Zone & Co Adds OCR Capabilities With Staria Flow Acquisition

Zone & Co has acquired Staria’s accounts payable (AP) automation solution, Staria Flow.

This acquisition will add enterprise optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities to Zone’s procure-to-pay solution, the companies said in a Thursday (July 11) press release.

It follows Zone’s acquisitions of financial reporting solution provider Solution 7 and payroll and employee-centric solution provider Infinet Cloud over the past year, as well as its introduction of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) functionality, Thomas Kim, CEO at Zone & Co, said in the release.

“This announcement marks yet another great investment to accelerate our platform’s capabilities, in line with our broader vision that continues to support our organic growth,” Kim said. “By combining our capabilities, we create more value, faster for our combined global customer bases. Enabling them to streamline their procure-to-pay process from start to finish with a single login.”

Zone’s platform integrates with leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, enhancing capabilities like complex billing and revenue recognition, AP automation and advanced financial planning and analysis (FP&A) reporting, according to the release.

Staria Flow offers OCR technology, eInvoicing and bank connectivity capabilities designed to streamline AP processes and payments, the release said.

With the addition of Staria Flow to the Zone platform, Zone’s AP solution will gain additional features and will be able to accelerate its product innovation, per the release.

“Integrating Staria Flow and Staria Banking into Zone’s suite of products will enhance the payments and accounts payable experience and create a seamless financial management environment for our users,” Artti Aurasmaa, CEO at Staria, said in the release. “Furthermore, it allows us at Staria to focus on bringing our customers top-notch services and solutions within global accounting, ERP consulting, and BI [business intelligence] and planning.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that digital technologies that support AP workflow automation have streamlined the source-to-pay cycle.

Eighty-three percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) said payment integration between buyer and seller has reduced payment friction, 77% credited automation’s processing speed with reducing invoicing errors, and more than one-third attributed reduced days of delay in invoice tracking to AI-based automation, according to “Solving Accounts Payables’ Top Frictions With Automation,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Corcentric collaboration.

For all PYMNTS B2B coverage, subscribe to the daily B2B Newsletter.