Companies Will Shift Their Focus to Profitability for Their Path to Success

 

All companies should look at automated purchasing and compliance in today’s marketplace. Tyler Kern, and co-host Hunter Austin, Managing Partner of Kelley Austin, got some hot tips on the latest trend in automated payment control solutions from James Thomas, CEO and Founder of Itemize. 

In the B2B space, where you need a lot more data in that transaction, that hasn’t effectively been automated the same way the consumer space has been automated,” Thomas said. 

The financial control software a company uses may be automated, but often getting the information into the system is still a manual effort. Thomas believes the AP (automated payment) world is ripe for digitization. “The data we need to automate business purchasing, so there’s not a lot of people involved in moving paper and workflow systems, that’s a problem most people probably thought was solved in the twentieth century. To make that happen, we need a lot more data coming in some manner into our financial control or expense management systems.”

The opportunity exists in payment control to reduce costs and mistakes and transform precious human resources to work on higher-value activities. Thomas, whose history with the payment industry is rich with experience, founded Itemize to provide solutions for B2B because the need is extensive. “We’ve all heard and seen about the labor shortages in the United States and globally,” Thomas said. “And that labor shortage is making it incumbent upon finance departments to look towards automation as a potential way to solve the problem.”

Hosts Tyler Kern and Hunter Austin sit down with Itemize CEO and founder James Thomas to talk about the future of automated payment control solutions. 

 

With the right automated solutions, an AP specialist can increase invoice processing volume and gain time elsewhere. “We can do five-to-ten invoices in a minute,” Thomas said. “So, that person can look at the data and use it for analysis and intelligence. That’s a welcome contribution to an accounts payable department.” 

More Episodes in This Series

Companies Are More Comfortable Embracing Emerging Technologies to Boost Efficiency

The Retail Sales Dilemma and How to Solve It

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

pre-clinical
From Classroom to Clinic: Pre-Clinical Talent Steps Into Healthcare’s Hard-to-Fill Roles
April 23, 2026

Healthcare systems are facing a workforce crisis that’s no longer temporary—it’s structural. Even before COVID-19, staffing shortages across nursing, technical, and administrative roles were already straining capacity; today, those gaps are wider, costlier, and directly impacting patient access. With labor shortages persisting and burnout rising, health systems are being forced to rethink not just…

Read More
learning
If Higher Ed Wants Experiential Learning at Scale, It Needs a Broader Playbook
April 21, 2026

The ground is shifting under higher education. AI is changing how people learn almost overnight—and at the same time, more than half of graduates are underemployed after finishing their degrees. That’s forcing a more uncomfortable question into the open: what is a college credential really worth today? As employers and governments shift their focus…

Read More
skilled trades mentorship
Why the Modern Data Center Is Forcing Communities and Policymakers to Rethink Infrastructure
April 21, 2026

Data centers have moved from largely invisible digital infrastructure to a highly visible source of public debate as artificial intelligence accelerates demand for power, fiber, and compute capacity. The modern data center is now being built closer to population centers to support low-latency services, bringing critical infrastructure into direct contact with residential communities for…

Read More
Inside the Spot Freight Shift: How Manifold Is Simplifying a Fragmented Logistics Market
April 21, 2026

The freight market is in the midst of a notable shift. With national tender rejection rates approaching 14% by the end of Q1, freight conditions have shifted back in carriers’ favor, often coinciding with increased activity in the spot market. At the same time, logistics teams are juggling an increasingly fragmented ecosystem of portals, emails,…

Read More