无服务架构faas_金融即服务（FaaS）-现代财务团队的技术栈

最新推荐文章于 2024-03-23 09:54:54 发布

weixin_26744853

最新推荐文章于 2024-03-23 09:54:54 发布

阅读量1.9k

点赞数

文章标签： java python linux 数据库

原文链接：https://medium.com/swlh/finance-as-a-service-faas-tech-stack-for-modern-finance-teams-801e38501216

版权

无服务架构faas

Software is eating the world. The SaaS (Software As a Service) market is growing by 10% annually, expected to reach $157 billion in 2020.

软件正在吞噬世界。 SaaS(软件即服务)市场每年增长10％，预计到2020年将达到1,570亿美元。

Today, teams are working exclusively in software applications to be more productive and grow their businesses faster. This is especially true for areas where the ROI for investing in SaaS is clear — most notably communications (Slack, Zoom, Calendly), software development (AWS, Twilio, Figma), and sales/marketing automation (Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo).

如今，团队专门致力于软件应用程序，以提高生产力并更快地发展业务。对于在SaaS上投资的投资回报率很明确的领域尤其如此-最著名的是通信(Slack，Zoom，Calendly)，软件开发(AWS，Twilio，Figma)和销售/营销自动化(Salesforce，Hubspot，Marketo)。

When it comes to finance, SaaS adoption is only just starting. In a recent survey, 88% of CFOs still relied on spreadsheets for budgeting and forecasting. The financial stack has largely been unchanged due to an industry skewed towards being late adopters and a lack of compelling innovation. That is — until the recent explosion of FinTech brought about a proliferation of FaaS tools (Finance As A Service).

在财务方面，SaaS的采用才刚刚开始。在最近的一项调查中，88％的CFO仍然依靠电子表格进行预算和预测。由于该行业倾向于晚采用，并且缺乏引人注目的创新，因此金融体系在很大程度上没有变化。也就是说，直到最近金融科技的爆发带来了FaaS工具(金融即服务)的激增。

Today’s finance leaders need to be equipped with a strong understanding of technology to enable them to scale their team and the rest of the organization. A revolution is coming — one where innovative solutions will redefine not only the way finance teams will manage company financials, but their very roles within the organization.

当今的财务主管需要对技术有深刻的了解，以使他们能够扩展自己的团队和组织的其他成员。一场革命即将到来—创新解决方案不仅将重新定义财务团队将如何管理公司财务的方式，而且将重新定义其在组织中的角色。

Here’s a basic rundown of the different sectors of finance, trends in the space and most innovative solutions for growing companies.

这是不同财务部门的基本概况 ，空间趋势以及针对成长中公司的最具创新性的解决方案。

Payments: send and receive money — the life and blood of any business.
付款：发送和接收钱-任何业务的生命和血液。
Spend Management: manage spending across employees and vendors.
支出管理 ：管理员工和供应商之间的支出。
Payroll & Benefits: give your employees the financial capital to succeed.
工资与福利：为您的员工提供成功的财务资本。
Equity & Financing: keep company afloat with optimized capital.
股本与融资：以优化的资本维持公司的生存。
Accounting & Reporting: maintain visibility into accurate financials.
会计和报告：保持对准确财务状况的可见性。
Financial Planning & Analysis: plan for the future to make decisions.
财务计划与分析：为将来的计划做出决策。

付款-汇款和收款 (Payments — send and receive money)

Payments is a broad term and complex space. For our purposes, let’s boil down to two things: 1) making payments, 2) receiving payments.

付款是一个广义的术语，也是一个复杂的空间。为了我们的目的，让我们归结为两件事：1)付款，2)收款。

付款-虚拟卡的兴起 (Making payments — the rise of virtual cards)

Winner: Ramp (credit card) + Mercury (bank)

优胜者：斜坡 (信用卡)+ 水银 (银行)

Businesses need a way to make payments easily for goods and services (e.g. marketing, SaaS, T&E, etc.). The use of virtual cards for B2B payments is on the rise — which makes sense given their benefit: cash back for the business, traceable payments, easy reconciliation and fast settlements for cash flow. Previously, finance teams leaned towards putting everything in invoices they managed manually, uploaded to their accounting software and manually sent payment files through their bank. With VCC solutions like Ramp, finance teams can issue virtual cards with 1 click and pay vendors on the fly.

