I'll go ahead and get kicked off here. So just for the sake of introduction, my name is Katie Africk. I lead our professional services and implementation teams here at Tropic, and I'm joined by three friendly faces that you see on the screen now, our very own procurement and finance leaders. Russell, our CFO, who I know you've met briefly earlier today, Joey, who is Tropic's controller, and Michael Sheerl Shields, our VP of procurement.
And before we jump in, I would love to just kinda set the stage for some of the fun that we'll have today.
And the first thing I thought I would do, because I'm a little bit biased, is start with implementation and how we think about actually bringing implementation to life at Tropic and bringing your Tropic platform to life in a way that's really meaningful. So over the last six months, our team has been hyper focused on how we can take so many of these incredible AI resources and agents that you've learned about today and essentially put them to work for our customers as real drivers.
So the cool thing about this is implementation has found kind of a new meaning here at Tropic across our team.
We're not solely helping customers configure their Tropic platform and set up their repository or leading a training session, but we're actually using implementation to set the foundation for these AI agents to actually do their best work and save people like Joey Russell Russell and Michael Shields time. So before we get into the panel and I let these three share some of their wisdom, I thought it'd be helpful just to tell a quick story.
I feel like everyone sort of had their AI light bulb moment, whether it's, like, typing in your wish list for the grocery store for the week and having it organized by the aisles. That's my personal favorite, or having it plan your dream tropical vacation with the must sees and the must dos and the must eats.
I want to share my AI light bulb moment with you over the past, you know, couple of months here at Tropic so we can all sort of visualize what a game changer this has become, and we'll get into some of the detail on that. So one of our new customers that signed with Tropic last year was super excited to access Tropic Intelligence. We hear a lot from our customers. We can't wait to sign so we can use your data to help save on x renewal that's coming up in three to four weeks. And after they they actually leveraged the data, they were like, okay, this is great. This was awesome. But how the heck am I gonna get my entire team to actually use this?
And our old answer was, don't worry. We have all this training. We'll lead stakeholder engagement. We'll send videos and so on.
And the light bulb moment for me has been this new answer because in this agentized world, we actually don't need to teach them how to use a brand new SaaS tool or system and train day in and day out to get them to use this thing. They can literally type in commands like, am I paying a fair price for Zoom? Or can you help me renew this contract? And the Tropic platform actually becomes that driver.
So it's holding their hand every step of the way. It's helping them access their data and our data and all in the service of making these more intelligent purse purchasing decisions. So to me, that's where that light bulb, like, truly came on. Implementation was no longer about teaching people how to use yet another software tool.
It's suddenly now about, like, how do you actually type in the right command to get what you need to do to happen, and how can you actually leverage that to save you time and focus on more strategic activities.
So with that, not solely just our customers taking advantage of this. The Tropic team here is doing the same exact thing to actually access some of our data and and make more, efficient decisions. So, what I'd love to do is actually transition over at this point. And, Russell, I'll pass it to you quickly first. You'll talk a little bit about, like, some of the contract visibility we're able to gain and request support, but would love to hear just your point of view a little bit on how this has, you know, pivoted some of the ways that we think about things across the business.
Great. Thanks, Katie.
Yeah.
Katie, it may surprise you that I wasn't very popular in school growing up. I wasn't. I sat alone at lunch, no friends, always picked last on the playground.
And fast forward till now as CFO, and some days I feel super popular. In fact, over the past week, I really did this, I counted how many inbound requests I got to review something, approve something, intently engage, intellectually engage in some type of decision point, and I was just keeping tick marks. In in one week, I stopped counting at a hundred. Think about that. Twenty inbound requests to think about something, approve something, put my signature on something.
That doesn't scale.
That doesn't scale. And the problem in the past has been the mindshare suck that that creates on a CFO.
Well, Tropic solves that for me in many ways, one of which is what we call the request highlights. So request highlights is basically it's a button. It's got the little AI sparkly things on it that show you, like, click me. You click that and you can see the overview of everything that that request includes.
Another funny story, I I am notoriously horrible with directions.
So bad, Katie.
I got lost on the way to my brother's rehearsal dinner.
Oh, no.
