions to meet industry-specific challenges. The company aims for organic growth while remaining open to strategic acquisitions to enhance capabilities.

The post Meeting the Financial Needs of the Modern CFO with Trintech’s Michael Ross appeared first on ERP Today.

These new responsibilities cannot be achieved by relying on the same methods and techniques that CFOs of yesteryear leaned on. Rather, financial executives need to have dynamic, cutting-edge tools and partnerships that allow them to deliver results quarter after quarter.

Data Means the World

To help understand the challenges that the modern CFO faces and how they can overcome them, ERP Today sat down for an exclusive interview with Lee An Schommer, Chief Product Officer and General Manager, ERP Reporting and BI at insightsoftware.

Schommer emphasized the importance of data in empowering CFOs to be able to perform at their best.

“We know that CFOs are now becoming the arbiter of truth around the health of the business. If I’m a CFO and I care about all the data. I don’t just care about financial reporting. I care about the supply chain and operational data,” said Schommer.

To drive the performance of their finance teams, CFOs need to be able to access clean, accurate data above all else. This allows them to make timely, informed decisions that drive business performance and reduce risk.

In the volatile economic environment in which organizations must now operate, financial leaders are expected to go beyond reporting historical results — they must proactively guide strategy, optimize cash flow, and support agile responses to emerging challenges.

Real-time data enables CFOs to monitor KPIs, detect financial anomalies early, and identify trends that influence forecasting, budgeting, and resource allocation.

Without real-time insights, CFOs risk basing decisions on outdated or incomplete information, leading to missed opportunities or costly errors. Accu rate data also strengthens stakeholder confidence, ensures compliance with financial regulations, and improves internal governance. For example, during financial close or audits, immediate access to reconciled, validated numbers reduces delays and increases transparency.

Moreover, as companies adopt digital finance transformations, real-time visibility across operations becomes essential for managing working capital, aligning with ESG goals, and supporting enterprise-wide automation initiatives.

In essence, real-time data empowers CFOs to shift from reactive to strategic leadership—supporting innovation, operational excellence, and long-term value creation in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

Flexibility and Connectivity are Paramount

Organizations often seek to strengthen their positions and expand operations through mergers and acquisitions. This presents numerous challenges for finance teams – many of which can be handled by complementing and extending existing ERP systems by connecting to their data.

This is a major reason why insight software focuses on out-of-the-box connectivity. It can integrate with a wide array of systems, including major ERP platforms like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics, as well as over 140 other ERPs and EPMs, and modern cloud data sources.

This capability is particularly valuable for companies that are highly acquisitive or operate with multiple, potentially legacy, ERP systems and need to bring all that data together to manage their business. The company’s pre-built connectors allow them to achieve this faster than others.

“Let’s say your company has nine in stances of ECC and they are so customized because SAP said we can make you whatever you want. All of these different notes, like you’ve just customized ECC. The idea of breaking all of that does not sound great. One of the things that we do is we enable you to treat ECC like an Infor like a snowflake data base. You don’t move all of it. We can let you run in parallel and create and make sure that everything moves over and stays intact. It makes it easier to rip the Band-Aid off and figure out how to rebuild everything if you go for a period of time where you’re just treating it like a third party instance,” said Schommer.

Strategic Priorities

Looking ahead, Schommer highlighted some of the strategic priorities her organization has and how those dovetail with the important work that modern CFOs are seeking to accomplish.

1. Adopt Meaningful AI: In 2025, AI is everywhere. While it can be helpful, the hype has often surpassed the deliverables. This is why Schommer emphasizes “meaningful AI.” Companies should seek out AI that solves real productivity challenges, particularly for the Office of the CFO, rather than just adding AI as a feature for marketing purposes.

“One thing we are focusing on more and more is AI that is focused on the office of the CFO’s challenges. Getting the right pre-built content, analyzing the data, spitting it out and actually having it inform my model my business model, and creating a report for me based on the following dynamic. We’re really doing more and more on the AI front and getting into agentic AI,” said Schommer.

AI is most effective when it is able to automate tasks like pulling reports, analyzing data to inform business models, and using agentic use cases to proactively schedule reporting and highlight anomalies or changes in data sources.

2. Maximize the Migration Journey: The migration from legacy ERP systems to newer versions or cloud platforms is a significant focus for many companies around the world. These businesses are facing man dates or incentives to move as ERP vendors are increasingly pushing them towards newer solutions. Schommer says insightsoftware aims to provide “safe passage” for reporting and analytics during these migrations.

A crucial part of this is ensuring report portability. insightsoftware allows customers to run their legacy and new systems in parallel during the transition, while still being able to bring clean data together. This diminishes the difficulty of migrating heavily customized systems, like multiple instances of a customized ERP, by treating the legacy system like a third-party instance.