企业需要一种轻松地为商品和服务付款的方法(例如，营销，SaaS，T＆E等)。使用虚拟卡进行B2B支付的趋势正在增加 -鉴于其好处，这是有道理的：企业的现金返还，可追溯的付款，容易的对帐和快速的现金流结算。以前，财务团队倾向于将所有内容放入他们手动管理的发票中，然后上传到其会计软件中，并通过银行手动发送付款文件。借助Ramp等VCC解决方案，财务团队可以一键发行虚拟卡，并即时向供应商付款。

接收付款-一个简单的插件，可以接受所有付款 (Receiving payments — a simple plugin to accept all payments)

Winner: Stripe

优胜者：条纹

Accepting payments is now easier than ever. Stripe has built a payment processing empire that can be integrated with any application in minutes. Sure, outsourcing is expensive, but you finance teams can leverage expertise (e.g. fraud analytics) and know the solution scales. Stripe is also expanding to other areas as well including payments (Stripe Issuing) and financing (Stripe Capital).

现在，接受付款比以往任何时候都容易。 Stripe建立了一个付款处理帝国，可以在几分钟内与任何应用程序集成。当然，外包是昂贵的，但是您的财务团队可以利用专业知识(例如欺诈分析)并知道解决方案的规模。 Stripe也正在扩展到其他领域，包括支付(Stripe发行)和融资(Stripe Capital)。

支出管理-管理员工和供应商之间的支出 (Spend Management — manage spending across employees and vendors)

AP / AR —用于复杂操作的自动化工作流程 (AP/AR — automated workflows for complex operations)

Winner: Routable

优胜者： Routable

For any payments that are on specific terms or require invoices, an AP/AR solution is a must. These systems handle invoices, approval workflows, payments (ACH, Wire, Check) and reconciliation with accounting systems. While Bill.com has a nice domain, many startups are competing to eat their lunch and offering more automation to save teams time (e.g. OCR for data entry, automated approval, better integrations, etc.).

对于按特定条款或需要发票的任何付款，必须有AP / AR解决方案。这些系统处理发票，批准工作流，付款(ACH，电汇，支票)以及与会计系统的对帐。虽然Bill.com的域名不错，但许多初创公司都在争相吃午餐，并提供更多自动化以节省团队时间(例如，用于数据输入的OCR，自动批准，更好的集成等)。

采购-为您进行谈判的智能平台 (Procurement — smart platforms that negotiate for you)

Winner: Procurify

优胜者： Procurify

In early stages, companies don’t have a centralized procurement function. Spending happens amorphously, optimizing for growth and sacrificing chaos. Once you hit a certain scale, a centralizing procurement process is put into place to regulate what employees purchase. Procurify is an industry standard, but a few exciting startups are arising here focused on SaaS management — including Vendr (professional procurement) and Intello/Blissfully (SaaS for… SaaS).

在早期阶段，公司没有集中采购功能。支出是无规律的，优化增长并牺牲混乱。一旦达到一定规模，就会建立集中采购流程以规范员工的采购量。 Procurify是行业标准，但是这里出现了一些专注于SaaS管理的令人兴奋的初创公司-包括Vendr(专业采购)和Intello / Blissfully(SaaS for…SaaS)。

费用-实时费用管理 (Expenses — real time expense management)

Winner: Ramp

优胜者：斜坡

Expense reimbursements are painful, inaccurate, late, and expensive. Finance teams are progressively moving away from forcing employees to front money and get reimbursed via solutions like Expensify. Today, leaders issue corporate cards (physical + virtual) via advanced spend management platforms like Ramp. Cards have embedded controls on what you can spend on, transactions on these cards are automatically visible and reconciled, and anything outside of the expense policy is flagged. The result: hours saved chasing receipts and expense reports, real time visibility, more control and faster reconciliation.

费用报销是痛苦的，不准确的，延迟的和昂贵的。财务团队正逐渐从强迫员工转移资金，并通过诸如Expensify之类的解决方案获得报销。如今，领导者可以通过Ramp等先进的支出管理平台发行公司卡(物理+虚拟)。卡片具有嵌入式控件，可用于付款，这些卡片上的交易会自动显示和核对，并且会标记出费用政策之外的所有内容。结果：节省了追踪收据和费用报告的时间，实时可见性，更多的控制权以及对帐更快。

薪资和福利-为您的员工提供成功的财务资本。 (Payroll & Benefits — give your employees the financial capital to succeed.)

薪资和福利-统一管理一切的平台 (Payroll & benefits — one platform to rule them all)

Winner: Justworks

获奖者： Justworks

One of the largest expenses companies incur is payroll. Leading solutions offer not just payroll, but a suite of other benefits that employees need to thrive, including retirement, insurance, onboarding, time tracking etc. This space (ERP, HRIS, HRMS) is competitive and fragmented — with ADP/Trinet dominating upmarket and Gusto/Zenefits/Justworks/Rippling fighting for SMEs. Pick a solution that can scale since it’s highly sticky.

