Finance As A Service (FaaS)— Tech Stack for Modern Finance Teams

With the growth of cloud, functions that were previously manual like billing customers, managing expenses, and forecasting budget, became actions that could be productized — which led to a better experience for the user (the finance role) and the end customer (the payee, the customer, and one’s own employees.)

While selling into the finance department has historically been a daunting task due to large incumbents in the category, we believe the next-generation of finance software has arrived. There’s a huge opportunity ahead for vendors who identify critical components of the finance workflow that have been grossly underserved by technology.

But with SaaS + fintech, a vertical SaaS company can capture a customer’s traditional software spend as well as the spend on employee and financial services.

As the broader finance function continues to take on a more diverse and strategic role within organizations, the appetite to invest in software that tangibly improves process efficiency, data-driven decision-making capabilities and overall financial performance management will only continue to grow.

As finance has started to take on more responsibility and influence within organizations, the technology enabling CFOs and finance teams has lagged. Most finance workflows, such as annual planning, quarterly actuals reporting and reconciliations, tend to be managed within disconnected spreadsheets with no automation or collaboration capabilities.

Rather than interpreting fintech's job as bringing Old World institutions online, embedded finance modularizes financial functions. Rather than directly involving a bank, payments can be made across the web through embedded tools like Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, and Square.