Beyond just technical connectivity, insightsoftware also offers consulting services around process optimization, using tools like process mining and data mapping to help customers improve workflows during migration, countering the tendency to simply replicate old, potentially inefficient, processes in the new system. It aims to help make the business case for migration more compelling by mitigating costs and risks and increasing benefits

3. Find ERP-Focused Solutions: Companies should seek out partners that work to understand their business challenges and offer a comprehensive set of capabilities tailored to their specific ERP environment. These ERP-focused solutions help businesses to streamline operations, reduce silos within their teams, and provide visibility to all relevant parties.

Solution and Product Portfolio

insightsoftware’s solutions connect to and make sense of data, boosting business performance with smart data solutions. The portfolio covers various areas critical to the Office of the CFO and broader business operations:

• Budgeting & Planning: Solutions to streamline and automate planning processes, improve data quality, enhance decision-making, support continuous planning, and integrate with ERPs/ EPMs.
• Operational Reporting & Analytics: Solutions for informed day-to-day decision-making and optimizing operations across various business areas like supply chain, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. It offers built-in ERPSmarts and self-ser vice capabilities. Products include Angles Professional and Angles Enterprise for Oracle.
• Financial Reporting: Solutions specifically designed for finance professionals to access and analyze ERP data efficiently, provide strategic guidance, understand the business state, and save time through automation. These tools allow users to pull real-time ERP data into formats like Excel or Web reports, often with drill-down capabilities, without needing technical expertise.
• Close & Consolidation: Solutions to automate and accelerate the financial close process, ensuring accuracy and compliance. They help reduce close time, improve data quality, handle com plex consolidation scenarios (multiple entities, currencies), and provide performance insights.
• Tax & Compliance: Solutions to optimize tax and compliance management, offering faster processing and a single source of truth. Capabilities include supporting tax provisioning, country by-country reporting, BEPS Pillar 2, and transfer pricing.
• Accounting & Treasury: Solutions to manage complex financial data, comply with regulations, and optimize performance. This area includes streamlining equity administration and reporting (cap table management, ESPPs), and consolidating IFRS 16 lease data for compliant reporting.
• Embedded Analytics: Solutions designed for ISVs to integrate data-driven features like interactive dashboards and reports directly into their own applications, providing self-service analytics to their end users. Logi Symphony is highlighted as a product built for this purpose.
• Automation & Data Management: Solutions to speed up processes, con solidate data from multiple sources in real-time, and manage data efficiently. Capabilities include automating manual ERP processes, managing master data, and streamlining product information management.

These solutions leverage the power of data to enable better decisions, improve efficiency, reduce errors, and save time, integrating with existing ERP and EPM systems.

Finding the Financial Future

Though there are challenges, modern CFOs can look ahead to a bright future. Finding solutions through partners like insightsoftware can help businesses to navigate complex data landscapes, particularly those centered around multiple ERP systems.

By leveraging exciting capabilities reporting, analytics, and advanced data management solutions, finance leaders can make smarter decisions more quickly than ever before.

The post How CFOs can Navigate Challenges to Deliver Real-time Results appeared first on ERP Today.

Yet sometimes, companies must reflect on the past to stay ahead of today’s fast changing environment. This is the case for Vertex, Inc. – a leading global indirect tax technology company utilized by more than 60% of the Fortune 500.

Propelled by advanced capabilities on its global platform and proliferating legislative changes, 2024 was a transformative year for Vertex, seeing total revenues increase by more than 16% to $667 million, and its stock price nearly double. The company’s profitability increased significantly, driven by a 29% increase in cloud revenue. Even coming off such a strong year, CEO David DeStefano still looks back to Vertex’s roots in its beginnings as a family business, having been founded in 1978 by Ray Westphal.

“We went public in 2020 after 40 years of operating privately,” said DeStefano. “Throughout my journey I learned the importance of long-term thinking. This mindset allows us to invest ahead of the curve with an eye toward the evolving landscape of technology and regulation – often considering where we need to be positioned two years from now, and sometimes even three to four years ahead for larger shifts. We work backwards from there and invest accordingly.”

DeStefano has served as President and CEO since November 2016 and was named Chairperson of the Board in 2020. His long tenure with the company started in 1999, previously serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. That tenure instilled a deep understanding of Vertex’s evolution and the intricacies of the tax technology landscape. Under his leadership, Vertex has expanded its global footprint and successfully transitioned to a public company amidst the challenging period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Building on this strong foundation and leadership, Vertex is well-positioned to embrace the opportunities that lie ahead. Vertex estimates its total addressable market (TAM) for tax technology solutions at approximately $30 billion. Current adoption rates are below 10%, indicating significant growth potential as businesses increasingly seek automated tax compliance solutions.

Pain Relief Through Trust and Collaboration

Companies often start with homegrown solutions or basic ERP functionalities for indirect tax, but as they scale, expand globally or face increasing complexity, these initial setups often can’t keep up. This is where Vertex steps in, offering not just technology, but trust.