公司承担的最大支出之一是薪资。领先的解决方案不仅提供工资单，还提供员工需要发展的一系列其他福利，包括退休，保险，入职，时间跟踪等。该空间(ERP，HRIS，HRMS)具有竞争性和分散性，其中ADP / Trinet占据了高端市场和Gusto / Zenefits / Justworks /为中小企业而战。选择一个可以扩展的解决方案，因为它具有很高的粘性。

股本与融资-通过优化的资本来维持公司的生存。 (Equity & Financing — keep company afloat with optimized capital.)

库房-自动化投资 (Treasury — automated investments)

Winner: Betterment (for business)

优胜者：改善 (商业用途)

Given we’re talking about software, a treasury robo-advisor was bound to win. Many companies are using their existing banks or specialized financial services for their treasury management. The digital revolution that happened with consumer asset management is bound to happen to the business sector. Returns on cash is less important for smaller companies, but can make a large difference at scale.

鉴于我们谈论的是软件，因此，财务管理顾问必将获胜。许多公司正在使用现有的银行或专门的金融服务进行资金管理。消费资产管理发生的数字革命注定会发生在商业领域。现金回报对于较小的公司而言不太重要，但可以在规模上产生很大的变化。

股本-私人市场的流动性 (Equity — liquidity to private markets)

Winner: Carta

优胜者： Carta

If you thought understanding your stock options was hard — try administering them! Ensuring that a company is not just well capitalized but well structured is important to acquire talent and investors to grow its valuation. Cap table software like Carta helps make it easy to structure and issue stocks. Startups are increasingly entering this space to try and create liquidity in the private equity space (e.g. vested which allows employees to sell their stocks) or help consumers become investors (e.g. Angelist Access Fund).

如果您认为很难理解股票期权，请尝试进行管理！确保一家公司不仅资本充足，而且结构良好，对于吸引人才和投资者以提高其估值也很重要。 Carta之类的限额表软件有助于简化结构和发行股票。初创企业越来越多地进入这个领域，试图在私募股权领域创造流动性(例如，允许员工出售股票的既得利益 )或帮助消费者成为投资者(例如，Angelist Access Fund)。

信贷-廉价贷款快速 (Credit — cheap loans fast)

Winner: BlueVine

获奖者： BlueVine

With interest rates lower than ever, it’s important to think about whether to fund a business using debt or equity. FinTech has focused on making small business lending easier than ever and cheaper by leveraging alternate data sources (e.g. cash flow via bank transactions through Plaid, accounting information from Quickbooks, payment data from Stripe, sales data from Shopify, etc.). These data owners are also trying to get into the lending business — Amazon, Intuit, Stripe, Shopify and Square all have a small business lending arm leveraging proprietary data to underwrite.

由于利率比以往任何时候都低，因此重要的是要考虑是使用债务还是股权来为企业提供资金。金融科技一直致力于通过利用备用数据源(例如，通过格子交易通过银行交易产生的现金流，Quickbooks中的会计信息，Stripe中的支付数据，Shopify中的销售数据等)使小企业贷款比以往任何时候都更容易和更便宜。这些数据所有者还试图涉足贷款业务-亚马逊，Intuit，Stripe，Shopify和Square都拥有一个利用专有数据进行承保的小型企业贷款机构。

会计和报告-保持对准确财务状况的可见性。 (Accounting & Reporting — maintain visibility into accurate financials.)

会计—自动化或外包 (Accounting — automate or outsource)

Winner: Xero

获奖者： Xero

Like any solution — the best accounting software for your business highly depends on your business. Most commonly, companies start on Quickbooks and graduate to the expensive and powerful NetSuite. But Xero is definitely making waves in the accounting community with their better UX, exhaustive integrations, and fast development cycles. Startups like Pilot are increasingly focused in automating or abstracting away the accounting function completely.

像任何解决方案一样，最适合您业务的会计软件在很大程度上取决于您的业务。最常见的是，公司开始使用Quickbooks，然后逐渐升级到功能强大的昂贵NetSuite。但是Xero凭借其更好的用户体验，详尽的集成和快速的开发周期，无疑在会计界引起了轰动。像Pilot这样的初创企业越来越关注于完全自动化或抽象化会计功能。

报告-实时可见性 (Reporting—real time visibility)

Winner: Looker

优胜者： Looker

In today’s environment, financial leaders need access to real time financial data across the organization. Many still pull reports from their accounting systems which are ~20 days stale on average. Leaders leverage a strong data warehouse and BI tool to be able to pull data and slice as needed. This enables a much more granular and up to date view of financials to make faster more informed decisions.

