ISV Talks
ISV Talks
Ramp’s All-in-One Finance Platform: Simplify and Automate Back-end Finance and Accounting Tasks with Barrett King of Ramp
On this episode of ISV Talks, host Carol Livingston interviews Barrett King from Ramp to explore their innovative all-in-one finance platform. Ramp is transforming the way modern businesses save time ⏳ and money 💰 by consolidating and automating back-end finance and accounting tasks. With native API integrations 🔗 for major ERPs and HRIS systems, Ramp is becoming the market leader in finance automation for modern businesses.
✨ Key Offerings Discussed:
• 💳 Corporate cards
• 📂 Expense management
• 🧾 Bill pay
• ✈️ Travel
• 🛒 Procurement
• 🏦 Treasury
🚀 Tune in to learn how Ramp is streamlining financial operations and empowering businesses to focus on what truly matters.
If you’re interested in exploring a partnership, please reach out to Natalie Young at npearlyoung@ramp.com.
Welcome to this episode of ISV Talks. I'm Carol Livingston, the owner of Dynamics Connections and your host of ISV Talks podcast. So welcome. And on this episode I have Barrett King from Ramp. Welcome, barrett.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, carol. I'm excited to be here, excited for our conversation.
Speaker 1:Me too. I'm excited too. Thanks for joining today, barrett. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You know how long you've been in the technology space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad to. So I've spent the majority of my adult career in and around technology. When I left college, I actually got into funny enough the fashion photography space because I had a digital arts degree but still always was a technologist and always had as a core part of where I spent my time. But, from a career perspective, back in 2010 was my first tech job helping a company build large-scale marketing and partner events, and then that cascaded all the way through to today here at Ramp, focused on, obviously, go-to-market partnerships. So much of my career from a technology perspective has been in and around tools that helped marketers, tools that were around CRM, tools that are now around FinTech, but, at its core, always about partnerships in terms of a role in the way that I did that work.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, so you've been in the channel for a few years now, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, prior to Ramp. So Ramp has been about seven, eight months at this point leading the alliances business and channel specifically. Prior to this I did almost a decade at HubSpot all across the channel program there, and before that I was in a sales and partnerships capacity at a startup for a couple of years. So I'd say again, most of my technology-centric career has been in and around partnerships, specifically go-to-market partnerships. But even before that, after college, I worked in restaurants for a while. I was a GM of a couple of different locations and there it was partnerships, but from a hospitality perspective in terms of hosting events and other collaborative things.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I'd say you know, for me, as an individual, partnerships has always been a core part of what I do, awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, and so let's kind of go over to Ramp. Tell us about the company. How did it start? What's the company history?
Speaker 2:no-transcript the fact, or you would expense something days, weeks or even months after the actual event to something that was proactive. Technology had evolved. Obviously, with the sort of advent of a more modern ERP and more modern tech stack, there's an opportunity for our founders to sort of capitalize on helping people save time and money in a very intentional way, and so our first product to market was a corporate card and then a machine learning application on top of that to manage and maximize the way that folks use that tool. And we started with card because we recognize that at the point of sale is where saving time and saving money takes place first. It's where you gain the most insight and the most valuable controls in that process.
Speaker 2:Since we've certainly evolved in the last six years. We've got an AP and procurement platform, we've got a travel platform and treasury, and so we've gone from just a spend management solution to really an all-in-one back-end tech stack that enables the finance teams of companies to capitalize on again both time and monetary savings across anything their money does and the way that they spend it in the front end and how they deployed their capital, help their team members be more efficient and obviously help their business save on that cash, but also in the back end how they actually optimize that capital in terms of the way it's managed through our treasury platform and other tools to help increase the profitability of the overall. So Ramp is sitting firmly in between most ERPs, hrs platforms and even some ISVs and the way their customers manage their spend overall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. It's seamless, right and helps onboard new employees and all those kind of people that will be using those solutions and services. Can you just tell me what are the unique products? I know you mentioned them, but like what are they individually and how they all relate to each other and the unique features?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So we have our corporate card, which has obviously the sort of heart of the platform there. So a credit card like in your wallet I would show you mine, but it has my credit card number on it so a card that you can then use at any point of sale. It's a Visa-backed credit card, so it's just like any other card in your wallet. That was our first product to market. And then we have an accounts payable like a bill pay solution.
