I thought I would weigh in on my impressions of the webinar...

I thought I would weigh in on my impressions of the webinar discussion and Spenda software demonstration. After 12 years of implementing payment systems in large multinational companies (now retired), I have seen payment systems evolve. But, first off, let me say WOW about the Spenda software, a huge improvement on what many large businesses are doing. I will try and explain why...

In around 2010, large companies in Australia started to use invoice scanning (Readsoft, Opentext, etc.,) where a paper invoice was placed on an OCR scanning device to read the data on the invoice. An invoice actually only has less than a dozen necessary invoice fields to process payment (invoice number, invoice date, vendor, PO number, ABN, gross amount, GST, currency, etc.,). The OCR engine automatically read these fields from the paper invoice, however, since all vendor invoices had different formats and fonts, the OCR engine often read the fields incorrectly. This required accounts payable staff to manually correct the interpretation errors and push through the invoices to the ERP system. Still, OCR with manual intervention was quicker than data entering all invoices from scratch.

From around 2012, automatic scanning from emailed invoices started to heat up. This meant that AP staff didn't need to place a physical invoice on an OCR scanner, the system automatically read the invoice off the email. Still, the OCR interpretation issues remained as most vendor invoices were of a different format and used different fonts. Further, vendors used different PDF software to create their invoices, which might not have been compatible with the OCR engine. Manual intervention was required to fix the interpretation errors before the invoices could be pushed to the ERP system.

Then in around 2015, XML invoices started to become popular. This is where the data in the invoice was sent in XML format, rather than a physical paper representation of the invoice. This reduced data errors because the invoice was no longer scanned to read the data, it received the data directly via XML. XML was meant to be the next be thing in invoice exchange, but it never quite took off in Australia because we don't have an agreed format for XML invoice exchange. It is more popular, in Europe, I believe.

Now the Spenda solution is even BETTER. There is no need to OCR or XML data because it is read directly between the accounting systems of the customers and suppliers. This eliminates data entry and OCR errors, fabulous for small to medium sized businesses.

It would be great for large businesses too, however, their payment processes are complex. For examples, there is delegated authority for the approval of invoice expenditure and rigid purchase order processing. It would likely be more expensive to rip out and replace preceding processes in order to implement a Spenda like system.

Nonetheless, Spenda is fabulous for small to medium businesses and opens up to them, a very reliable method of invoice processing, which currently is very difficult for large businesses.

This is an awesome achievement and I am excited to be a shareholder in CRO.

GLTAH