As a fourth generation entrepreneur, I grew up in and around small and mid-sized businesses and have a deep appreciation for the role SMBs play in our communities and our economy. When I was running my first business, I remember spending way too much time managing payables and receivables — writing sticky notes about invoices; printing and signing checks, stapling check stubs and hunting through filing cabinets for contracts. I thought to myself, “Why isn’t there a way to automate this?” If I could solve that problem, I could help so many SMBs to succeed. And so, BILL was born.
SMBs are the lifeblood of our economy and cash flow is their oxygen. Having visibility and control over money coming in and going out is vital to their success. The early days of BILL taught me that in order to innovate successfully for SMBs, the technology would have to make their lives easier. Starting and growing a business is hard enough, technology should work for your business not against it. Equally important, your technology should help you connect with other businesses for things like paying and getting paid. You should be able to see what’s happening financially inside your business. That is why our mission is to make it simple to connect and do business. And our goal is to create a company that is the top choice for SMBs to manage all their financial operations.
We listen to our customers carefully and often. Their feedback has truly helped us evolve and grow our company and platform. Recently customers have been asking to be able to use BILL to manage more and more of their B2B spending. Specifically, more spend management, expense management and budgeting capabilities. And that’s why I’m so excited about our Divvy announcement — they are known for innovating simple, easy-to-use spend management solutions that make their customers' lives easier.
From the moment we started talking with the Divvy team, we saw an opportunity to accelerate both our innovation agendas from very complementary perspectives — BILL’s experience in automated payables, receivables and workflow and Divvy’s experience with spend management, budgeting and corporate card usage. Customers will be able to manage and have real-time insight into all their B2B spend. But more than the prospect of integrating great products, we see the potential of the more than 1,200 employees across both companies who are dedicated and passionate about helping SMBs to succeed. I respect and admire what Divvy has built and am thrilled at the prospect of working with such a fast-moving, innovative and passionate team when the transaction closes.
Together with Divvy, we see a big opportunity to help more SMBs take full advantage of digital transformation to simplify and automate their financial operations, with greater efficiency, control and insight across all their B2B spending. There’s more work to do for the deal to close and so everything will be business as usual until that happens, but I cannot be more enthusiastic about the significant potential value our combined teams can create for our customers.
René
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