Advocating for Change and Approaching Tech with Curiosity with Shawn Robinson

Please note: The “Power of Change” podcast is designed for audio consumption. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

[00:00:00] Michael Praeger: Welcome to The Power of Change, the podcast that delves into the intersection of leadership and technology in the finance world. I’m your host, Michael Prager, the CEO and Co-founder of AvidXchange. In each episode, I dive into the leadership topics and industry trends with business leaders, partners, and customers who embrace the power of change. 

So our guest for this particular episode is Shawn Robinson, accounts payable manager at ASSA ABLOY. ASSA ABLOY is a mid-market, uh, subcontractor, especially in, in both garage door installations and automatic door installations based on Monroe, North Carolina. And they’ve been transforming their payment process with AvidXchange actually, since 2017. 

Shawn has, uh, been with ASSA ABLOY for now 12 years and has the hands-on experience to address the full order to cash cycle, including invoicing, portable billing, collections, cash applications, and accounts payable. Shawn says one of the most frustrating parts of the manual accounts payable process is how long it takes to complete even the smallest tasks. 

But automation has significantly, uh, reduced that time, and today they’re seeing about a 76% reduction in time it takes in their payment process. And I think, uh, as a great lead in to today’s episode. It’s not every day I get to talk to a native Charlotte leader, uh, that’s been involved in automating this particular business process. 

You’ve been at ASSA ABLOY now for 12 years. How did you get started with them and how have you grown your career over the last 12 years?  

[00:01:32] Shawn Robinson: Um, so I actually started as a temporary employee, um, in the portal billing department, and I’ve done, over the course of the 12 years, I’ve done everything to be quite honest. 

So everything from the portal, billing, invoicing, uh, credit collections, I managed the cash, um, application group. Uh, got that started up, uh, processes in place, and then moved over to AP, which is where I currently am now. So I’ve touched just about everything, so,  

[00:02:03] Michael Praeger: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. We’ll start with the macro economy. 

It’s, uh, really interesting times that we live in right now. It seems like every day when you wake up, there’s a, a different headline in the Wall Street Journal related to the economy, you know, with rising interest rates and potential inflation and now, you know, the tariff issue. Tell us a little bit about how those, you know, kind of changes have just impacted your business kind of day to day. 

And especially around, you know, kinda managing cash flow and supply relationships.  

[00:02:29] Shawn Robinson: It’s affected everybody, right? Like every business that you know, deals with this stuff. So everything has increased. And so we’re seeing that on our side as well. So like when we’re doing the payables, we’re paying a lot more every month, so we’re having to. 

Closely watch what, what our spend is every month versus our revenues. So that’s the biggest thing. So the more important thing to us during this time is a better understanding with our suppliers and our subcontractors and keeping that relationship that we’ve built over, you know, the course of 30 years. 

So we’ve always had a focus on that so that we understand where they’re at because we’re in it as well. So it allows us to keep that relationship with them, you know, at a high level. 

[00:03:19] Michael Praeger: There’s a lot of change happening almost daily, right? Yeah. And so, you know, having those, you know, kind of close relationships with suppliers is, uh, you know, super critical. 

And we see that across, you know, number of the different, you know, kind of vertical markets that, you know, we operate in supporting customers. But you, you’re in a really unique spot within ASSA ABLOY in terms of, you know, being in the middle of the invoicing, collections, cash management, managing, you know, the supplier relationships. 

And I’d love to get some insight in, you know, as you see manual process inefficiencies. How do you advocate for change in terms of, hey, this is an area that we can actually deploy technology to, or automate and make this a better process. How do you advocate for that [00:04:00] internally and turn, you know, to get, you know, kind of the results that you’ve gotten so far? 

[00:04:04] Shawn Robinson: So I, I’ve always been a huge advocate of change ’cause you know, it’s, it’s fast moving. You gotta be fast as well. So the way I, I do it as far as our team is, we’ll see a problem, right? And we will, we’ll as a group come together and I’ll allow them to tell me what they think that we should change or, or bring in as far as technology. 

‘Cause we have a very old ERP system, almost archaic at this point, so we don’t have a lot of the bells and whistles, so we have to go outside of that to help, um, our day-to-day tasks. So, and, and that’s how you get buy-in from the team as well, is you bring them in, allow them to come up with the solution, allow them to do the research and technology, and therefore. 

They’re more on board as we go forward and things happens. So  

[00:04:56] Michael Praeger: That, I mean, that’s a great leadership lesson. You know, just right there when he highlighted is, you know, empowering the team and then, um, you know, encouraging the team and giving the team the freedom to share their ideas and how they can make the process better. 

Right. What I see across, you know, common themes of other leaders that have been on the forefront of automating kind of manual process, it’s a little bit risky, right? Because you don’t know exactly how it’s gonna happen, but you know, kind of providing a vision of what it could be and then empowering your team to participate in the process with you cause then they have this vested interest, right, in making the process better. So, yeah. No, that’s a, it’s a, it’s a great learning. Prior to automation, you know, kind of when you first started, what did that process look like? And now, and now what does it look like?  

[00:05:38] Shawn Robinson: Yeah, so, um, it, it was very manual. Uh, like even the smallest of tasks, like storing invoices for example. 