Right? So I'm kinda similar with software tools. Sometimes I I I have a gazillion of them open. I enter into them and I'm like, what do I click where? How do I do I go to this screen or that tab?
With Tropic, I can go to ask Tropic dot ai and simply ask it what I'm looking for, and that actually completely changes the game of how I, as a CFO, can interact with Tropic. Because it's no longer about being an expert at the tool, remembering where that report is stored. I can go in. I can ask the question that I want, which could be about contracts. It could be some data request, and it comes back and it spits the information out for me in extremely fast manner. So it's it's changed how I can interact even with our own tool.
That's awesome.
Can I jump in here, Katie?
I'm not a CFO. I I actually had friends in school. But, you know, what what I I have I have worked for, you know, CFOs and and others, throughout my career. And what's interesting is that as as someone in procurement who kinda guides the the spend process along, a lot of times when it gets hung up by a CFO or, any sort of approver, it's not that they're against the spend.
It's that they don't know if they're against or for this, but they just don't have that context. And a lot of times, all of the information is there, but it's not readily accessible. It's not easily kind of digested. Right?
And so it may sound like very simple, but this is actually a huge unlock for a lot of businesses because whether it's, you know, getting it faster, which by the way, maybe, you know, good or bad. Like, obviously, if it's a good tool, you want it to go faster because there's a cost of inaction there. Or just getting to know faster because what that does is that frees up time for the requester to, like, move on. Right?
So it actually is a very, you know, strategic, like, an initiative and in concept to have something that simple as like, hey. Summarize this for me. I do the same thing. Right?
But I I have to imagine, you know, at someone at at at Russell's level where they're dealing with just so many different requests, you know, having that summarization is is amazing.
Yeah.
It's great. It does the quick thinking and you don't you're no longer spending, you know, five minutes clicking around figuring out who did Shields actually approve this. Exactly.
Russell, question for you because I know core finance has been using Ask Tropic a ton. Are there any examples from, like, what you've heard across, other departments within Tropic that are core purchasers where they've used Tropic to help, you know, support or make things a bit easier on them?
Yeah. For sure. And with this question, I had a a recent light bulb moment. So FedEx dropped off this giant package outside my front door during one of the breaks. It's so giant. It weighed over a hundred pounds, and it said on it two person lift.
Well, it's a bed that I got my son that I'm surprising him with. He's at he's away on at a camp. And I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to carry this two person lift bed up the stairs? I I don't have enough hands to carry it.
We heard earlier panelists talk about how the g and a functions were often being collapsed and consolidated where we don't have two hands to carry it. And so with Tropic, we can multiply our efforts. So for the rev ops team, which reports to me, we get inbound requests. They own the tech stack.
Right? So we could have several hundred software tools that we are responsible for determining, do we renew them? Well, you can't scale that unless you threw a ton of people at that problem. But with Tropic, they can scale it because spinning up a renewal request, as Srinivas showed, is as easy as clicking a button and answering questions.
So it completely eradicates and eliminates all the heavy lifting that a two person lift would require. It does the heavy lifting for you, in a seamless way and and twenty four seven.
That's awesome. I completely agree. No longer need the the double trouble for the lift.
That's it.
Great. Well, Joey, I'm gonna head your way for a second. I think the awesome thing about what I've seen upstream with some of our ducks becoming in a row and cleaning up a lot of the process, whether it's, like, tapping the AI to help support some of the maintenance of that, or simply just getting adoption of a procurement process upstream. How do you feel like that's made it easier on accounting teams to actually close the books or follow through with some of the processes that we know are important for audit and things of that nature?
Yeah.
Great question. So, you know, once those contracts are approved by Russell and team, we've gotten through the request. It's been my team's job to make sure that, like, what we're paying is actually aligned to the contract that we've signed. And as controllers, some of my more important responsibilities revolve around cash flow management and safeguarding our company assets. And that's becoming more and more critical as technology is advancing because they'll do prod attempts, and they're getting harder to spot.
For accounting teams who are operating with a without a system like Tropic, that often means a lot of manual effort. Right? So teams are gonna be spending a lot of hours doing line by line reviews of invoices, checking those invoices against contracts and purchase orders, and trying to make sure that nothing has slipped through the cracks. And even then, the process is still inherently susceptible to human error.