“Ultimately, what we’re selling is trust. It’s not just about solving today’s problem. It’s that business is going to continue to change, and so we must earn that trust every day through a valued experience,” said DeStefano.

He adds that Vertex is positioned at the center of commerce and compliance, enabling businesses to navigate growth and change with confidence. This support is rooted in accuracy, flexibility, and a vast tax content library encompassing more than one billion data-driven effective tax rates and rules that reflect the intricate regulations of jurisdictions worldwide.

Though important, this content is only as good as the platform that delivers it. This is why Vertex designed its technology to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end global tax platform with flexibility in mind, ensuring it can be deployed in diverse environments – multi-cloud, single tenant cloud, self-hosted, or hybrid.

Finance and tax professionals are primarily looking for efficiency gains and continuous compliance from tax technologies like Vertex offers, according to recent research from Wellesley Information Services. In fact, 61% of these professionals identified increased efficiencies as the top benefit they expect from tax compliance software. “We have less budget and headcount allocated to tax than we have had before. This has forced us to work even more efficiently with the tight deadlines that we have in front of us,” said a finance and accounting leader at a retail and distribution company.

Vertex places a strong emphasis on understanding and meeting the evolving needs of its
customers. The company’s annual “Exchange” conferences in the U.S. and Europe serve as critical touchpoints for nurturing connections, facilitating learning, product training, and peer-to-peer networking – bringing together industry leaders, tax professionals and technology innovators. These events also provide a valuable listening post for Vertex to gather customer feedback, to inform future capabilities and solutions, and foster relationships within the industry ecosystem.

Vertex has dedicated significant time and effort to achieving certifications, deep integrations, endorsements within leading ERP systems (such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft) and fostering strong relationships with top technology providers and consulting firms. Vertex’s partnership with SAP exemplifies its strategic integration and innovative approach. DeStefano highlights the combination of tax and technology expertise and team proficiency that sets Vertex apart, reinforcing, “the amount of IP we have, combined with the expertise of our team, is evidenced in the 20+ integrations and solutions we’ve developed for SAP.” This illustrates the depth and sophistication of the company’s technical expertise.

Building trust has paid significant dividends for Vertex over the years, helping customers prepare for a shifting tax compliance landscape. DeStefano said that the company has relied on customer insights not only to build Vertex’s customer base, but also to develop solutions that continue to push innovation.

“Anytime we consider a new technology, we bring customers and partners together to co-innovate because they are part of the solutions we build. We bring them along on the journey,” said DeStefano. This collaborative process, built on a long-standing foundation of trust, is more important than ever.

Anytime we consider a new technology, we bring customers and partners together to co-innovate, because they are part of the solutions we build. We bring them along on the journey.

The company enhances its technological capabilities, expands its service offerings, and strengthens its position through strategic partnerships with companies like Shopify. In November 2023, Vertex became the first Shopify Tax Platform Partner to integrate directly into Shopify, automating global indirect tax calculations for enterprise companies. Beyond Shopify, Vertex is gaining significant momentum with ERP partners, particularly through integrations with platforms like NetSuite. This unified approach simplifies tax compliance, enabling businesses to scale efficiently while maintaining accuracy across its systems.

Tight SAP Integrations

Vertex maintains a strong, longstanding partnership with SAP, driven by ongoing collaboration and engagement. Dedicated efforts to enhance and expand this relationship ensure continued support for SAP customers at every stage of their SAP S/4HANA journey.

“As SAP has sharpened its focus on transformation, Vertex has established a go-to-market strategy with SAP to accelerate value delivery. Positioned to support customers throughout this journey, Vertex helps navigate the transition from ECC to SAP S/4HANA, including engagement with the RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP programs,” said DeStefano.

This strategic partnership is integral to Vertex’s global go-to-market strategy. The close relationship with SAP has evolved into a multi-faceted collaboration encompassing technology alignment, joint initiatives, and deep integration within the SAP ecosystem.

The development of purpose-built Accelerators for SAP further enhances the user experience and reduces manual requirements. This provides Vertex with a key advantage in its ability to support customers across different deployment models, acknowledging that while SAP drives for cloud adoption, many enterprises still operate on-premise
ERP systems.

“Vertex is SAP’s indirect tax solution and partner, no matter the platform. Whether SAP is offering on-premise or cloud solutions, Vertex ensures indirect tax is covered. While the focus is on the cloud, solving tax challenges for all SAP customers remains the priority,” said DeStefano.

Likewise, Vertex continues to expand its partner network with other leading ERP providers such as Oracle and Microsoft – ensuring customers can seamlessly integrate tax automation into their existing business systems.

