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Olivier Novasque, Chairman and CEO of Sidetrade, had this to say:

2020 will remain the year in which many companies saw their business models put to the test. In this unprecedented context, Sidetrade demonstrated the extreme resilience of its SaaS model by achieving a record year with double-digit revenue growth. I would like to thank all of our employees, customers, partners and shareholders, who have helped us achieve an exceptional year in 2020, despite the terrible nature of this crisis.

For companies, and in particular for CFOs, transformation is no longer an option but an absolute priority, and our technology offering is perfectly in tune with the need to accelerate cash generation, particularly by reducing payment delays. Industry analyst IDC’s leading research has also identified Sidetrade as one of the major players in Order-to-Cash. This market is booming and has seen numerous capital-intensive operations throughout the year. This demonstrates once again the tremendous growth potential it holds for solid and ambitious players. Sidetrade has considerable advantages to help it exploit this powerful market dynamic and has the means to live up to its ambitions. We have never been in a stronger position than where we find ourselves at the end of 2020.

With our new Fusion100 strategic plan, we are clearly focusing on innovation and accelerating our growth in both Europe and the United States. Sidetrade’s core businesses have never been so solid, which enables us to have the financial means necessary to achieve our ambitions. These significant investment programs will make Sidetrade a global player on a completely new scale. We now have to seize this unique opportunity to be a major world leader in the Order-to-Cash.

Record Q4 bookings: up 31%

In the new paradigm that 2020 represented, Sidetrade’s sales strategy has focused on international companies with revenues over €1 billion that are more resilient to the crisis and have significant resources to implement cash flow generation projects. Another advantage of this strategic orientation is that these large companies offer more opportunities for the company in terms of additional sales (44% 2020 bookings were upsell and cross-sell deals), ultimately producing increased revenues for upcoming years.

For Q4 2020, Sidetrade has set a new record for bookings with an additional €1.54 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) vs. €1.17 million in Q4 2019, representing 31% growth. In the enterprise segment, growth is even more pronounced with €1.51 million in ARR (vs. €1.04 million in 2019), up 46%.

Sidetrade continued to expand its geographical presence in Q4 2020 with 46% of bookings outside continental Europe. Its customer base is represented across all industry sectors, including for example: Bidfood (United Kingdom, Distribution), Biffa (United Kingdom, Services), Christeyns (France, Pharmaceuticals), Colt (Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, ICT), Deliveroo (Europe, ICT), RS Components (global, Distribution), Autodistribution (Europe, Distribution), Pricer (France, ICT), Randstad (APAC, Human Resources), STG (France, Transport), Trescal (United States, Electronics), XPO Logistics (Europe, Transport).

Over the whole of fiscal year 2020, Sidetrade broke its record for the number of new enterprise account customers with the addition of 45 subscribers who joined the Sidetrade Cloud (vs. 37 in 2019). Enterprise accounts now represent 97% of bookings. The company is repeating its 2019 record performance in terms of bookings, with new ARR on enterprise accounts of €4.03 million (vs. €4.16 million in 2019) despite 2020 Q1 being hugely impacted by the sudden halt in economic activity.
These new enterprise accounts have committed to average initial contract periods of 38.1 months (vs. 33.8 months in 2019), with a total value of new contracts signed of €11.95m (vs. €11.1 million in 2019).

Attrition remains under control for enterprise accounts with a churn rate of 5.6% as of December 31, 2020, which represents an excellent result for the SaaS industry whose average was 13.9% according to the “2020 SaaS survey results – Covid edition” by KeyBank CapitalMarkets (published on May 31, 2020).

Strong growth in annual revenue: up 14%

SIDETRADE
(IN MILLIONS OF EUROS)		 2020 2019 VARIATION (%)
REVENUE 29.2 25.7 +14%
The 2020 information is unaudited consolidated data.

Sidetrade posted annual revenue of €29.2 million for 2020, up 14%. This steady growth, quarter after quarter, is purely organic and demonstrates the attractiveness of Sidetrade’s offer in a business environment where cash collection has been a vital issue for companies.

The company’s SaaS model, where 89% of revenue is recurring, has really demonstrated its resilience in the face of the economic crisis.