It's time consuming work. It's repetitive and frankly not the best use of a highly skilled accounting team. Now in our world, Tropics AI invoice match does all the heavy lifting for us. Right?
It reads the invoice. It checks it against the right documents. It flags any exceptions without us ever having to lift a finger.
When my team logs on every single day, that manual matching work that I described has already been going on behind the scenes. So all we have to do is actually review the proactive insights and only focus on the exceptions that then require judgment.
So we've been able to cut our invoicing process time, by over seventy percent on average. And more importantly, we further reduce the risk of paying incorrect or unauthorized amount.
But it's not just about efficiency. You know, you mentioned, you know, audit and internal controls and things like that. So, you know, with transforming the role of accounting and AP teams, we've gone from being reactive to strategic.
So we're actually no longer buried in administrative work. We've unlocked this whole new level of bandwidth that we can then shift to being more strategic partners for the business. And that means spending more time on things like cash flow forecasting, uncovering other savings opportunities, strengthening our internal controls, prepping for our audit, shortening our time to close, and improving our post close reporting. And we're able to do that without having to grow the team.
That's great. I feel like there's a lot of times where we know accounting is making magic happen to make sure our financials, you know, are healthy and clean, but yet folks in the business still will pester you all with questions like, hey. Did my invoice get paid? Or, hey. Is it okay if I buy x y z tool?
And for me personally, I'll have to admit, this this story here, but I went to buy an onboarding tool to help make it a bit more efficient for our customers to get things set up in the platform. And I wasn't even sure if I was allowed to make this purchase at Tropic. I knew how to do it, hopefully and naturally, given my role, but I wasn't sure if it was okay. Like, was this actually part of our spend policy? I'm curious, Joey, since I know you're kind of, you know, the the gatekeeper of that. Has AI helped enforce our policy in any way, shape, and for or form for you and hopefully, like, less pings and slacks all day from the rest of the team?
Yeah. Great lead in into kind of our, compliance copilot. So that story is gonna hit on a challenge that a lot of companies are gonna face. Right?
Especially as they're growing and scaling. People aren't always sure what's in policy, meaning what's allowed, what's preferred, and what the right process even is. And that's assuming that they've got a clear policy to begin with. Right?
So without the right guardrails, those gray areas can turn into a spin leakage, policy violations, and things that are kinda quietly slip slipping through the cracks.
What tropics compliance check brings, it it kinda brings those guardrails into the actual flow of the work that we're doing within the platform. So now we can actually go in and strategically configure our procurement policies directly in the settings of the platform, everything from net payment terms, payment frequency to preferred payment methods, virtual card usage, and even branding and logo guidelines.
And then the AI does its job. It's monitoring for issues before they ever become problems, flagging things like unapproved vendors, incorrect payment methods, or brand misuse, automatically reviewing the documents that are being uploaded to the request and making sure that the requests are following the right approval path.
And that's a massive shift in, you know, from the old way of doing things. So, you know, you kinda mentioned, you know, the manual pings and the manual works. So back then, if someone's got a question, you know, it means going and reading a long policy document on our Internet or pinging finance in Slack. And most of the time, you know, we might not catch an issue until after the spend has happened or we've already negotiated that point with the vendor.
And so it kinda puts us behind the eight ball.
Now we're actually catching issues upfront and in many cases, without any manual involvement from the finance team or the procurement team. So that means, fewer retroactive cleanups, better better policy adherence, and just a much stronger control environment overall, which is really near and dear to my heart.
And the best part of it is it doesn't actually slow the business down putting those guardrails in place. It actually is speeding it up. So people can actually move faster with confidence knowing that these smart checks are running in the background. And for my team, it means that we're no longer in the role of spin police. We're actually enabling smarter, faster decisions from the start.
That's great. I do feel like at least folks that, you know, are contract owners at Tropic, giving them visibility into what our policy actually is and when a compliance check runs, it's, like, kind of a cool thing for me to be able to see, like, oh, nice. Like, this checks out, like, scored the net thirty payment terms and monthly payments instead of, you know, annual upfront. So, for me to have, like, some of that wherewithal and understanding has been helpful just to make sure I'm being a good steward of Tropic funds.