Looking Ahead: AI and Tax Compliance

Companies are becoming more familiar and adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to support business functions and efficiencies for essential tax workflows. Looking to the future, AI is poised to play an increasingly significant role in tax compliance. Vertex approaches AI with a pragmatic perspective, emphasizing the need for “human in the
loop” guidance, governance, and controls.

The use of Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) may not be appropriate for all tax processes. Indirect tax calculation requires a “deterministic” logic to produce precise and consistent outcomes, whereas the probabilistic nature of AI does not always guarantee the exact same results each and every time.

That said, Vertex sees opportunities to develop and integrate AI capabilities in different aspects of the tax lifecycle management processes. The company is actively integrating GenAI with applications such as Smart Categorization to manage vast product catalogs as well as Vertex Copilot to help customers gain higher productivity with their use of Vertex applications. AI is driving innovation across new features, capabilities and products and will be a foundational key and strategic technology foundation for their product portfolio.

What fires me up is the enormous opportunity in front of us to support customers. Constant change in business models, regulatory requirements and technological advancements create opportunity for innovation.

“We’ve already launched copilots, but we’re taking it further. Smart Categorization is phase one, and now we’re looking at agentic AI not only in our products, but how it can work across the entire indirect tax lifecycle. You start upstream from tax determination, but you ultimately have to go down through compliance, filing, and audit where agentic AI could play. We’re also thinking about how agentic AI can work to improve the relationship and engagement between some of our ecosystem partners,” said DeStefano.

Culture is Crucial

After 25 years with Vertex, DeStefano remains just as passionate about helping customers solve their biggest challenges. He attributes this to the company’s collaborative culture. This allows Vertex to continue to innovate in the tax space and take advantage of the opportunities that come with change.

“What fires me up is the enormous opportunity in front of us to support our customers. Constant change in business models, regulatory requirements and technological advancements create opportunity for innovation. Our team is filled with passionate individuals who are eager to embrace these changes and drive new developments,” said DeStefano.

The company has been recognized among the “50 Best Remote Large Places to Work,” reflecting its dedication to embracing remote work and investing in employee well-being and development. To foster a collaborative culture, Vertex demonstrates a strong commitment to community involvement and engagement. Initiatives like a global week of service, support for disaster relief efforts, and the integration of philanthropic activities into its customer conferences underscore this value-driven approach.

In his personal life, DeStefano remains committed to community engagement, serving on the Advisory Board for Corporate Social Responsibility at the Satell Institute and the Board of Trustees of the Joseph Fund in Camden, New Jersey.

The focus on culture permeates Vertex’s growth strategy. Recent acquisitions like ecosio and LCR Dixon exemplify a targeted approach based on cultural alignment, recognizing that a strong cultural fit is crucial for successful integration. These acquisitions are also one of many ways the company seeks to expand its organizational capabilities and market reach.

The company also fosters business resource groups, open to all employees, which play a key role in creating a supportive and inclusive environment where every employee can thrive. Vertex’s highly engaged workforce and commitment to continuous collaboration enables them to remain agile and responsive to global customers and employees.

With a mission to support businesses worldwide, Vertex is actively broadening its reach into new global markets. This expansion aims to provide localized tax solutions that cater to the specific regulatory requirements of diverse regions, enabling companies to navigate complex tax landscapes with confidence. As Vertex continues to navigate the complexities of indirect tax in a rapidly evolving technological and regulatory landscape, its enduring principles of long-term vision, a focus on people and culture, deep customer understanding, and strategic innovation position it for continued success. The journey, marked by adaptability and a commitment to solving real-world challenges for its clients, offers a compelling case study in sustained growth and relevance in the dynamic world of enterprise software.

The post Vertex: Connections That Win appeared first on ERP Today.

This guide will…

• Offer you a very carefully chosen selection of the most
important and useful financial KPIs.
• Give you full definitions for all the KPIs, with (fictional)
case study examples to show you how they work.
• Provide you with free, downloadable, battle-tested
templates to help get you started with your freshlychosen
KPIs.

Within this should be most of the financial figures you need
to keep an eye on.

One thing to point out: the KPIs here are probably not
going to help you with your legal accounting and reporting
requirements (make sure you discuss those with your
accountant), but they are definitely going to help you run
your business. Keeping a close eye on things like ‘Cash in the
bank’ , ‘Working Capital Ratio’ and ‘Net Profit’ is the key to a
successful business and being able to sleep at night.

How to use this guide
To make best use of this guide you should think about your
business objectives (the outcome you want your KPIs to help
you achieve), read through the KPIs on offer, select the ones
relevant to your objectives then implement them. Nice and
simple.

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Södertälje Kommun’s existing finance platform struggled to support automation, digitization, and a more efficient way of working, for example. Multiple manual checks and controls bsorbed resources, financial processes were non-standard and finance reporting was slow and labor-intensive, delaying the insights needed for decision making.

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