The special guests for episode 3 of the EPIC Podcast by GIACT are Corey Kleinbauer, GM & VP of Sales for U.S. SMB at SAS and Brett Petersen, EVP of Sales and Client Relations at GIACT. 

The topic of discussion for this episode is the massive shift to online selling due to COVID-19. Some of the questions answered during this episode include how has sales changed in 2020, how has the purchasing process changed and how do sales teams cut through the noise and quickly address the pain points clients and prospects are having.  

Given the effects of COVID-19, nearly all of b2b sales has been driven online. In the early days of the pandemic it was about having the physical location to conduct business and having the right technology in place to conduct sales but it has now shifted to understanding clients and prospects current needs and adjusting the sales process to the new normal.   

The days of jumping on an airplane and flying to a prospect for a 2-hour meeting are over – maybe over forever. The expectations now with online selling is that the sales presenter will get straight to the point, and the solution will be helping solve a major pain point for the customer. Especially during this time, companies are focusing on solving problems where they have a very urgent need. There just isn’t the desire to listen to sales presentations about nice to have solutions – IT resources and budgets today are more limited.

www.sas.com

www.giact.com

This is episode 2 of the EPIC Podcast by GIACT. The special guests on the show are Julie Becker, Accounting Operations, Senior Manager, PepsiCo North America Shared Services and Jeff Caton, SVP and Senior Sales Engineer at GIACT. 

The topic for this episode is vendor management fraud. For large companies one of the challenges that they face when verifying and validating suppliers is the sheer volume of vendors being added and the pressure from the business to add them quickly.

Fraudsters are also getting smarter and determining how to insert themselves in the approval process which becomes especially burdensome when multiple departments or approvals are needed. Once fraudsters are able to successfully insert themselves into the approval process (often by hijacking email accounts) it is often difficult for internal fraud teams to identify them.

Overall lack of visibility into smaller entities as well as international vendors are other major challenges facing departments responsible for vendor onboarding.   

Fraud tools like those provided by GIACT can help by consolidating data and providing one source to validate multiple attributes. More participation and the sharing of data by more and more players in the financial services ecosystem will benefit everyone. 

www.giact.com 

This is the first episode of The EPIC Podcast by GIACT. In this episode we are focusing on company culture and why it matters. We have three tremendous leaders on the show this week: 

• Melissa Townsley-Solis – Co-Founder and CEO of GIACT
• Merlin Bise – Co-Founder and CTO of GIACT 
• Chris Ward – EVP, Head of Product and Operations, Treasury Management at PNC 

The entire episode focuses on defining culture, understanding how to build it and maintain it and maybe most importantly how to hire people into a great culture.

This quote from Melissa summarizes the entire podcast and answer why culture matters, “when you treat your employees right, and you set the right culture, then they're going to treat your customers right. And I think that when you look at the growth of both PNC and GIACT has experienced, it's a reflection of that. It starts at the top. It trickles down when you realize that your employees are your greatest asset and you treat them right, what happens is they go out and treat your customers right.”

www.giact.com

www.pnc.com