Interview with Seamus Smith, FIS Automated Finance, winner of PayTech Leadership – At the Helm award
FIS, a global leader in financial technology, is honored to take home two prestigious awards at the 2024 PayTech Awards USA. FIS Integrated Payables has been named Best Business Payments Solution, and Seamus Smith, FIS group president of Automated Finance, has been honored with the prestigious PayTech Leadership – At the Helm award. These accolades underscore FIS’ commitment to advancing payment technology and enabling seamless money movement within the money lifecycle.
Seamus Smith, FIS, winner of the PayTech Leadership – At the Helm award at PayTech Awards USA
Seamus Smith is a global business leader with a successful track record in payments and fintech spanning the last 20+ years. He serves as EVP group president of Global Automated Finance at FIS.
In this role, he leads teams in providing best in class accounts payable, accounts receivable, biller integration, and value-added services solutions to leading financial institutions and corporations across the world.
Let’s talk about one of the stars of the show in B2B payments: the chief financial officer. How has the role of the CFO evolved, and what kind of strategies should a CFO adopt when trying to advance a company’s payment modernization efforts?
I think looking holistically at the bigger picture, in most of the mid-market and large global enterprises that we currently serve with our product offerings, the CFO is increasingly playing a much bigger part in the strategic development of their organization.
The power and application of modern technology in B2B payment solutions can enable the CFO to become a much more forward-looking seer and knower of the future, allowing them to predict and analyze future trends that they can see in the money movement of their business in a much more certain manner than before.
Of course, the CFO will always have the classic and very important functions of liquidity, return on investment, forecasting and reporting to manage, but the modern tools that can be made available to unify, improve security of, and provide additional features of efficiency and automation can enable the CFO to spend more time looking at the future and business growth.
They don’t need to be burdened worrying about reconciliation errors, working capital challenges, days sales outstanding, etc. These are the things we can automate and really allow the CFO to spend more of their horsepower thinking about the growth of their business.
What can payments automation bring to the CFO? Can it really get them to a state where they have one eye on the present and another on the future?
We believe strongly that that’s the case, and our mission is about delivering technology that enables businesses to do just that. For example, anyone associated with financial processes in a business know that it’s the exception management, the things that go wrong, the things that don’t go to plan are what take exponential time, effort, resources, and ultimately cost to a business.
We know that by automating key processes around reconciliation and using data to predict the future rather than just report on the past, we can reduce aged receivables, improve days sales outstanding, and increase working capital efficiency of a business.
When you’re dealing with a large complex business at scale and you can make significant improvements to those areas, they quickly manifest in substantiative results and performance improvements for the business. So there’s no question that overall the automation of payments and reconciliation of those payments should be top of mind for every CFO of a large or mid-market enterprise.
What is Automated Finance and how does it serve the payments landscape?
Automated Finance is the term we use to describe the suite of services FIS offers across the B2B payments landscape. For receivables, that’s money into a business, the order to cash process. For payables, that’s money out of a business, the procure to pay process. But most critically, revenue optimization opportunities where we can help businesses turn their finance function into a growth and revenue center.
Our CEO, Stephanie Ferris, eloquently puts it that we provide solutions to help companies with their money at rest, money in motion, and money at work. This is clearly demonstrated across the payments landscape by the solutions and services within Automated Finance. We believe that’s a great competitive advantage for us.
What are some of FIS’s credentials and differentiators in this space?
We have a number of market leading credentials that place FIS at the forefront of the automated finance arena. For example, in our integrated receivables offering, we facilitate the movement of over $3 trillion. We operate in over 50 countries, and we’re very experienced in supporting businesses on their expansion journeys, be that internationally or growth journeys in market.
In our payables business, we facilitate the movement of over $320 billion annually here in the US. We do that through a series of integrations for invoice portals, payment types, and invoice capture and reconciliation.
But most importantly, I would say our expertise and the quality of our people is our biggest differentiator. We’ve been in this space for a long time and we’re investing in new technologies. We think the combination of the experience and expertise that we have in our people and our ability to invest and create new technological solutions really puts us at the front of the pack.
You mention investments. Can you speak about the investments that FIS is making in this space?
We’ve been adding to our capabilities within this sphere of Automated Finance products and services that we offer. Most recently, we acquired a fantastic asset in the pillar management space that’s very closely linked to effective receivables or money into business management. We’re really excited to acquire new capabilities in this space, and we’re continuing to invest to develop them further for the benefit of our clients and partners.
Where does artificial intelligence fit into payments automation?
There’s no question that artificial intelligence is already and will, of course, go on to have a much bigger part in the impact of financial services, treasury management, and financial management solutions. The good news is FIS has been very practiced in this space for quite some time.
We’re really experienced in using large data sets from various sources, bringing those together, surfacing insight for the office of the CFO, giving them insights into businesses most likely to pay their bills on time, as well as giving them insights into fraud and bad actor risk in their business. These are ever increasing threats facing businesses across the world today, and we’re well placed, given our years of experience, to really be a market leader in the next gen revolution for artificial intelligence (AI) and beyond.
What is your future vision and ambitions for FIS Automated Finance?
Our future vision really means creating that growth engine for organizations. The office of the CFO is facing more challenges than ever before. But we provide technology solutions that can reduce the friction of financial processes, create revenue generating opportunities, and position our clients for growth.
We deliver many business benefits, from efficiency to fraud reduction to increasing the day sales outstanding and increasing time to pay on invoices. These are all critical elements in managing a business’s cash flow, and FIS is a trusted brand that brings that to life.
Sponsored by FIS Global