Indexing, you know, what’s coming in and what we’re paying. Even that took, you know, five, six minutes per invoice just to be able to do within the system. And then you take like payments, for example, uh, currently to issue a payment, it’s, it’s about three minutes per invoice to issue a payment, uh, which is a lot of time and we’re a very small team, but we’re doing a very high volume worth of payables every month. I believe it’s like 32, last number, I check 32,000 a month. And there’s only seven of us. So I mean, it’s, it is a lot of time taken to do that. So when you bring in technology, um, and the automation of things like the payments for example, uh, it’s reduced that time. Like I said, it was like, it’s like 76% and it’s reduced that time to where we’re allowed to focus on what’s really important, which is like the visibility and finding the issues and being able to solve them, and then also focusing on our relationships, which is a huge priority for the team with our suppliers and subcontractors, and making sure everybody’s, you know, doing okay.  

[00:06:55] Michael Praeger: That’s phenomenal. 

My instinct is then as you guys have grown as a business, you probably haven’t had to hire as many head count to keep up with the growing accounts payable process. Is that correct?  

[00:07:06] Shawn Robinson: Correct. Yes. Yeah. We we’re able to stay lean as far as the, the team goes because we, we automate or try to automate as much as we can. 

So it takes the manual out of it and keeps us smaller, so yeah, you’re exactly right.  

[00:07:20] Michael Praeger: Well, hey, you’ve been in the forefront of a lot of this automation. Maybe just comment about, you know, as you’ve kind of grown your career, just the role of technology has had, you know, for you personally and how you think about, you know, then how it could be deployed to others to make business processes better. 

[00:07:34] Shawn Robinson: Yeah. So, um, I’ve always, lack of a better word, been kind of nerdy when it comes to technology. So I, I watch it constantly. I, I even have a whole bunch at home, you know, as far as automation where it’s turning on lights is something as simple as that. You know, you just tell it to and it turns on. So, but no, I’ve, I’ve always been into that. 

So bringing that, that mindset into the workflow, uh, and the teams to try and change their mindset, to look into that, regardless of age. Um, it does help because like I said, there’s a lot of things out there and technology is one of the fastest growing fields and fastest changing fields, so you gotta be constantly watching it and see, and it, it’s always for the better, you know, most of it is, you know, so you bring that in and it, like I said, it allows better time management and gives you back more time in your day to day um, by bringing all that in. Yeah. I’ve al I’ve always loved technology. I don’t know, even like the, the AI stuff that we’re looking into now and seeing, you know, in the world. It’s crazy. 

[00:08:38] Michael Praeger: Yeah. It’s, it’s really fascinating and the leverage of power. And one of the things that I, I encourage, you know, all our teammates here at AvidXchange to do, and I’m, you know, trying to do this for myself as well as any new technology and taking AI as an example, is being curious and playing with it, testing it, using it as, you know, kind of personal examples, all those kind of things, I think is kind of really valuable to then saying, okay, this is actually isn’t scary. I, and then I can start seeing examples of how I actually can use it in my work, you know, to be more efficient and things like that. But it starts with, you know, almost having like a mindset of curiosity. 

Is there anything, you know, any words of wisdom around, you know, that you could share for other leaders?  

[00:09:14] Shawn Robinson: The biggest thing is just the understanding of it. Because a lot of, you know, when you have a business that’s 30 years old, you kind of. You, you start it one way and it’s very hard to get out of that mindset and head towards change, whether it’s, you know, ’cause like you said, it’s always scary. 

You don’t know the outcome until you try it. Leaders need to be more understanding, uh, and adaptable to the change that’s happening around them ’cause like I said, it is the fastest growing thing, so you need to always be on the lookout and, and find better ways to help your, your own employees, your own team. 

And in doing that, you have to bring in technology. Uh, there’s no way around it. That’s just the biggest thing is being more adaptable and understanding of the world that’s around you. Um, so you can help the, your business grow. So, and don’t stay stagnant like most businesses do. 

[00:10:09] Michael Praeger: Exactly. I think it’s, um, you know, by kind of by definition as a business, you’re either moving forward and growing or you’re kinda shrinking. 

Kind of staying in one place is really hard to do. Some takeaways that I had from today’s episode where one is, it starts with great leadership and empowering your teammates and using the teammates to kind of be along in the journey of automation. And that’s, uh, kind of been a cornerstone that Shawn shared with me about, you know, his success and deploying technology and, uh, the success that they’ve had in particular in accounts payable. 

I mean, you know, 76% reduction there, you know, moving from their manual process to an automated process and more importantly, be able to now grow their business without, without adding more manual process, more headcount. And I’ll leave you with this. I thought one of the best, uh, takeaways is, uh, Shawn, you shared with us that to embrace technology you have to be a little bit nerdy. 

And I think, uh, I love that quote. And, uh, I, uh, I, I agree with that as well. And I think the benefit of being a little bit nerdy is you get back time in your day, you get back time to pursue other things, be more value added in your business, have higher impact. And all that goes to just creating more value. 

Shawn, thanks for sharing, uh, you know, everything in today’s episode, and that’s it for today’s Power Change episode. It’s a wrap. Thanks, Shawn. 

Shawn Robinson: Thanks. Thanks for having me. 

Michael Praeger: Thanks for listening to The Power of Change presented by AvidXchange. If you like what you’ve heard, subscribe to our channel, leave a five star review. While you’re waiting for the next episode, head on over to AvidXchange.com for our latest research reports and business insights. And if you’re interested in learning more about accounts payable automation from AvidXchange, click the link in our show notes to connect with our experts. Thanks again for listening to the Power of Change. We’ll see you next time.