From reporting and analytics to subscription management, we uncover what software buyers want to see in leading expense management platforms.
Do you know your product’s gaps?
We spoke with customers of expense management companies — Brex, Ramp, Navan (fka TripActions), Airbase, Payhawk, and Pleo — and they told us what they want to see in the products they use.
Since launching Yardstiq software buyer transcripts, teams working across product, marketing, go-to-market, and corporate development have already used them to:
- Influence marketing and sales efforts
- Improve their positioning and product marketing
- Refine their product roadmaps
- Identify acquisition targets to fill gaps
Below we highlight what buyers are saying about expense management vendors.
NAVAN
Product gap: Reporting capabilities
I think that even though their dashboard and their analytics is incredibly flashy and great, I think there could be some more canned reports, and they have been working on that as well. So for instance, there definitely could be some more analysis. So sometimes I’ll sit there and say, okay, I know my average hotel night and maybe now you’re giving me a period-over-period comparison, but I would like you to break it down more.
I’d like to be able to print out a canned hotel report that shows me what is it based in local areas or metro areas. This is a better example, for airfare, and I can toggle on your site and just look at maybe domestic flights in the US. But instead of me having to click on, okay, so show me an average price just for the US domestic, show me an average price may be for international flights or intra-European flights. Why not just pull some of that data for me on a nice little canned report? I know it’s all out there in these great dashboards and these great metrics and you can drill down in the analysis. — T&E Program Manager at $1B+ valuation technology startup
Read the full transcript here.
PayHAWK
Product gap: Subscription management
I think the piece where we think they can do a little bit better is on subscription management, where you have reoccurring expenses like Slack or Google G Suite or LinkedIn or whatever, so you can manage your subscriptions a little better and with that have sort of a forecast and planning. I think that’s something where they need to do a little bit better. […]
What we could consider is to say we get the subscription part to a separate company, so that you almost unbundle all these different features and say, ‘Well, 5 of the core features stay with Payhawk, but this one feature that we give to another company and let them handle that,’ because there are companies like Cledara, for example, that I think are excellent at subscription management.
So you would say, okay, all the subscriptions we do through Cledara and then all the other stuff we do is through Payhawk. That’s something that I think we could consider, and then the subscription cost is even easier. But other than that, I don’t see a reason of why we should switch. — Co-founder at $100M+ funded e-commerce company
Read the full transcript here.
BREX
Product gap: Integrated expense management
And so for me, I want to start consolidating my payables, all my AP. And I want to start bringing that in and unifying that with things like my corporate credit cards and out-of-pocket reimbursements. In this way, my employees only have to go to one place for all that stuff and I have one set of approvals to manage. And that’s actually the power of a product like Airbase, one of their up-and-coming competitors, that really is trying to do all three of those things well. There’s consolidation in the space is what I’m saying to you. I want them to start offering it, frankly. I really do…Perhaps Brex Empower, this new product, will actually deliver. […]
So remember, there’s other constituencies besides that end user. I care a lot as a CFO whether they’re submitting receipts, whether they can’t spend over a certain amount of money, whether there’s approvals, like there’s a lot. Whether it snaps into the ERP system, whether the app is good for them to use to submit a receipt, when they submit a receipt that’s auto read by AI so that the employees are oftentimes typing some stuff in that’s on receipt. These are all things. So my needs aren’t as simple as just get a card to somebody and have them swipe. They’re beyond that. — CFO at $100M+ funded fintech
Read the full transcript here.
AIRBASE
Product gap: Coding and classification capabilities
I’ve chatted with some of the product leads and they’re making improvements to the coding and choosing the appropriate classifications. I’d like to see improvements in which wage classifications are mandatory on which transactions, such as which departments need to be mandatory, and if you’re using a class or location within that suite, the ability to choose which of those classifications are shown so people know how to code them correctly. That’s one of the main areas I’d like to see updates with, and I believe they are making those changes. — Director at Accounting firm
Read the full transcript here.
Product gap: International payments and integrations
One of which would just be facilitating international payments. That would be a really big one for us. […]
We are purchasing procurement software, and that procurement software has an integration with Bill.com, but it doesn’t with Airbase, and so that would be another one. And then as we think about increasing our usage and our administrators, there’s more familiarity with the Bill.com platform than there is with Airbase. — Director, Finance & Accounting at $1B+ valuation technology startup
Read the full transcript here.
PLEO
Product gap: Sophisticated reporting
I think the other things that are quite important is just reporting and the fidelity of reporting. If you log into Pleo app, it does not scream super-high levels of sophistication. The infrastructure works really well, but the reporting nuance and all of that, building dashboards, building reports, investigating spend levels in certain structures either in certain categories or from certain users or over certain timeframes, you can get a bunch of that done, but it’s not quite as customer-friendly as it is in Ramp’s portal, which is obviously our day-to-day direct comparison.
So I think that that’s something to invest into. And then I do think obviously in terms of bill pay and receipt matching, I do think it works, but I think it works yet a little bit better with Ramp in the US and there’s obviously nuances. It’s obviously tougher with a bunch of different countries and languages and all of that across Europe. — CFO at $1B+ valuation technology startup
Read the full transcript here.
RAMP
Product gap: Mobile app user experience
I believe the biggest area for growth for Ramp is its mobile app. The website is decent, but the app itself needs improvement…If I were to give Ramp advice, I would suggest investing in improving the user experience on the app.— Vice President at $10M+ funded healthcare startup
Read the full transcript here.
Product gap: Enterprise features
What can get improved is, I don’t think they have all the enterprise features figured out just yet. So they’re still developing that. You can’t close periods with them. Their QuickBooks integration is different from other credit cards. They’re more of a ledger rather than an actual credit card integration. — CFO at Investor-backed retail tech startup
Read the full transcript here.
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