I think I think you're touching on something really important here. Right? Because as as we think about finance leaders and and, you know, as as us as finance and procurement leaders, we're often focused on, okay, how is this making, you know, our job easier? How are we derisking the situation? But, really, you're also improving the the experience for the stakeholder, for the requisitioner here. You're almost turning it into, for some elements, self-service.
Right? Because they can get immediate feedback.
And and it's not like, hey. Go read the policy and make sure your compliance. Like, no. Great.
You've you've uploaded the form, which is a requirement. And then boom. Here, it just flags to you. Hey, Katie.
Here are some things you need to be thinking about as as we kinda progress along. And so I think that aspect is really cool where even if Joey were on top of his job, which, you know, he he is, but, like, you know, it might take him twenty four or forty eight hours to respond to that sort of thing, you know, and and and for what? For him to say, hey. Here's what we need to push on.
So I really like analyzing it from from both elements. I also love this particular agent where it's talking about, you know, you know, compliance. Right? Because we in procurement are often doing, like, due diligence, whether it's, you know, hey, is this approved supplier or things of that nature and all of that can be incorporated into this.
So but but just looking at it from an efficiency, from a limited risk, but also the enhanced, user experience for stakeholders is is great because when when they're in compliance with the program because they're aware, then, obviously, that derisks it as well.
Yeah. That's that's accurate. Shields, just to pull you a little further upstream, because, you know, I love to talk about contract data and making sure your source of truth is in a really clean state.
Do you wanna share a little bit about how Tropic has sort of transformed the way you're able to just, like, maintain and build that true renewal calendar using some of the AI agents that we have today?
Yeah. And maybe I'll answer your question by just kinda zooming out a little bit. Right? Because right now, there's a ton of, interest in, you know, I I use the word procurement, although I think some people think of it as, like, you know, spend management.
How do we spend money efficiently? Like, dollars are, you know, a very limited resource, which sounds intuitive, but a few years ago, that was definitely not the case. Right? It was like, hey.
Money was free. Well, now it's not. Right? And so, effective spend manage spend management is no longer a nice to have.
Like, it is a requirement for survival. Right?
And so if you, like, said, hey. We need to do this effectively.
The foundational layer, the the start, like, step number one, like, before you start doing anything else is having a good foundation of good data. Right? And a lot of times that's not just knowing how much you're spending and with whom, but it's having the visibility going down a few layers to be able to know, hey. You know, when do certain contracts end, you know, what's incorporated as part of that? How many licenses do we have? Like, all of that metadata and visibility to that metadata is imperative. It is that foundation.
Now if you go back to, like, you know, before this awesome agent and before, you know, AI kinda was playing a role here, it took a lot of time to to maintain this data, to have good, I call it data hygiene. Okay? And and even for a company like Tropic, and, you know, kinda, you know, confess our our, you know, sins a little bit here. Like, we were good.
Right? But we still struggled here in some aspects. You know, we we were good in maybe great, but there's room to improve because once again, the the amount of effort in terms of, like, maintaining and keep that up to speed is an investment in and of itself and, you know, requires resources which are, you know, strained. Right?
And so when you have a tool that can, like, do a lot of this heavy lifting for you, in automatically, you know, unlocking critical contract details and insights, you know, taking those legal documents, you know, making sure that there's, you know, no missed, you know, key dates like auto renewals, like, erasing data entry, errors, which, you know, despite your best efforts are are gonna happen. Right?
You know, now you have, you know, this agent which auto extracts the key details. Right?
Whether it's renewal dates, clauses, whatever you want the visibility to. And by the way, customizable, of course, from your contracts, you know, it cuts out that step, but it also removes simultaneously not only the effort, but it also removes, effort, but it also removes, you know, the the the hygiene aspect. And so it kinda keeps that foundational layer in very good quality shape, which allows you to kind of build up from there, which is like phenomenal. So, and and then just the instantaneous nature of it all is amazing.
Yeah. So true. I think the being able to basically have this feel like a machine that's humming to keep your contract data in sync has been super powerful.
On that note, we all know why I love contract data because I think it serves as sort of, like, this trigger for you to be able to take advantage of our intelligence data.
