Welcome to our new series, The Circuit. Meet our next interviewee:
Fintech platform Soldo works with businesses to help them manage company-wide spending in real-time using the latest technology. Following a Series C funding round of $180m (£133m) in 2021, the solution has partnered with the likes of Sony, Warner Bros and Mitsubishi Electric.
After two decades in payments and financial services, including a 14-year stint at American Express, Flavia Alzetta has been Soldo’s chief business officer since April 2024.
In an exclusive interview with UKTN, Alzetta explains how digitalisation is transforming financial operations, identifies the trends among UK business’ spending priorities and reminisces about her ‘PhD in leadership’.
How is the role of spend management evolving in today’s economic climate, particularly with rising inflation and global supply chain disruptions?
There are two sides to spend management. One side is how much money is spent, where and why and the other is the governance, processes and procedures used.
In today’s world, companies are interested in using technology to optimise the way they organise their spend management activities. Technology is also key for automating manual, labour intensive administrative tasks and therefore freeing up resource and driving efficiencies
Inflation and supply chain disruption means businesses need greater visibility and control over every transaction.
Effective spend management tools help organisations to empower users to manage expenses they are accountable for, identifying inefficiencies and mitigating risk, to ensure they can respond with agility and that resources can be directed where they add the most value.
With the right tools, proper governance and accountability can be enforced. As a result, finance teams will have more free time to focus on strategic business activity that creates a tangible impact.
With AI and automation transforming financial operations, how is Soldo integrating these technologies to deliver smarter spend insights?
We are viewing AI with a much wider scope. At Soldo, we utilise AI at the start of our process from a customer showing interest in our product via website navigation and directing them to the relevant web pages right through the onboarding process.
We are designing an onboarding process with cues powered by AI which help us to engage with a customer dynamically in real time without the need for human intervention.
But this is just the beginning. We are always looking at how to provide more intelligent management information, in turn creating a better experience to the customer end-to-end.
In the financial sector, regulated companies are well versed on their AI policies and rather than viewing restrictions as limiting, it is something that financially regulated firms must, and do, embrace.
Ultimately the frameworks in place protect the end consumer so it is important to be creative with innovation while respecting the regulation in place.
Spend management often involves influencing employee behaviour around procurement. How do you balance control with a user-friendly experience?
At Soldo, we don’t often balance control with a user-friendly experience – we offer both. We provide the tools for the customer to decide on this balance themselves; they can decide on how to use the tools we offer to determine how to manage spending in the best way for their business or department.
It is not a question of balance; it is a question of choice. We want to provide tools that empower the user to make the right decisions. We do not make the decisions for businesses; we enable them.
We want to provide tools that empower the user to make the right decisions
What trends are you seeing among UK businesses in terms of spend priorities, and how is Soldo adapting to meet those needs?
There is a growing maturity of businesses realising that the way they have managed certain type of spend in the past is not necessarily the way they need to continue doing so in the future.
An example would be the simple concept of a company credit card for travel and entertainment expenses. The company credit card is a payment tool to allow an employee to be able to pay for a service, not a spend management tool.
I have been in this business for a long time, and I am surprised at how businesses continue to accept the payment tool as a spend management tool. Ultimately, the digitalisation of receipts and invoicing is a reality. The ability to codify in real time using a platform like Soldo is the future of spend management.
The advancement of technology is accelerating but the adoption rate among companies can be slow. We want to raise awareness of the benefits of using a platform like Soldo in-house and to dispel any perceived barriers.
Flavia’s PhD in leadership
I completed, what I call, my PhD in leadership. Not at Harvard, but on a boat. I sailed across the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, then trained as a professional skipper in Australia. That was year one – team leadership in extreme environments.
The second year was on high mountains; exploring how I adapted physically and mentally in extreme conditions.
The experience gave me perspective on what it means to operate as a team when mistakes carry real risk – – injury, even life. Business is demanding, but at the end of the day, it is work. Sailing and mountaineering made me learn with full involvement of body and emotions, not just intellect.
I’ve always had high energy, but the drawback was not understanding those with less. That experience taught me when to slow down, when to protect myself, and how to adjust the speed for my team to prevent burnout.
Ultimately, my ‘PhD’ gave me self-awareness, resilience, and perspective. It was one of the best investments of my life.
As part of our Circuit interview series, we speak to execs from some of the most exciting companies on the UK tech scene. These interviews offer insight about a company’s journey, the sector in which it operates and the people behind the job titles.
Visit The Circuit page to read all interviews in the series and stay tuned for future conversations.