Published on the 15/03/2018 | Written by Newsdesk
The platform will integrate bank data and provide accounting, inventory, and payroll to SME customers…
Following unions with several large financial groups in Australia and internationally – including Barclays Bank and Deloitte UK – NZ-based cloud app integrator 9 Spokes has partnered with Bank of New Zealand to provide a white-label version of its business data platform.
The BNZ will provide its business customers with 9 Spokes’ accounting, inventory management and payroll dashboard, while “fully integrating” its bank data into the product, enabling businesses to “gain deeper insights into cash flow management” – and, presumably, securing a welcome degree of lock-in for some of the BNZ’s 130,000 SME customers.
The BNZ will pay 9 Spokes a license fee to offer the platform for ‘free’ to its customers and will leverage the sales ability of its retail network to sign business customers up. The platform will also be available at no cost to the general public.
The ‘free’ aspect relates to the 9 Spokes dashboard – users pay for the use of the apps that they select to use.
The tech company started negotiations with the bank, a fully-owned subsidiary of NAB, eight months ago. 9 Spokes CEO Mark Estall says entering the Australasian retail bank market is an important deal for the company and is the natural outcome of an early strategy to target global companies specifically.
“The recognition from signing a tier one global bank is significant to establishing 9 Spokes as a credible business in our category,” Estall told iStart. “This recognition has opened doors for us around the world with other tier one banks.”
“There are many challenges to this strategy, but the advantages are also phenomenal; we get to pick the right partners for 9 Spokes, we get to scale globally, we have a reputation as leaders in our category and we have an exciting business.”
9 Spokes offers a management dashboard that integrates information from a range of accounting, customer and business management apps that customers migrating to the platform select from. One of the challenges for 9 Spokes, and the BNZ, is in transitioning customers off their existing set of apps in favour of those available on the 9 Spokes platform.
The public 9 Spokes website does not list the big small business accounting providers MYOB and Xero – with their own bank feeds already on board – promoting instead Quickbooks or SageOne. A 9 Spokes spokesperson however advised that MYOB and Xero will both be able to be integrated with the BNZ version.
The move follows ASB who recently released Plus a similar concept likewise not restricted to ASB customers with popular small business apps Xero, Shopify and Vend on board.
Estall though is enthusiastic about signing another significant channel partner. “We are extremely delighted to now enter the Australasian retail bank market with such a well-recognised and respected partner in BNZ.”
Estall says that while fintech – especially the kind that engages with large corporates – is challenging, the opportunities are enormous.
“There is nothing easy about fintech,” he says. “We are in an industry that is traditional with some of the largest and oldest businesses in the world…There is a necessity to be agile and innovative, have the ability to scale and grow, and demand to be international.”
“The challenges are no different for any small company engaging with a large corporate; mostly it is time, then legacy technology challenges, and sometimes legacy thinking. BNZ is very advanced in engaging with partners and the process was reasonably seamless.”
Following the signing the company’s stock (ASX: 9SP) rose 16 percent in Australia. Since launch the stock has suffered a decline from the AU$0.15 – 0.20 range to recently be trading around AU$0.05. The company announced on Tuesday that, as of March 31, it had achieved “a range of annualised recurring revenue guidance” (a normalized measurement of recurring revenue used by SaaS and subscription businesses) to the tune of AU$6-7 million. This is against a backdrop of net losses of AU$10.6 million for the six months to Sept 30.
“Banking and fintech is in transition,” he says, “subject to regulation, the customers are becoming more demanding, and the competitive environment is aggressive. The industry is now driven by data and all about insights and actionable insights. The data we provide to our clients has to deliver an action outcome.”
The BNZ says the service will launch later this year.
Refer also our earlier story on 9 Spokes (April 2016).