Shield, how have you kind of leveraged the ability to get access to some of Tropic's pricing and benchmarking data and sort of plan for spend in a more proactive way, using some of our agents?
Yeah. This is this is the this is the fun part. Right? Like, the foundational, the data is like I mean, it's it's important, but, know, just like the foundation of a building, you don't always see it.
Right? It's not you know, I'm no architect, but, you know, you see the the facade, you see the the beautiful, like, high rise, whatever the case may be, and you don't see the foundation. But, obviously, the foundation is playing a part, but this is now what you're asking about. This is, you know, the fun part.
This is the exciting part.
You know, gosh. Like, if I think about procurement, if I think about, you know, spend management, you know, I come from a world where in the indirect space, which I think a lot of us kind of play in and I'm sure a lot of listeners are playing, you know, we have procurement specialists who, you know, know a lot about what they're buying.
But more often than not, we have procurement generalists, which means we're covering a broad amount of spend, which means we're not always true experts, which means we're dealing with salespeople who sell the the same, you know, product day in and day out. And we've never heard about this product or we're not as familiar with it. Right?
And, I think that's that in and of itself is a disparity. And so to compensate for that and kind of how Tropicana about it is like, hey. Providing you with the data, which by the way, was inaccessible before. So Tropic comes along.
It's like, great. The data is there. Now it still takes time, effort to, kind of absorb it all to go, you know, to kinda sift through it, to, you know, just determine like, you know, which, you know, suppliers that we should even be looking at right now. You throw, you know, the negotiation navigator, right?
The agent on top of this.
And, and what it does is it kind of brings you information like that. Maybe you're you didn't even request yet. It's like, hey, Katie, like you need to know this. And you're like, oh my gosh, like I do need to know this.
Right? And so, you know, yeah, the the metadata is is the catalyst, but all of a sudden it's like, hey. Gosh. Yeah.
We need to start preparing for this. And, oh, by the way, it instantly serves up, like, a price benchmark. Right? And and you're like, oh my gosh.
Like, we can certainly, you know, make a difference here. Or maybe, gosh, our our pricing is good apparently based off of the price benchmark, but but we're still not where we need to be from, you know, an ROI perspective. So then it becomes okay. Well, maybe you should consider this other provider.
Right? You know, alternative suppliers.
And and so now before you even step on a call with the supplier, you're able to really have a strong strategy. Like it is extremely empowering, which, which is phenomenal. It's definitely, you know, leveling the playing field by kind of arming, you know, us with, you know, data driven insights. And so if I kind of think about like, okay, so what?
Well, think about right now how quickly your tech stack is evolving. You know, obviously with the proliferation of, of AI, but even even software is changing and, and we need to stay on top of it. Like we as a company, well guess whose shoulder that falls on. A lot of times it falls on, you know, procurement or, you know, finance in some in some degree to make sure, that that we are staying on top of that because it is going to be a competitive advantage.
That's why we're investing in the tool.
And so instead of historically, you know, managing like, you know, the paper, the paperwork and the request and then, you know, spending up like, you know, all this time, like trying to kind of get up to speed, you know, I'm able to, be way, way more efficient. I'm able to, you know, evaluate new providers. I'm able to identify, you know, cost optimization opportunities, including, by the way, rationalization aspects.
And and and that has been a game changer because for so long, like, procurement has bemoaned the fact that, like, you know, we're we're stuck focused on the urgent, but maybe more tactical aspects. And and this is a great example, especially as we evaluate the tech stack on on ways for us to, you know, bring, more to the equation, but not just from, like, a a negotiation point of view, but you're also really touching on the source and angle, which is which is really powerful.
And I feel like those are a couple of examples of unlocking the, like, what is this allowing you to do more of, so to speak. Like, you're not save spending a bunch of your time. Shields, probably, as a procurement wizard, you are doing a ton of this, like, outside research to make sure that you're sourcing strategically. This, I assume, unlock some of that for you.
It's definitely a time savings, but make make no mistake. The impact is there as well. Does that make sense? You have more credibility going into calls.
You're also able to align with better providers, which, you know, if you have a better provider, maybe it's a lower price, maybe it's not a provider with a lower price, but it definitely is a higher ROI. Right? So absolutely, like, you can think about the the savings and the efficiencies in in many different ways, and it is really hard tangible savings. But it's kind of fun to think about how procurement can not only impact the bottom line and and do so in a more meaningful way, but start to impact the top line as well.