Speaker 2:We have a procurement tool to manage the way you spend your money. We have a corporate travel solution. So if you think about any time you need to book an airplane or a train or hotel, so if you think about any time you need to book an airplane or a train or a hotel, then we have a treasury platform where you store your money and how your money is optimized to make you more money. And the way that this all ties together is that Ramp is an all-in-one solution. So they're not individual tools you have to have separate, but it is one unified platform. And why that matters is if you think about being the CFO of a company or an individual frontline employee at any point throughout the career, if you will, throughout the story arc of the way your cash or money is moved around, we want to be able to intersect that right, intercede and manage that spend really effectively. So the simplest example that I can give is you know you are the admin of the platform, for example's sake, and you come in and you've got an employee that's going to travel to Boston. I live south of Boston, so say they're coming to Boston and they would go into the platform and they would book their travel there. That travel could be attached to a spend program that you've allocated for this trip. Now you've got really clear controls and ability to manage where they are going, right, and so they're not buying a flight to Arizona, they're going to Boston. We want to make sure that happens first, and then, en route to that trip, they go and they actually use their card to buy a sandwich in the airport. That cost, that spend, should be controlled and so that automatically is tied back to that same spend. That program that you've developed in terms of how much money somebody can use for this trip happens automatically. There's no need for a human being to intercede there. But also we want to make sure that maybe Barrett well, we can pick up myself in this example is going to take some clients at the dinner that night. They're going to go and have a nice meal. Well, on the way to the airport, maybe Barrett needs to stop off and buy a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates or a nice bottle of wine or whatever it is for that event.
Speaker 2:And you can control that too. You can ensure that that employee can or cannot spend money on certain things. Meaning, do we allow them to buy alcohol, do we not? Do we allow them to buy gas, do we not? But even down to the vendor level.
Speaker 2:And so while Barrett's traveling and he's going to Boston for this event and he lands and he goes to pull up his ride share app, what if you have an agreement with Uber? You want to make sure that your employees are always using Uber because you've got a really good rate, a special deal there. Well, if they were using their own card and their own tools, they could just go and use Lyft or a regular taxi or whatever it might be, and then you as a business would be stuck going back and trying to manage that after the fact. But in our case, now we can impact at the point of sale. We can ensure they are actively using Uber by either declining Lyft and or integrating that spend directly into the Uber app and allowing them to do so from that interface. Do you think about our ability, in terms of a finance platform, to touch and impact the entire spend of an individual or a business?
Speaker 1:You know that's the key right.
Speaker 2:Exactly that, exactly Right in the moment before it's spent. Exactly.
Speaker 1:So where do people usually start their journey? Is it with a corporate card or expense management?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a fair question, you know. I think a majority of customers we see come in with typically some sort of a need around management or control expense management in general. We do see some folks come in that say I've got a specifically, you know, a bill pay need and or some sort of a procurement need in terms of how they manage a vendor spend. But a majority do come to us looking to explore moving off of, say, an Amex or some sort of a local bank and wanting to shift into a tool that allows more control and more spend.
Speaker 2:And you know, Ram's card is at your front door in 48 hours, so they don't really disrupt any of their process. We transfer all their existing spend right to it and they continue on with their day that they gain a lot of insight. It's usually the first point that we see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's like it's nice because it's all one platform. I know a lot of businesses in the mid-market have several different tools. Maybe they have a bill pay and expense management and a corporate card and they don't necessarily tie together right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's a very common scenario we do see this is a really nice slide. We have that we share with prospects and with partners. It shows the way that we consolidate a lot of the tools in the market. It's not an intentional pitch. It's the reality of the fact that Ramp is an all-in-one solution and because of that, we replace a lot of what you're already doing. To be clear, we layer into your existing ERP, so your NetSuite and your Sage and your Microsoft and all of your different platforms. We layer into your HIS platform If you've got other tools there your Workday, your ADP, et cetera and so we're non-disruptive. We just add in this extra power, this horsepower, to what you're already doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and are there any particular industries you work with or specialize in?
