Insightful Accountant Publisher Gary DeHart caught up with Ramp's Chris Early during the recent 'Xerocon 2022' event in New Orleans. (The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.)
Gary DeHart: Gary DeHart with Insightful Accountant at Xerocon 2022. I’m sitting in the Ramp booth with Chris Early. Tell me a little bit about what you've done. What brought you here?
Chris Early: I call myself an ex-accountant. I started my career at PWC, where I served in their audit practice for four years. I got my CPA danger chime. I worked in industry for a couple of Fortune 500 companies—some deal desk accounting operations.
Most recently, before Ramp, I was at Xero. I was an account manager, partnering with CPAs, bookkeepers, advisors to help them with the latest trends in technology and Xero.
Gary DeHart: Wen were you at Xero?
Chris Early: From July 2019 through March 2022.
Gary DeHart: They did not do Xerocon then, right?
Chris Early: Correct. This is my first one.
Gary DeHart: What is Ramp?
Chris Early: Ramp is a corporate card with an automated finance platform. We have everything from bill pay, reimbursements, reporting, savings, insights—all focused around a corporate charge card. We're on Visa.
Gary DeHart: So you deal primarily with the accounting accountant channel?
Chris Early: Exactly.
Gary DeHart: What's in it for the accountant with Ramp?
Chris Early: The goal of Ramp is saving time and money. We pass that value through to their clients. A lot of accountants are doing the books, obviously for their clients. So Ramp has a lot of automated efficiencies built to save time. We can close the books about eight times faster when a client is on Ramp. That's from our automated receipt capturing our accounting integrations. It's a two-way sync with Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.
Gary DeHart: How long has Ramp been around?
Chris Early: Ramp itself has been around for three years. We were launched in the pandemic and are based in Manhattan. Half of our workforce is remote. I just moved back from Austin, Texas to the East Bay. That's why I was born and raised.
Gary DeHart: What's the win for the end user? I kind of have it in my head, but I'd rather you tell me so I'm not making any assumptions?
Chris Early: With the automated finance platforms, you think of all the different tools and apps in the industry. You're logging to different systems; they don't talk to each other. Ramp is kind of your all-in-one solution. It integrates very seamlessly with accounting solutions. So we're saving time and money.
We're offering ways to cancel out duplicate subscriptions and helping negotiate SAS contracts. On top of that, Ramp is actually a free platform. We give 1.5% cashback on all transactions.
Gary DeHart: Fantastic. What's it like when you are on the phone or face to face with an account?. Let's just toss it out there one more time—the key points of Ramp people need to keep in mind as they look at their book of business. What kind of things would make sense for their business?
Chris Early: We're consulting the finance stack. It is really annoying to log into different platforms, different processes. Ramp is doing an all in one. It's really benefiting the end user in this economy. It's really important to save money, while people don't know about Ramp. We are saving the end user's mind, not just encouraging, but enabling.
From the accountant’s perspective, they have a dedicated team in my team. We're really helping out with onboarding, training, making sure everyone is very comfortable with Ramp and how it integrates with their software.
Gary DeHart: Do you have an accountant program or an advisor program—anything like that?
Chris Early: It's a very user-friendly system. There's no Slyke training, where Xero has Xero certification. We do staff training for larger firms who are very engaged with us.
Gary DeHart: What about if somebody wants to learn more? How do they find you?
Chris Early: I’m Chris at Ramp, I'm on LinkedIn. My email is creally@ramp.com. We are at a lot of these trade shows. You can also log on to ramp.com and look into our counting website portion.
We also just launched an accounting landing page that shows where we integrate, where we sit in the space. We have tiers, benefits, and different features that our accountants can access. One of the things is an advisor directory. So, if you're an accounting firm looking to grow your practice, Ramp users can find an accounting firm there and kind of a matchmaking tool.
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