Because why are we paying these suppliers at all? We're paying them to improve our market. We're paying them to help in you know, impact our, you know, engineering teams where and all these things impact the top line. And so then it becomes, you know, impacting both sides of the coin, which, is, a huge impact.
Yeah. And, Katie, I would say it's not even about doing more of or less of.
It's actually doing first of.
Because I think we kid ourselves often when we think that we do compliance on every purchase, like, without a tool like Tropic or that we're actually keeping track of the owners or the renewal dates or running price benchmarks or collaborating on, is this the right tool or comparing alternatives or linking every purchase to an ROI and a company objective. So I would argue it's often that doing this at scale leveraging AI allows you to finally do something for the first time ever in your business in a scalable way that doesn't sleep twenty four seven.
Yeah. I I like what you're saying there, Russell.
You much to my, you know, chagrin, you know, a lot of times there's been a, reluctance to invest in, you know, robust procurement functions or even procurement functions at all or even procurement tools. Right? And now, functions at all, or even procurement tools. Right?
And now, and it's always like, hey, do more with less or, or do something with little. And now it's like, that's no longer an impossible equation to kind of solve. Right? Because now you can actually do those things for the first time that maybe just haven't been done in the past or been done very poorly.
Or maybe if they were done, they were done by people who, you know, should have been focused on other things, you know, to begin with. Right? When at the end of the day, you know, if you hire an engineer, do you really want them, you know, doing, like, spend management, or do you want them, you know, focused on kind of building product? Right?
If you if you hire, you know, Joey, do you want him focused on spend management, or do you want him, you know, doing, you know, the accounting stuff. Right? And so that's I think that's, that that's a a good good call out, Russell.
That's great.
Are there any examples that the three of you can think of around, you know, how maybe your mindset has changed a little bit? I think going back to my little story at the beginning, you know, at first, I was like, oh, make me the grocery list. Now I'm like, put it in the order of Whole Foods in New York City.
Are there any examples that the three of you have sort of, you know, leveraged in Tropic to sort of level up the way you're you're typing in commands and using some of the functionality?
I think the biggest mind shift mind shift for me, was basically realizing that, like, AI is not here to replace our judgment. It's not here to replace us entirely. It's here to protect us. I think it's making me kind of smarter and more efficient, you know, from the accounting standpoint by eliminating all the noise and repetition. We actually get more space to think strategically and lead proactively. I think when when AI first came on the scene, it was, all of the, you know, conversation around AI is gonna replace everybody's jobs. People are gonna be obsolete.
I don't think that that's necessarily the case where we are right now with AI, and I also don't think that AI is completely replacing judgment. I don't think people are just mindlessly typing things into chat CPT.
I think there has been a lot, that I've learned around prompt engineering, how to interact with the tools, how to interact with Tropic dot ai.
You know, before, Tropic dot ai came on, you know, the scene, before we kinda started to iterate on all of that, you know, so much of my team's time is just keeping up with the volume. Right? You're matching, you're chasing, you're validating.
Now we spend that same time spotting risks earlier, identifying trends in our spend data, advising the business. And so if anything, it's making us, you know, smarter and more strategic. And, you know, to the point that we were just talking about before, it's unlocking things that maybe we've never done before. Right? And so it's expanding the scope of our roles in a very meaningful way.
Awesome.
Yeah. I I I don't think this contradicts, Joey at all. I think it's it's taken it to one one more level because I I agree, like, you know, the unlock is is like, hey. It's it's it's not here to, like, replace me.
It's here to help me. But I actually think that now instead of it being this, like, helpful little tool, right, I I really view it as, like, no. I'm gonna have a dedicated agent who's focused on this. There's almost be it's almost like in my mind, you know, I mean, you can still have a team of people for sure, but also in addition to the people, you have this thing, you know, this this person, this artificial intelligence who's focused on a job.
Right? Hey. This is your job. You're this agent, and you do this for me. Right?
And then, hey. This separate different agent. So rather than think of it as, like, one, you know, tool that's kinda doing everything, it's like, hey. Like, great.