Speaker 2:One of the fun things that I get to say when working here we can help anybody anywhere that has a business that spends money. That's how broad our ICP is. We certainly narrow that down and say we see really fast value in the traditional SaaS industries because there's a lot of overlap there in terms of technology adoption and early adoption. Where we see a lot of impact, I find personally and I wouldn't speak for Ramp in this sense, but I've seen it in just my partner calls is that we work in industries where they're perhaps a little bit laggard in their technology use or, to your point earlier, carol, they've got a lot of different stuff going on, a lot of different tools or process. So industries like you know your manufacturing or your technology, you know your construction, your pro services industries where they deliver a ton of value to their own customer, but maybe they don't always turn that kind of lens back on themselves to innovate their own tool use and their own processes, and we do really see a lot of lift there.
Speaker 1:And I know I've had several partners I've talked to that already have customers that use Ramp or they themselves use Ramp. So you're getting out there in all these different areas, right? So-.
Speaker 2:We are. Yeah, we definitely are. I like to joke and say like, if you have not seen an ad from us within the last week, we're not doing our job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like you're the car that I just bought, or thinking of buying, and now I see it everywhere.
Speaker 2:Every stoplight. Yeah, exactly, that is us, the cool red car we are in front of you. I see it everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't feel a way about Rance. I've seen your ads Everywhere. Tell me a little bit about a customer, maybe that has been successful with your product and solutions, and why.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, yeah, we had. There's a construction company in the Midwest that we were working with. This is about a year ago now, right, and it's an up and coming case study. I thought about giving you a live case study, but I frankly, this one's exciting to me, so I'm using this example where you know they had an average of two and a half to three and a half weeks of time spent by their bookkeeping and their finance team to rectify the books after the end of the month they run their quarter the end of that next month. It was about another month almost of time to go and close everything out and consume all of the receipts and the expenditures, and it's a lot of work, right, and so you can imagine the hours and the costs associated with that type of dynamic. So we took what we are on paper saying is three weeks worth of effort down to less than 24 hours. Less than 24 hours Now, to be clear, that only works because they set up the platform well and worked with one of our partners to implement the solution to its full capabilities.
Speaker 2:But they you know what they did really uniquely, I think, was they leaned into the technology itself.
Speaker 2:The platform has machine learning and AI built in to enable really smart receipt matching and enable really good spend program matching and whatnot.
Speaker 2:And so it took all of that manual work out of their hands and so now they spend that day, day and a half, even in a busy month, just looking at everything, making sure they understand where the capital went and did it go to the right places in terms of what they want to spend it on the next month, the next quarter. So they spend more time. Being intentional is a word that we have. It's a really nice quote in the case study around the way they spend their money, the way they run their business, so they can spend more time on their customers and a lot less time looking internal, chasing down. I'll pick up myself again Barrett, the sales rep, if you will to go and submit that one receipt that's left open at the end of the day. So pretty significant time savings, obviously, and from a capital perspective, and cost savings, not insignificant. We saw there's an M after that in terms of cost savings, so it's pretty significant as well.
Speaker 1:Great. So just kind of changing gears a little bit. What have you seen as far as the channel and the partners in the last couple of years, like, what challenges are partners struggling with? And customers, what are they doing in terms of helping their customers?
Speaker 2:I think you know, when you look at what transitioned throughout the early pandemic to the later pandemic that we all experienced, right, it's an inflection point that we can point to. People were moving faster, certainly because they had less commute, they had less meeting time, everything was virtual and digital and I think because of that they also became more informed. And if you ask people before the pandemic, where partners sat in their go-to-market, for a lot of them, in technology in particular, it was well they do this thing, whether that was to help them sell or help them service or help them implement, was one behavior, one dimension. I think what you're seeing now in the partner space, in particular in, again, b2b tech, b2c tech, is that there's an acceleration of the way that partners deliver multiples of value, dimensions of value, so they don't just sell or just service, but they sell and they service and they might market and they might build and they might develop. And so what I've seen, and what we've experienced, certainly at Ramp, what I saw at HubSpot, what I've seen in my career, is that partners have become much more multidimensional in the way that they actually go to market alongside companies, because the customer has begun asking for a multidimensional, a much more involved partner.
