“If you go to the legal market, you see accountants are way more forward-thinking than the legal market. It’s all Word, Excel, no tech, no nothing.”

– Matt Lowry, Chief Revenue Officer | GTM Leader at ApprovalMax.

Today’s episode is the fifth of my six interviews recorded at the Oracle CloudWorld and SuiteWorld conferences, which were held in Las Vegas in September 2024. I encourage you to subscribe and add them all to your playlist.

For this podcast, I speak with Matt Lowry, Chief Revenue Officer & GTM Leader at ApprovalMax. 

Matt is a commercially-minded and proactive revenue leader with SaaS scale-up experience. His areas of expertise include GTM strategy, revenue operations, sales, special projects, and customer experience.

Matt and I have known each other for a few years. As he was representing ApprovalMax on the floor of the SuiteWorld conference, I jumped at the opportunity to speak with him and get his perspective on the conference. 

We discuss:

  • The vastness and variety of activities at the NetSuite SuiteWorld event, including a pottery studio and a bird conservancy!
  • Attendee’s keen interest in learning about third-party apps and the experience of being first-time exhibitors.
  • The importance of cloud integrators and technology solution providers in the NetSuite ecosystem, as they play a crucial role in helping clients implement and integrate solutions.

I’ll also highlight that afterwards, he wrote a LinkedIn post highlighting that in the Mid-Market/ERP space, lots of third party apps don’t offer free trials, and they tie you into an annual contract.

Also, remember, if you’re looking to earn free CPE, head over to the EarMarkApp and take the quiz for this podcast.

Finally, thank you to the Oracle NetSuite teams for hosting me at your conferences.

Scroll down for a full transcript

This transcript has been generated and transcribed by AI.

Tell us a bit about your journey to being Chief Revenue Officer at ApprovalMax.



Matt:
Yes. It’s quite a strange journey, in a way. So I actually start by explaining the accent, which is a little bit funky. So I’m British Canadian. So I was born in England, grew up on the east coast of Canada for eight years in a tiny island, and went back to England. So that explains the accent.

Heather:
So you speak two languages: English and Canadian?

Matt:
Also French Canadian, so almost like two and a half.

Heather:
Three languages.

Matt:
But, yeah. Then actually, originally I have, like, a legal background, which kind of works a couple jobs then decide, actually, for the commercial side. Ended up working at a Checkit PLC as head of customer experience, and then decided I wanted to work for a smaller company. And then an Australian software, Fathom, were opening up the UK office, so myself and a colleague, Andrew Jordan, worked there and set it up in late 2018 and that kind of brought me to the world of accounting and fintech, and then about 18 months ago, ended up moving over to ApprovalMax.

Heather:
Goodness. That is certainly quite the journey. So I imagine with a legal background that probably gives you a really good understanding of contractual relationships, negotiating and partner relationships, I imagine, am I? Am I correct in that?

Matt:
Yeah, for sure. And it’s quite interesting, because moving into the accounting space, a lot of people, you know, a lot of the discourse is about accountants being really behind in tech and stuff. And if you go to the legal market, yeah, you see accountants are way more forward thinking than than the legal market. It’s all Word, Excel, no tech, no nothing. So having that insight…

Lawyers love their spreadsheets as well, is that what you’re saying?



Matt:
They can’t really work them with the numbers, but they like to stay with what they’re familiar with, and the whole billable hour and all those sorts of themes. Obviously, they translate pretty well from any professional services, including the law.

Heather:
That certainly is interesting. Look, I think it’s always there’s always something you can bring to everything, whatever your background is. So tell our listeners. Now, we have had ApprovalMax on the show a few times.

Give our listeners a brief overview of what ApprovalMax is.



Matt:
Yes, we’re a tool that helps you kind of create robust financial controls across your AP and AR processes. So we integrate with NetSuite, obviously, hence why we’re here, as well as a few other GL systems like Xero, QBO and Cin7 Core. And we pull through the documents and take users outside of the GL so they can put it through a multi tier, multi layered approval process. You’re triaging it to who needs to approve it when they need to approve it. So it’s super, super slick and easy for the approvers. And it means that when it goes back into the GL the person has confidence in terms of the person making the payment that’s gone through that approval process. So that’s a nutshell. There’s obviously a lot more kind of sophisticated features as well. We have capture now and pay, kind of two new add ons as well as fraud detection features. It’s all about basically creating that system and having that trust in the system that everything is happening as it should do, so you don’t misfire payment.

Heather:
Yeah, absolutely. And we’re here at NetSuite. How would you, oh, my goodness. What’s going on here? Okay, we’re walking around the studio floor the sort of the Expo for NetSuite, and we’ve actually just come across a pottery studio,

Matt:
It’s actually very nice.

Heather:
Beautiful. So what they NetSuite do a really good job of is showcasing, uses. Showcasing clients. That was quite a shock.

Matt:
Yeah.

Heather:
The other day, yesterday, there was dog petting. Pause for paws, P, A, U S, E for P, A, w, s, yes, but. I thought it would be quite stressful for the dog, for me to go and pat the dog. I just looked at the dog.

Yoco automates complex approvals to move at speed

Describe SuiteWorld for our listeners.