This agent, this is what you do. This is what you do for me. I think that'll continue to enhance and grow. And so all of a sudden, I am managing a team of agents.
I may also be managing a team of people and agents and but that team of people is also managing their own agents. Right? And so all of a sudden, you know, I I know the term force multipliers used a lot, and I don't wanna, like, just throw buzzwords around, but that's really what it is. Right?
Because I'm still one person, and yet all of a sudden, I now have, you know, a quote unquote little army out there, like, you know, doing work on on, on my behalf, which is but it's but it's very specialized work. Does that make sense? It's like, hey. You you set it up.
You give it some instructions or a setup where you log into Tropics. Like, hey. This is what this agent does.
Oh my gosh. That is so amazing. And so when I think about it from that mindset, that has been the shift for me that I don't think of artificial intelligence as as, hey. One thing that does a lot, I think of it really as, like, a lot of little things that do very niche and specific goals, and outcomes.
Yeah. For me, the mindset shift is really around the importance of context, parameters, and iteration.
When you think about any AI tool that you're working with, we're all learning how to create better prompts.
Right? It gives you back better answers the more context you give it, the more you, constrain and prompt it in the direction of what you're actually asking for, and then, of course, what's feeding it. So if we if we just went out to chat GPT and just ask a question with no context, you're gonna get a more generic vanilla answer.
In the context of our work in finance and procurement in the environment of Tropic, trained on all of that rich data from thousands of at bats and knowing our metadata and that particular agreement and the compliance standards that we've set forth.
So the mindset shift is about the power of that and the power of that multiplied across teams and individuals using it at scale.
The other mindset shift would be you're not gonna break it.
Like, go in, ask questions of it, interact with it, iterate with it, continue to hone, and you will be surprised what together you and your agentic services can come up with.
Yeah. That's great.
Exactly.
I'm going a little bit off script, but I thought this would be interesting.
What is between just quick rapid fire across each of you, what are you most excited to do less of? I know we talked about more of in first of, but are there specific things that you used to do that were kinda, like, bogging down your time that you're just you know, can be just a one liner, but what are you excited to sort of do less of with some of what we've built out in Tropic?
I'm looking forward to not having to go in and look for things or, discover on my own and rather being informed proactively and told, here's where you need to focus. Here's the status of things. Like, it's working for me, not me working for it.
Mhmm. Love it.
Yeah. I feel like I'm no longer, again, no longer behind the eight ball. Right? I mean, Russell just mentioned, you know, it's working for you. Right? So I think I'm excited to do kind of more of the, I would say, repetitive work, the kind of fact finding, the discovery, and then, you know, realizing maybe in some of that fact finding and discovery that we maybe missed something, something's out of policy, things like that.
Having it worked for you and having that proactive insights and, you know, letting it run loose, it's making us be kind of more, I don't know, more proactive. Just overall, it's helping us to catch more things.
That then has downstream effects on making our audits cleaner, things like that. So I'm dealing with less messes and cleanup and, again, you know, being more proactive, not only in our own tropic processes, but throughout the accounting organization as a whole, and that has tons of downstream impacts all the way through our financial statement audits.
Yeah. It's awesome.
Yeah.
Mine's probably gonna wax a little bit philosophical, but I think, like, one common pain point that I hear procurement people talk about a lot is the fact that we're often brought in light. Right? And, and it's not just an annoyance of like, like, I wish I had more time. The reality is, is like the things I can do and the things I can participate as a procurement person.
Like if, if, if they come to me at the last minute, like, hey, can you affect this deal? We've chosen the supplier. We just need you to go, like, negotiate some terms. Like, okay.
Sure. I can try. And, yeah, if you would have brought me in earlier, I could probably have had greater impact on it. But if we if I get involved from the very, very beginning, but and and get involved in sourcing and even identifying who the right, you know, supplier is for the job.
Like, that's where my impact begins to expound, expand exponentially. Right? And so, yeah, I think that AI is, like, primed, you know, everything from, like, intelligent intake that that starts way upstream, but, you know, embedded procurement logic and and tools that people are already using, like pattern recognition, you know, from historical behavior. And then all the insights that we've talked about, I think that that's gonna put me in a position where that is happening less and less frequently.