Speaker 2:Dynamic Partners always owned the customer's trust way before the vendor ever did right, and they always will after that relationship. That's sort of the nature of it, I think. Because of that, partners had to also become more educated, not just on the product but in the solution itself. And so I think you look at the average partner now in most B2B tech, most SaaS, just in general, they tend to be more tech savvy, more technical by nature, and so I think those are kind of the two trends that I would highlight most. Frankly, there's a lot of other stuff going on, you know pricing dynamics and sort of the optimization of labor and how folks build their teams, but I would say, generally speaking, you see a lot more sophisticated and a lot more multidimensional partners in the market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point. They wear more than one hat or have more tools in their toolbox than they used to.
Speaker 2:That's true. Just to add to it, because the customer is asking for it to be clear. I think it's a really important call out, because you did ask the question and I want to make sure I'm clear there. The customer behavior changed because they expected more for less, because they wanted a consolidation, because they wanted to have less tools and more output, and all of this kind of less is more, and so I think the partner had to use a tool analogy. I love that, like put more tools in their tool belt so when they go next door to fix the leaky pipe and it turns into, you know, renovating the entire kitchen, they've got the tools necessary to actually do that work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. I have a different question to ask you and I'm curious. I know you talk to a lot of partners, so what are you hearing the partner saying at this point?
Speaker 2:Around the market itself or on the change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are they saying? The market going, microsoft, you know the other software publishers. What are partners telling you?
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting If you listen to the straightforward answer. It tends to be something to the effect of they want more support, they want more enablement, they want more empowerment. There's a lot of independence, a sort of fierce independence, because they're in some ways a little bit less tool-reliant and a little bit more flexible in their go-to-market. I've heard little rumblings and they're getting louder of the bigs need to pay attention. I've heard that phrase recently and it's got kind of a kick out of.
Speaker 2:I think the bigger firms are in need of an innovation attitude to the way that they work in their markets. There's still a bit of and I won't use any names, but a bit of a sort of old boys club, a little bit of an old ways club across a lot of these larger companies. And what I find really fascinating in particular you know, coming from CRM, now being an ERP, really foundational tools is the customer feels that they experience a lot of that tension and that sort of backwards nature of the way that these companies have done business in the past relative to today and because of that they're looking at their partners to become a bridge to that, that. They're looking at their partners to become a bridge to that solution. They're looking at their partners to take some of the tension or the frustration out of it and own a lot more of the relationship and the dynamic and the solution so they can work with a more forward and progressive business set. I found that to be really interesting. It's been a lot coming up lately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of back to the old.
Speaker 2:This is the way we've always done it. The worst phrase in tech. It's like the most famous excuse there never was. Everyone would say, well, we've always done it that way, that's okay.
Speaker 1:but you don't have to anymore now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I find some partners in the channel it doesn't even matter which channel, they kind of tend to have the ones that they've maybe trusted ISVs that they've worked with a long time and they're not. They're hesitant, because this is their client and their reputation right To turn them over to somebody new to the marketplace or they've never heard of them, and I find that sometimes can be a barrier to get them introduced to new ISVs. Maybe they're not new but they're new to them right. They just haven't been exposed to them.
Speaker 1:And I'm hearing that a lot from partners that you know beginning to realize hey, my clients are signing up with Ramp. I guess I should find out who is this Ramp and how can I work with them.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating and you know, as somebody, I'm not as shy as this. Right, I'm 40 years old. Right, I didn't start my life with technology, but it was very early in my life if you will my lifeline that it showed up. I got a cell phone at 16. I was around computers from probably around 13, 14, give or take in school when PCs were a thing. What's fascinating to me is the argument has always been well, that's new technology. I'm doing bunny ears for those listening, I think, why that matters. And what's really fascinating about it is that was the excuse before, so it was the. We've always done it that way Excuse one right, Excuse two, our way of explaining it. Oh, that's technology and it's different and that's scary. With the acceleration of technology now it's almost more beneficial to say I don't know about your technology, but can you anchor it in something that I can relate to?