在当今的环境中，财务主管需要访问整个组织的实时财务数据。许多人仍然从他们的会计系统中提取报告，这些报告平均大约陈旧20天。领导者利用强大的数据仓库和BI工具能够根据需要提取数据和切片。这样可以更详尽地了解财务状况，从而更快地做出更明智的决策。

财务计划和分析-规划未来以制定决策。 (Financial Planning & Analysis — plan for the future to make decisions.)

分析-比电子表格更智能 (Analysis — smarter than spreadsheets)

Winner: Airtable

获胜者： Airtable

Analysts love spreadsheets — they aren’t going away anytime soon (until AI takes over). But at the very least, use smarter spreadsheets. This includes: cloud collaboration (please don’t email a spreadsheet ever again), version and access controls, and integrations with your data warehouse to automatically update the analysis. A flurry of startups are entering this space and building more automated analysis of financials for businesses — including Runway, Valencia Data, BurnRate, etc. Their goal: bridge the gap between private financial data and private investors.

分析师喜欢电子表格-它们不会很快消失(直到AI接手为止)。但至少要使用更智能的电子表格。这包括：云协作(请不要再通过电子邮件发送电子表格)，版本和访问控制以及与数据仓库的集成以自动更新分析。众多初创公司正在进入这一领域，并为企业(包括Runway ， Valencia Data ， BurnRate等)建立更加自动化的财务分析。他们的目标是：弥合私人财务数据与私人投资者之间的鸿沟。

规划-CFO即服务 (Planning — CFO as a service)

Winner: Planful

优胜者：有计划

Modern financial leaders have shifted away from annual financial planning to Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) which leans into Agile financial planning — allocating money more fluidly based on the strategy and needs of the business instead of trying to predict the future. Expect many of the analysis companies entering this space to increase their value ad.

现代财务领导者已从年度财务计划转移到零基预算(ZBB)，后者倾向于敏捷财务计划-根据业务的战略和需求更流畅地分配资金，而不是试图预测未来。期望许多分析公司进入这一领域来增加其价值广告。

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” — General Dwight Eisenhower.

“在准备战斗时，我总是发现计划没有用，但是计划是必不可少的。” —德怀特· 艾森豪威尔将军。

如何导航 (How to navigate)

The finance tech stack is complex. There is no one size fits all. When choosing solutions across the sectors, finance leaders and need to keep the following considerations in mind:

金融技术栈很复杂。没有一种适合所有人。在跨部门选择解决方案时，财务负责人需要牢记以下注意事项：

Ease of integration: Does the solution fit neatly within your existing tools? Does it replace a tool you are currently using? → go for solutions with direct integrations with your critical systems.
易于集成 ：该解决方案是否完全适合您现有的工具？它会替代您当前使用的工具吗？ →寻找与您的关键系统直接 集成的解决方案。
UX: Do you users enjoy using the solution? Is it intuitive or does it need a user manual? → go for solutions that make your employees happy.
UX ：您喜欢使用该解决方案吗？它是直观的还是需要用户手册？ →寻找使您的员工满意的解决方案。
Speed of development: Is the company still investing in the product? Is it responsive to feedback? → go for innovative solutions over comprehensiveness.
发展速度 ：公司仍在投资该产品吗？它对反馈有React吗？ →寻求全面的创新解决方案。
Flexible pricing terms: Does the company offer low cost trials to test out the product? Are you forced into expensive multi year contracts? → go for transparent and low cost solutions.
灵活的定价条款：公司是否提供低成本的试用版来测试产品？您是否被迫签订了昂贵的多年合同？ →寻求透明和低成本的解决方案。
Scalability: Will the solution scale with your organization as you grow? If it doesn’t, will it be painful to switch? → go for solutions that scale especially if they are hard to replace.
可扩展性：随着您的成长，解决方案是否会随您的组织扩展？如果没有，切换会很痛苦吗？ →选择可扩展的解决方案，尤其是在难以替换的情况下。

总结思想 (Closing thoughts)

Ultimately, leading players want to take over the rest of the finance space leveraging their user base, technology and brand. Payment companies doing loans. Payroll providers starting to act like aggregators of services. Accounting solutions doing planning. Expense management platforms doing procurement. Strap in — The world is about to get even more messy.

最终，领先的参与者希望利用其用户群，技术和品牌来接管其余的金融领域。付款公司做贷款。薪资提供者开始扮演服务聚合者的角色。会计解决方案进行规划。费用管理平台进行采购。束手无策—世界将变得更加混乱。