Our People: James Beeson
At Earlypay, we are only as good as our people — the people who work with our customers every day to help grow SMEs across Australia.
As part of a new Our People series, we are proud to profile the people of Earlypay — what motivates them, what they love about working in the business, and how working with SMEs inspires them day in and day out.
We kick the series off with our CEO, James Beeson, who explains just how excited he is about the future of Earlypay.
What makes Earlypay such a great place to work?
We have a genuine belief at Earlypay that invoice finance is a great solution that should benefit many more SMEs than it does, as we see first-hand how it helps our clients with their challenges and opportunities every day.
The core purpose of making invoice finance simpler and more value-added for a much broader group of Australian SMEs is very motivating for the team.
This drives a culture of continuous improvement, and it’s exciting to be part of a team that is always looking for new ways to combine product and technological innovation with personalised client service to improve how we provide early payments to our clients.
What and who inspires you most about Earlypay?
A unique feature of invoice finance is that we can often provide funding to SMEs with outstanding invoices to strong customers when other lenders can’t.
It’s inspiring to listen to the stories of SME operators when they reflect on difficult and stressful times and then talk with pride about how they successfully came out the other side.
Many of these people say that they wouldn’t be where they are today without Earlypay and invoice finance, which makes me very proud of not only what we do, but also of the outstanding quality team we have at Earlypay.
These stories motivate us to keep pushing hard to simplify invoice finance and spread the word about the benefits to more SME operators who may not be familiar with it.
With so much innovation going on in the business and also a new brand refresh going to market, how exciting is the future for the business?
There are some major themes developing that we expect will push invoice finance to become a mainstream alternative for Australian SMEs, and it’s exciting to be at the forefront of this change.
Technology is enabling invoice finance to be much simpler to use than it was in the past due to integrations with accounting software and other third-party platforms. An important part of this is our focus on providing the early payment of invoices within non-financial platforms like workforce management platforms so users can do everything they need in one place.
Embracing technology like this enables us to get funding to SMEs sooner, and it’s exciting to be at the forefront of this innovation and combine it with personal service to provide SMEs with a genuine value-added experience that goes beyond funding.
Another big change is that SME operators are pushing back against the banks taking their homes as security for business lending and want to use their business assets, like outstanding invoices, as security instead.
This has seen some banks respond by offering invoice finance, which is raising awareness and supporting it becoming a mainstream alternative for SMEs as it is in many other countries.
Launching our refreshed Earlypay brand is perfect timing as the foundations are in place for the adoption of invoice finance to increase rapidly. Earlypay is at the forefront of this movement by making it a simple and attractive alternative for SMEs facing challenges or opportunities.
You have so many great customers and a clear vision to assist small to medium businesses grow in Australia. How important is this sector, and what sort of satisfaction does it give you to be able to partner with this engine room of the Australian economy?
There are 2.6 million SMEs in Australia, and 1 million of those businesses sell to other businesses, so there is a huge number of SMEs that could potentially use invoice finance.
Of those businesses, half of them suffer from their customers paying invoices after the due date. This can put a lot of stress on businesses trying to pay staff and suppliers and invest in growth.
Providing early payment of invoices to bring forward cash flow for SMEs is a direct solution to this major problem, and it’s very rewarding for the Earlypay team to help Australian businesses in this way.