Speaker 2:And a lot of what my team does in working with partners is help them, help themselves, educate their customer base on how Ramp connects to existing things that they've done. We're not developing something wholly new. It's not that we've created the first airplane and we have to explain flight. Ramp is optimizing existing processes and solutions that exist in the market. There's a lot of innovation in how we do it and there's a lot of really important dynamic work done on top of what we do. That, I think, is very much forward thinking, and so that takes a little bit more education, but generally we're just helping people do something they're stuck doing now really poorly, do it a lot better, a lot more efficiently, etc. And when we start to talk to our partners in that way, you do see the light bulb go on oh, I don't have to change everything that I've done, I don't have to relearn a new process. I just have to get better and or think differently about what I'm doing now, and I think because of that it's made this a more effective path to market.
Speaker 1:Great. So, barrett, you know it sounds like you thought about and you guys are doing some planning around the future. What changes are you looking to introduce or new things you're looking to introduce to help customers?
Speaker 2:Now I think, from a technology perspective, you're going to see Ramp continue to innovate the way that we impact the customer dollar and the way that we drive, obviously, value around time savings. I can't speak to specific products, of course, but you can imagine a world where more and more of the way that a business utilizes their cash is optimized not just by that person could say like there are a lot of businesses and firms that go in and do that optimization for a business and organization but more specifically, that the technology does it for them so that those individuals can be freed up to work with their customers more, to innovate their companies, to grow their businesses. I think you're going to see a lot more of that. The other story that I think is really fascinating is you know, as people work to consolidate their tools and think about how they optimize the way that their tech stack works together, the more you can become a unified solution not just in terms of what we do, but play really nicely with other tools, the more effective you can be at delivering your own message, meaning us, and so I think you're going to see us continue to expand the types of businesses that we work with, type of solutions that we integrate with and the ways we integrate with them, and so my intent from the Alliance's perspective is to continue to meet organizations that are innovative.
Speaker 2:I actually talked to one today. I won't use his name, but I spoke with him earlier and he's really innovative in the healthcare space. Like, okay, interesting, Tell me about that, Right. And he said well, we've got a bunch of different solutions that we bring to market specifically to help healthcare companies optimize the way that they deliver their services to the greater masses. We're not talking about like hospitals here. We're talking about, like innovative technology and services companies that are delivering really unique value to people that need it. He said I'm going to make Ramp my absolute solution as a finance tool for all of my customers now, from now on, moving forward.
Speaker 2:Now I'm excited, I like that it becomes a tool in his tool belt. But the fact that he saw us as the innovative solution to help him deliver accelerated value he's got 38,000 customers in his network. It's not insignificant, right? So that's exciting to think about for us as much as we are building something that people would say is fast or innovative from a technology perspective, and that's all interesting. For me, it's about freeing up people to do the thing that they signed up to do, whatever it is, whether they have a lawn care business or they are curing cancer right. Whatever that thing is that they're excited about, that they built their company on. We free up their teams to spend more time on that and I think you're going to see us dive into more corners of the professional space where we can deliver that value quickly.
Speaker 1:If you think about spend management in general, it's all about being mobile and flexible, and so I like what you're saying, that you know being innovative and helping push that envelope helps because you can't go back to the office.
Speaker 2:You know if you're in the field you're out doing, meeting with clients or taking care of customers remotely you have to be able to have that freedom and the technologies support that, and it should work the way you do, right? So, like? A good example is when I transact using my ramp card, if that card doesn't recognize the spend program that I'm trying to attach that transaction to say, I just get gas, right, and you know that gas happens to be for me to travel to a specific customer and I haven't directly left my region where I live, the platform, instead of just letting that wait, sends me a text message. It says hey, we think, because we saw your calendar, mine's connected right by choice, we think this is for you to go visit this customer X customer, right? Is that correct? Press Y, yes, right, if it's wrong, tell me what it could be and I'll make sure I update it for you.
Speaker 2:Fascinating. So now the platform can recognize natural language, I can say yes, and it does tie it to that spend, or no, actually that was a mistake. Can you correct it and move it over to here? And it'll go yep, all set and takes care of it for me. And what I find fascinating about that is that it moves in the way that I need to move. It works the way I need to work and I think technology needs to be that way more and more, as the sort of general society accelerates the way that we use tools in our everyday lives and we're trying to be on the forefront of that innovation.