Matt:
It’s actually quite hard to describe. So I’ve done a lot of accounting events before, globally, both at Fathom and ApprovalMax. And I guess the first thing to say about SuiteWorld is it’s very, very big. We’ve now stumbled across a Bird Conservancy, which is kind of cool.

Heather:
The American Bird Conservancy. So it seems to be providing us education about bird conserving.

Matt:
So that’s new as well. Actually, you’ve not seen that in an event before.

Heather:
They bring a new thing every day. Yeah, it’s pretty, pretty intense. But no, it’s been a great event. Really, really big, both in terms of the size of the scroll of the events. There’s two different expos going on, as well as just the number of people.

Massive.

Matt:
Yes, it is.

Heather:
So 18,000 people.

Matt:
Lots of maps are needed to get around, but, no, it’s good. And they’re putting on a good show and looking after everyone, which is great, great to see.

Heather:
Oh, that’s good. So, as an exhibitor here, you’re feeling very looked after.

Matt:
Yeah.

Heather:
Fantastic, fantastic. And we’re now coming up to the, I think it’s the thermo people, and what thermotherapy people, and what you can do here, if, in case you didn’t know, is you lie there and you get those leg bubbles put on your legs. And I don’t know what they do, but it looks very exciting.

Matt:
Yeah.

Heather:
Then there’s all these people lying with these big Thera body, T, H, E, R, A, B, O, D, Y, body, a, wellness solution, harnessing the power of technology to enhance recovery and health, and you have to wear pants, and you got pants on.

Matt:
That is true. I think they might be quite busy tomorrow morning after the party.

Heather:
But if you manage to get in early.

Matt:
Yeah, true.

Heather:
But they’ve got a few things there. They’ve got a facial one as well. I’d love to get on the airplane with the face and scare people.

Matt:
Yeah.

Heather:
Well, that’s really great to hear that. It’s all going well for you.

What sort of clients in the ERP ecosystem are suited to you?



Matt:
Yeah, so it’s an interesting question, because we don’t really focus on any specific vertical so we’re vertical agnostic. We do have kind of quite a lot of construction clients and NFPs and stuff. It’s more happenstance than anything else. In terms of, like, where we play well, you know, someone’s quite new to NetSuite works out as quite a nice bridging gap. So you have to add all of the users onto the platform, like immediately they can have a lot in ApprovalMax, which is quite good. And then they can almost graduate and go along that journey to become closer to the IPO companies that they’ve been showcasing this morning at the keynote. But yeah, in terms of that, you need kind of two or more approvers processing, probably a couple, like 100 documents a month, maybe for the next week’s instance, then you can kind of come and take a look.

Heather:
And there’s a lot of the whole market floor is split into two. One is SuiteWorld and one is CloudWorld. And there’s actually, like a, I don’t know, it takes about 10 minutes or 15 minutes. Maybe you can do it faster to walk between the two. So I did it. I think I did 16 kilometers yesterday. But the other thing that it’s worth noting is there’s a lot of what I would call cloud integrators or technology solution providers here.

What is your relationship with those cloud integrators or technology solution providers here?



Matt:
We look to partner with them, and it kind of makes makes natural sense, because they want to have apps like us who can help make their clients lives even easier. And ultimately, they exist to try and make that implementation to NetSuite seamless. And NetSuite is so broad that a lot of these people who are moving up to the ERP space want help as to where they should focus. That’s where the obviously, the partners come in, and if the partners are educated and understands what we do, they know to implement financial controls for those clients who they deem might need it.

Heather:
Yeah, absolutely. I was on the High Roller, which is the name for the Ferris wheel here in Las Vegas. And the lady I was speaking to, she said, her integrator didn’t understand what was out there and didn’t understand their business, and they just felt the whole thing was going quite haphazardly, which was unfortunate for them. And it’s, you know, it’s a big world, and it’s very, very complicated, and it’s about finding the integrator. Perhaps you understand that niche and sort of that industry that you’re in, and can really work with you on that. But a lot of people tell me that the NetSuite partners who is assigned to you, there’s a very, very deep relationship there, which is great to see. And people are like, this partner is a friend and is part of my business, so they seem to do quite a good job of rolling it out. Well. Thank you so much, Matt for joining me on the podcast.

Matt:
Thank you.

What have been your one or two takeaways from attending this event?

Matt:
So I think key takeaway is just the amount of depth of applications that I think the prospects and the audience here need. So it’s quite interesting compared to other conferences I’ve been to with other GL systems, the NetSuite audience kind of really seemed keen to try these different third party apps, whether it’s ourselves or other apps on the on the show floor here today. So I think a key takeaway for the proceeds is the education of the audience. Know when it is appropriate, when it’s not appropriate, to introduce a solution like ApprovalMax and just how we can integrate and really partner with NetSuite to make sure that we’re ultimately providing a seamless service to the prospects of the audience.

How can people get in contact with you?

Get in touch with me. I mean, however you want to. There’s obviously LinkedIn, so yeah, just type my name in there and ApprovalMax. I’ll hopefully come up. Matt dot Lowry @approvalmax.com, as well. Or just email sales and it will ultimately come to me if you want to get in touch that way as well.

Heather:
Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on The Accounting Apps podcast.

Matt:
Thanks, Heather. I appreciate it.

Heather:
Awesome.