Today In B2B: Corporate M&A Tech Gets Creative; BBVA Enhances Expense Management

Today in B2B payments, corporate acquirers get creative with technology in a pandemic world, while BBVA upgrades its expense management offering. Plus, Sleek raises $4 million, JAGGAER upgrades its treasury management tool and AWS teams with Orange Business Services to accelerate corporates’ digital cloud migrations.

Corporate Buyers Take On COVID World With Pandemic Technology

How do finance executives perform due diligence, much less kick the tires, in order to buy another company — in the middle of a raging pandemic? It seems necessity is the mother of invention. Third-quarter mergers and acquisitions reportedly rang up $1 trillion worth of deals globally. The secret to success, The Wall Street Journal reported, is that finance execs got used to signing deals with people they may never even meet. To pull that off, they have had to use the tools of the pandemic, such as Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Executives have even done factory tours via video calls. While that may be extreme, execs are actually gaining better access to a target company’s books.

BBVA Streamlines Expense Management For Card Purchases

Spanish financial firm BBVA has created a Global Commercial Cards product that lets firms have more control over the utilization of business cards by staffers. The new offering is designed to assist business customers in streamlining and optimizing costs paid through the bank’s commercial cards, according to a Monday (Nov. 23) announcement. Global Commercial Cards tailors to the requirements of firms of all different sizes and speeds to optimize the workflow of everyone who participates in the expense management procedure, according to the announcement. The offering is in charge of centralizing all costs and directing them to the expense management technology or enterprise resource planning system (ERP) that the firm chooses without intervention.

FinTech Sleek Lands $4M For Corporate Services Platform

Financial technology company Sleek has reportedly netted $4 million in venture funding for its efforts to take on the traditional corporate services industry. SEEDS Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, led the funding round, which also included MI8 Ltd., a Hong-Kong multifamily office, and investor Pierre Lorinet, an Enterprise Singapore board member. “It has been extremely humbling to experience the growth we’ve seen at Sleek over the last three years, even more so amidst the global pandemic, which has been a growth catalyst for fully digital players like us,” said Julien Labruyere, CEO of the FinTech Sleek. “Ultimately, we envision Sleek to be the go-to digital platform for all entrepreneurs setting up in Singapore, Hong Kong and beyond,” he told the French Chamber of Commerce in Singapore.

JAGGAER Release Upgrades AI Capabilities For Suppliers, Risk Analysis

The latest JAGGAER software release offers new artificial intelligence (AI)-based ways of measuring risk and optimizing the purchasing process, a press release says. The JAGGAER ONE 20.3 software suite offers a streamlined eProcurement model and invoicing service, so people can easily search for and find, then requisition, the services and goods they need, the press release says. Meanwhile, the Supplier Management+ module in the new release “simplifies and streamlines” the supplier qualification and onboarding processes, with the universal and category assessments combined. Users will be able to assign a single assessment status for suppliers, which will let suppliers update it at any time. In addition, that service also lets users delete duplicate or redundant suppliers, or those who were “onboarded by mistake,” with generally easier rationalization of the supplier base.

Orange Business Services Teams With AWS On Cloud Technology

Orange Business Services has unveiled a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to assist large companies with speeding up their digital transformation and harness the benefits of the cloud to evolve in response to market changes and user requirements, according to a Monday (Nov. 23) announcement. Stefan Kanis, senior vice president of the cloud business unit at Orange Business Services, said in the announcement that the tie-up with AWS lengthens its relationship, increasing its abilities to streamline and speed up clients’ cloud transformations. “Customers appreciate having a combination of our cloud excellence to address their specific needs as well as our global vision with local care,” Kanis said.