Speaker 1:Nice. So any other perspectives you have to share about the marketplace, how customers are trying to improve operational efficiency, cash flow.
Speaker 2:I think if you go to like really simple brass tacks kind of bottom line comments, generally people are fed up with too much. People are getting back to straightforward and simple and clear. I think communication matters certainly more than ever. People don't want to be sold to. They want to know why they should invest in your tool or your service. I think if I and don't quote me on this, please my math might be wrong, but the last I heard the fact it was something to the effect of like the average B2B SaaS company has 70 unique tools in their business. I don't know how true that was, it was maybe six months ago.
Speaker 2:I read it, but if it's even half of that that's a lot right, and a lot of those tools now overlap, and so I think the core thing for me, as a consumer and a technologist myself, is I want less, I want more efficiency, I want more interconnectivity and I want my technology and my tools to operate the way I do in this world, to not disrupt and force me to bend to them, but to work in the way that I like to. And the best way to give an example I ride mountain bikes. I also like to hike, I ski, I run. There's an application called Strava S-T-R-A-V-A. It's great. The thing works all the time, never has issues. I think I pay $30 a year. I don't even think of it. That tells you how significant it is. And what's fascinating is it captures my bike ride automatically. It captures my run automatically, my hike automatically, anything that I do. From an athletics perspective, it captures.
Speaker 2:And I love that. I love that because it allows me to track my fitness in a way that is integrated. Even Peloton, when I go for a run on the tread or ride the bike, all of that is integrated into one application, not three or five or otherwise. That means the next time I want to take that ride, it's already there.
Speaker 2:It's logged. I can go look it up and use the map on my phone, or I want to go back to that run and see how fast I ran. It's right there because all of those different exercises are in one place. I think if you continue to watch the way that technology will innovate finance and foundational systems like ERP and CRM, it's going to continue to be this evolution of those tools fitting into the way you like to do business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then tracking on that, but also anticipating, right Like 100 percent Yep. Might be this or proactive nature, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Kind of even like, maybe for your run or for your bicycle ride, you know, might even suggest some things. And what I think is interesting too, you kind of talked about being able to interact with the software, maybe in the future. Like, hey, I just want to have a conversation with you, versus having to type something in or go to a menu and drop down and click on that having to type something in or go to a menu and drop down and click on the.
Speaker 2:It's one of the more interesting parts of AI and machine learning that I'm personally fascinated by Right now. I'm not a great prompt writer. I do okay, but if I want to refine a prompt, I can have let's call it GPT. In this example, I can have GPT refine the prompt, which I find fascinating. I can literally say act as a world-class prompt engineer and take this prompt and refine it for this goal and ask me any questions you have along the way, and it will do that, and that I find to be brilliant.
Speaker 2:What's interesting I want to maybe fire a shot here is how slow and far behind the technology that we have. Every day I'm holding my phone up for those that can't see me. Why is Siri not talking to me? Why am I having to input and wait and do all this stuff just to put in a reminder or add a new calendar invite? And so I think, over the next three to five years, as those outside tools become more integrated into the things that we're using from a hardware perspective to your point, that's where it gets interesting. That's where you start to see the evolution of technology becoming an integrated part of what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good analogy. People are familiar with Siri saying hey, siri, put that on my reminder, on my calendar for tomorrow, or put that on the grocery list.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's such an easy solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, having that conversation with technology instead of typing it.
Speaker 2:Exactly Yep.
Speaker 1:So tell me any new industry trends on the horizon, like what are you hearing in your industry? What's what seems to be developed for the future.
Speaker 2:I think we're seeing this a little bit earlier. Like this idea of all in one is really fascinating right now. You're seeing that come up more yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I just again. People are sort of fatigued by how many apps they have to use and interfaces they have to get used to, and I personally don't disagree with that. That feels important to me. The control, I think, is the other one, with the sort of permeation of where technology is in everything that we do. It's in the banking system, it's in the finance tools, it's in the ERP and CRM platforms, et cetera.
