TRANSCRIPT:

Fabrice: Hello everyone. My name is Fabrice Saporito. I'm the founder and CEO of Blue Bean, and I'm delighted to have Amit Bade with us — President and CFO of Cognitus, an IBM company. Amit is an expert in finance and procurement, and Cognitus is a leading software and services company serving the aerospace and defense industry. Amit, welcome to the Open Buying Conversation. Thank you for joining us.

Amit: Thanks, Fabrice. Thanks for having me.

Fabrice: It's great to have you here. We love having people from the finance space who are tackling procurement challenges with the kind of spirit you've shown as we've worked together. Let me start with the very first question: before working with Blue Bean, what were the problems you were trying to solve?

Amit: Sure. Look, our business is a software and services company — about 800 employees globally, and at any point in time around 200 contractors. One of the constant complaints we got, especially from the teams engaged in professional services and sales, was that reimbursements took a lot of time — meaning travel and expense reimbursements. Our AP team sits in India; it's a small but very good team, and they were constantly being chased by employees. But many times the AP team also had to chase employees back, because expenses were being submitted that weren't approved or were outside policy. So there was a lot of rogue spending going on. Those were the key challenges we were facing — and on top of that, we were growing very fast. That meant new employees were constantly joining and internalizing company policy wasn't easy for them. And finally, a challenge many professional services businesses face: you often have to apply your customer's travel and expense policies too, because those costs ultimately get billed to the client. So we had to manage not just our own policies but our customers' as well.

Fabrice: That makes a lot of sense — multiple angles to account for when approving expenses and making sure they're in line with what you've agreed with your clients, as well as your own company's rules. But tell me: why was it so important for you to address these problems?

Amit: A few reasons. One was simply the management burden — we could have expanded our AP team, but I don't think that would have fully solved the problem. Even with a larger AP team, if people are still going outside of policy, you haven't fixed it. Another was employee dissatisfaction. I wanted the experience to be much better. My objective was that if people submit their expenses on day X, we should be paying them by X plus seven. And as we were growing, every dollar we couldn't recover because spending fell outside customer policy mattered — it flows directly into our margins. So it was both a people issue and a financial one.

Fabrice: A compounding issue, essentially — the more successful you became, the more it mattered that you looked the part, were a great place to work, and that employees were satisfied. So you evaluated multiple solutions and ultimately chose Blue Bean. Why did you choose Blue Bean over the alternatives?

Amit: We spent time looking at various solutions. We looked at rolling out corporate cards company-wide — we bank with JP Morgan, so they have a corporate card program, and we also had Amex corporate cards. But we very quickly realized there's no easy way to control spending on those cards. There are no built-in controls, no software layer that allows you to manage it. And even where something existed, it was very clunky — for example, you had to log into the bank portal, but not everyone is authorized to do that. We also looked at Ramp and Brex. Those were elegant solutions with great interfaces and fantastic pitches, but the challenge was that we'd have to leave JP Morgan and Amex — which we didn't want to do. We have multiple banking relationships with JP Morgan tied to our working capital lines and loans, so walking away from their card program wasn't an option. What Blue Bean offered was card agnosticism — we could bring our own rails. Blue Bean works with Amex and now with Visa rails as well, which was very important to us. Beyond that, I think Blue Bean is genuinely simpler than Ramp and Brex — I feel those solutions have over-complicated things. Blue Bean's interface is straightforward; my team can easily configure policies in it. It was also important that the solution works everywhere — at checkout, online, on the go. And finally, the agility. You were willing to innovate, Fabrice. If we had a problem or wanted a specific feature, you'd work on it. That mattered a great deal to us.

Fabrice: Thank you — those are exactly the values we wanted Blue Bean to stand for, so that's great to hear. You went ahead with the implementation, and I remember well the moments of co-creation and the feedback you gave us. We genuinely value that kind of input from people living that reality every day. There was a small group that piloted it first, and eventually it rolled out to the broader teams. So what changed after the implementation?

Amit: A couple of things. The most important was that many expenses became pre-approved — people no longer needed to submit an expense report at all. That significantly reduced processing costs on our side and improved the employee experience enormously. Second, we gained an immense amount of control: we could control by category of spend, by the team the person belonged to, and we could even create a specific customer profile and control spending against that. So a lot more control and much better employee satisfaction. And of course, those controls translate directly into profitability. My view for the company was always that instead of the Rule of 40, we wanted to operate at a Rule of 60 to 70 — meaning 50–60% revenue growth with the rest coming from EBITDA margin. Blue Bean helped us get there by giving us the tools to control cost, and that flows straight to the bottom line.

Fabrice: Wonderful. Thank you, Amit — it was very insightful to hear how you identified your challenges and how you went about solving them with Blue Bean. We're excited to continue working with you and Cognitus as an IBM company, and we wish you sustained growth going forward. Thank you again for your time.

Amit: Thanks, Fabrice, for the invitation. I wish you all the best and look forward to continuing our relationship.

Fabrice: Thank you.