And and so it's going to fundamentally change, you know, my role in procurement in a great way. And and also, you know, the impact that I can have on the organization.
So I think it's what I'm looking forward to most.
K. That's awesome.
Cool. Any, last closing thoughts on just some of the things you're excited about, whether it's, like, specific to Tropic and or, how you plan to leverage and or continue to leverage AI or any of your, like, fun wish list items as we think about, moving forward?
You know, in traffic oh. No. You first.
I mean, if you insist. Right?
No. I I I you know, we we we announced a handful of agents, you know, that that that have come out, and and it's so incredibly interesting to, like, watch, like, even how those agents have progressed even the past cup kinda couple months from maybe an informal start to a more formal start. I I once again, I think five is I think five is, a starting point and it's gonna, you know, completely, like, expand from there. Right?
Everything from I know, like a a benchmark agent, you know, kind of coming soon. But once again, it's it's something a very specific, like, problem solve. Okay. Great.
That's awesome. And so then, you know, death by a thousand cuts is you see the reverse of that. It's like, hey. Like, progression by, you know, making impacts here and there.
And, I I think that's gonna be a phenomenal future to kinda be a part of.
Yeah. I'm wholeheartedly agree. I think, you know, seeing the evolution of the Tropic platform over the time that I've been here has been incredible.
Seeing how we've woven AI very meaningfully and thoughtfully into the platform has been amazing.
I think the way that we're listening to feedback and actually pushing out features that are solving real problems for boots in the ground folks has been great to see.
And I think to piggyback off of Shields, I don't know if there's one specific thing that I'm excited for the most, but I'm excited to continue to participate in discussions like these, hear from customers, and, continue to, see how the Tropic platform evolves.
Yeah. I'm excited to see how where we're headed is transforming how people interact with software, which sounds like really highfalutin. But, really, I think, you know, gone are the days where reports are just places where data goes to die or where people are hunting around desperately trying to find the data or contacting support, asking for a custom report, you know, or fumbling around, clicking where what's where's the menu. Like, it's now an interactive environment where you just ask the question you want. I mean, literally, try it out. If you're a customer, go in there, ask it a question. How can I use Tropic for budgeting and planning?
Product team's probably freaking out. What is it gonna tell me? It actually gives a really solid answer, and it will prompt you further. And it it will say, do you want me to walk you through how to add a custom field?
Yes. Yes, please. Think about that at scale, the power of that multiplied and how much inertia it has gained just in the past few months. The velocity of improvement and the power that's being harnessed, I don't I don't even think we fully yet realize what we've built and what it can do for our customers because we ourselves are only just now experiencing it.
Customers because we ourselves are only just now experiencing it. But it's it's gonna be big, and I'm excited to see all the customer success stories that that follow.
But great. Well, I'll make one plug. If anyone would like to ask any questions, feel free to submit via the q and a, and we are happy to take any questions.
In the in the meantime, I think it'd be great to just sort of wrap us up and close us out. So Shields and Russell, how are you feeling about the day thus far?
I mean, Russell, I don't know about you, but, I'm I'm it sounds like, that, you know, shirt business that you were telling me at the beginning, it it I'm not saying you have to kill the dream. I'm but I'm saying you now have optionality. Right? You can pursue it if you want, or if you like what you're doing as a CFO, you can keep doing that because the kind of the takeaway here is, like, you know, despite the, you know, the the the headlines, I think your job is safe for a little bit. Assuming, you know, assuming you, you know, you start, leveraging AI.
Yeah. Our jobs aren't going anywhere. And if anything, I have more time to spin up my t shirt shop. And so, no.
I'm excited about it. I think the there are myths and legends out there about people will no longer need finance, accounting, or procurement employees. No. They'll still need us, but we'll be able to work on much more strategic work, the fun stuff, get in the mix, be strategic advisors.
And that's the reality of AI. That's the the future that we're we're sitting in right now.
Well, that's kind of what we've been asking for for a long time. Right? So that's been, like, one of the big takeaways for me is we've seen what's possible.
We've seen what's working. We've seen how real teams are making AI part of the day to day, and and that's been really fun to discuss.
Yeah. Absolutely. I've enjoyed it.