Speaker 2:People want it to be more absolute, more all versus some, and I think if you look at what tools like Ramp are doing uniquely is we sit as sort of a system of record around finance and around financial optimization. In your existing tool set, that absolution feels unique. And so I think, from a trends perspective, you'll see some M&A, you'll see some innovation. You're going to see a lot of folks, I would expect, try and figure out how to go to market in a way that allows them to impact more of the thing they do well. So for us, obviously, it's capital and financial optimization and spend management. I think you're going to see that across a variety of different players in the industry.
Speaker 1:Right, so any other last thoughts, barrett, before I kind of wrap up here.
Speaker 2:No, I mean it's been a great conversation. I really enjoyed your questions. I think you know, at its core, what I like talking about most is that Ramp Ramp's easy, like we're not a hard to use platform, and I think what you see in most I mean even before starting here, like transparently candidly, I thought the word finance was kind of uncomfortable in some ways. Right, that's not my career, it's not my background or education. More time I spent around Ramp as a platform, the more I realized it's easy for frontline teams to get value. It's easy for finance leaders to deliver that value in an effective way at scale. Where partners come in, which I find really fascinating is in a reach, in a capacity of educating their buyers. Ramp doesn't take $200,000 and 10,000 hours to implement. Ramp is lightweight.
Speaker 2:It's $5,000, $10,000, $25,000 to implement and it's hours and maybe days, not weeks and months or even years and I think innovation like that is exciting and so my maybe selfish CTA is like, whether it's us or other tools, go learn. If you're listening to this as a partner or as a buyer. Like, go learn, because there's a lot of tech out there. That's maybe kind of bucking the trend of its countless hundreds of thousands and its countless tens of hours and trying to make it easy for frontline team members to get value, while still empowering organizations to scale that value over time, and I'm really proud of the work we're doing here for that reason.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So I don't know if you want to answer this last question, so let me just go ahead and pose the question. You can answer if you want. Is there one trend that you're seeing that's driving customers or partners to come talk to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I don't have to. I think a lot of folks would take this opportunity to say we're better than, or we do different than. I think what Ramp has done very well as an organization is listen to the customer. I think, full stop. People come and work with us, people come and join our customer base or our partner base because it's not difficult. It's what they're looking for and I think what's fascinating to me is that when you look at great companies that have managed to tap into the lifeblood of that customer and they can take that and they can harness it and deliver that value back right the questions that are being asked they can answer, then they kind of win in general because they grow a really healthy business and those customers get what they're looking for. That's why folks are coming to Ramp because we're listening, we're innovating, we're doing it really fast. That's our superpower and we're very proud of the fact that we continue to grow alongside the business's demand.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, barrett, for joining this episode of ISV Talks. It was super interesting and fun, so thank you for joining today.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, Carol. I'm really glad to be here. It's a great conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you, so I have your contact information for Natalie here. Do you want to?
Speaker 2:kind of go over who to contact and how partners or customers can reach out to you. Sure, absolutely so. Ramp is on the Internet. As you can imagine, right, rampcom is a very well-known domain. If you're a customer and you're interested, by all means reach out. If you have questions, you can certainly shoot me a note. It's Barrett J King, b-a-r-r-e-t-t-j-k-i-n-g on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:It's where I spend a lot of my social media time, certainly, but if you're a partner and you want to explore out, you know, adding ramp to your business or how you could help your customers with solutions, like we talked about today on the show, natalie is one of the members of my team. She's incredibly proficient at our platform or on the partner program or what we do, and so I would direct you to her. Her email is npearl P-E-A-R-L. Young at rampcom. So it's N, as in Natalie, pearl, p-e-a-r-l and then young Y. All one word at rampcom. Again, rampcom is our main domain. Go ahead and check it out. We have great videos and content and assets to help you get up to speed. If you have any questions, you're welcome to shoot me a note on LinkedIn as well. And again, thanks, carol, this has been fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now that you've heard the name, ramp you're going to start seeing it everywhere, everywhere.
Speaker 2:We're going to be in your social feed. We're going to be on the bus driving next to you on the street.
Speaker 1:You too, you're everywhere. Everywhere, all right, well, thank you so much, barrett. It was great having you and I'll see you next time. Friends, on the next episode of ISV Talks, bye-bye.