Summit Spotlight: Breakthrough Technologies Showcased in the Demo Zone

A dozen companies gathered at Community Summit NA 2024 for the Demo Zone, a new opportunity to show off their latest innovations designed to improve everything from tax reporting to invoicing. Here’s a quick wrap-up of the event, which culminated in a suspenseful raffle.

Streamlining Business with Automation

Kristin Ewart, Director, Professional Services, Dooap, presented the company’s invoice automation solution. Dooap offers cloud-native automation for AX 2012 and Dynamics 365, featuring a single-user interface and plug-and-play integration, with a focus on vendor invoices. Ewart touted the offering’s simplified approval process. Especially notable was the ability to swipe to approve invoices. It’s a product that does the “heavy lifting” for users, Ewart explained.

Next was Vanessa Villarreal, Director of Channels & Alliances at Corpay Cross-Border Solutions. She demonstrated Corpay’s international payments solution. Corpay allows for local payments in 34 currencies to over 60 countries, eliminating the need for multiple bank accounts. “Our tool is entirely free,” Villareal said. “There’s no charge for implementation. The way that we actually make our money is simply off the margin that we charge on top of the foreign exchange rate.”

After Corpay came Paystand, represented by David Gersten, Director, Emerging Ecosystems. During the demo, an invoice for a desk was created and sent for payment, demonstrating the ability to offer cost-effective payment options, including a free bank-to-bank method. The software is also highly customizable: “We put the knobs and dials in your hand when it comes to fees and incentives,” Gersten said.

Then it was Nuvei’s turn on the stage, with Nicole Ronchetti, Senior ERP Product Manager, Nuvei, noting that it was the company’s first time at Summit. “What truly sets [Nuvei] apart,” she explained, “is the fact that we are entirely a group of consultants who formerly worked with the software who are now developing these solutions and implementing them. We offer full-circle support.” Nuvei offers integrated payment solutions across various ERPs, including Business Central, supporting functions including card present, card not present, and chip swipe transactions.

Neil MacDonald, Solutions Consultant at Canada-based Vena Solutions emphasized one area where Vena, which integrates into Microsoft 365 and Power Platform to enhance financial planning and reporting, has taken a unique industry approach: “Unlike a lot of our competitors, who will tell you that Excel is the problem, we’ve embraced Excel.” Key features of its product include using Excel for budgeting, leveraging historical data for informed decisions, and a copilot that was co-developed with Microsoft.

James Roberts of MCA Connect presented its Inspire Platform, saying it “gets you from the past to the present and into your future.” One of its standout features is that it’s highly customizable. The platform integrates various data sources, including ERPs, warehouse management, transportation management, and shop floor data into a curated industry data model for business intelligence and advanced analytics.

As Demo Zone neared the midway point, Jorge Castro, Vice President of Customer Engagement and CRM at Optimus, shared its offerings, Optimus PACE and Optimus PABS. Together, they boost productivity and drive growth. The system provides analytics dashboards, Team integrations, and a map view for project locations. “If you have projects in different countries, you will see a map that is going to be showing you where your projects are located.”

Shawn Martin, Senior Solution Architect, Wolters Kluwer, demonstrated the company’s CCH SureTax software. Key features include real-time API integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP, BC, and NAV for seamless tax calculations and detailed tax reporting through Power BI. Martin also mentioned its compliance functionality. “When it comes to the compliance piece with your tax returns, because of that API connection, we will generate the returns automatically . . . This is supremely helpful and will save you a ton of time,” Martin said.

Then Bartosz Szpiech, Vice President of Product, Executive Automats by XPLUS, and Kamila Szelag, Head of Service, Executive Automats by XPLUS, discussed the Executive Automats platform. Szpiech explained the AI agent’s role in interpreting error messages and executing test cases, enhancing efficiency in finance operations. “Out of the box, inside of the app, you’re going to have all capabilities for compliance, and also for security design, for role design, audits, and so forth.”

DocuPhase presented a high-level demonstration of its product, which bridges gaps in ERP systems by offering comprehensive automation solutions. DocuPhase’s offerings include AP automation, document management, and workflow automation, leveraging OCR and AI with a human indexing team to achieve 99.9% accuracy. Use of humans is critical to build on the technology functionality and ensure exceptionally high accuracy.

Charlie Sapienza, Enterprise Sales Director, Experlogix, demonstrated its CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) solution. The company emphasized its 15-year partnership with Microsoft and its expansion into document automation and digital commerce. The demo showcased a guided selling approach, eliminating errors through rule-based functionality, and offering customizable options for products like fences. “Our goal is to help you speed up and supercharge your coding process.”

Joe Christensen from Aqueducts Consulting presented a data and reporting product developed over 14 years. “When I started in the industry, I never saw pricing on anything… I wanted to come to the market with something that was transparent.” He discussed its role as an expert system for BI teams. He extolled the product’s transparent pricing. It includes reports for AP, AR, inventory, and production, with a focus on transparency and customization. The presentation highlighted the importance of decision-making between Fabric and Synapse, and the need for adaptable reporting solutions.

Exciting Raffle

Once the presentations were done, a live raffle was held. Some lucky entrants got to leave Demo Zone not only with valuable information about promising products but also with prizes like VISA gift cards and passes to next year’s Summit.