Launch of the “Fusion100” strategic plan

All over the world, the pandemic and its economic consequences have caused a historic increase in B2B payment delays. United Kingdom recorded a spike of unpaid and overdue invoices reaching 43% on May 2, 2020 according to the Sidetrade tracker. In this unprecedented context, companies are faced with the urgent need to transform their organizations, digitize their financial processes and increase the professional performance of their teams in order to regain control over payment deadlines. Securing and accelerating cash flow generation is now a crucial issue for most organizations.

The market for Order-to-Cash technological solutions, previously largely dominated by manual processes combined with simple office spreadsheets, has in just a few months become one of the most dynamic segments of the enterprise software industry. Unsurprisingly, investors (private equity funds, key industry players) have just within the last twelve months launched an unprecedented wave of capital investment targeting the main players in this booming market:

Despite this frenzy of acquisitions, it is clear that the Order-to-Cash is still an emerging and extremely fragmented market where no one player can claim a dominant position, either in terms of size or capacity to functionally cover the requirements of companies over the entire cycle. This market is in fact currently estimated at $10 billion in Europe and North America (Source: Midcap Partners, October 9, 2020), and even doubling the consolidated revenues of its major players (including Sidetrade in third place worldwide with its $36 million in revenue) to take into account small local players and peripheral solutions, the penetration rate would still represent just 5% of the potential market to date; Billtrust, with its $100 million in estimated revenue, would only have a 1% market share. The Order-to-Cash market is therefore one of the markets of the future with considerable growth potential, and one where the field between the different software companies remains extremely open. Over the next five years, Sidetrade clearly has a good hand to play in this global market and intends to give itself all the means to achieve its ambitions with its “Fusion 100” strategic plan.

Fusion100 is first and foremost an ambitious growth plan to enable Sidetrade to seize this tremendous market opportunity. Through a targeted investment program, Sidetrade will aim for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of between 20% and 25% over the period 2021-2025, compared to 15% on average over the last two years. This ambitious plan should enable the company to reach its target revenue of $100 million in 2025 (or €82 million).

This plan is based on three major pillars: 1/ Continuing to lead the field on AI and quickly offering the most complete Order-to-Cash platform on the market 2/ Strengthening its position as #1 on the European market and joining the Top 3 players on the American domestic market 3/ Seizing all opportunities for targeted external growth compatible with the two previous points.

1 – Innovation: Lead the field on AI and offer the most complete platform on the market

Leading the field on Artificial Intelligence

Fusion100 aims to consolidate Sidetrade’s technological advances in the area of Artificial Intelligence. As early as 2015, Sidetrade had developed unique expertise compared to its competitors by applying machine learning algorithms to the 330 million consolidated payment experiences in its Cloud, representing the analysis of more than $1 trillion worth of B2B transactions. In addition to the ability to predict the payment behavior of more than 3 million companies around the world, Sidetrade’s AI, “Aimie”, is now able to receive input and learn from the 40 million collection activities carried out annually by all of Sidetrade’s customers, to recommend the best collection action to the operational teams for a given customer, at the best time and using the most effective medium. In addition to automating large numbers of tasks that were previously manual, the actions recommended by Aimie result in a 53% increase in average cash collection efficiency over the traditional methods and thus a 51% reduction in unnecessary manual tasks. The next step will be to refine this approach and to make Aimie even more autonomous in carrying out certain tasks.

Offering the most comprehensive platform on the market

Thanks to its AI, Sidetrade is clearly ahead on the core Order-to-Cash process, namely the management of collection, the monitoring and resolution of disputes, and the management of customer case and credit risk, all crucial elements that bring the highest return on investment. Nevertheless, there are certain functional areas, upstream or downstream of the Order-to-Cash cycle, which are not yet addressed substantially or at all by the Sidetrade platform, such as electronic customer orders or invoices (“e-Orders” and “e-Invoicing”), the ability to automatically reconcile open invoices with the relevant credits received (“Cash Application” or “Cash Allocation”) and the option to offer end debtors online payment solutions (“e-Payment”) via web portals. Sidetrade is in fact already specifically working on these areas and within 12 to 18 months will be able to offer the market innovative solutions while also including new advances in AI.

To achieve these objectives, Sidetrade will allocate €14 million in R&D investments over the next 24 months, with in particular the forthcoming inauguration of a second Tech Hub in France, following the one opened in February 2020 in the United Kingdom (Birmingham). In total, nearly a 100 engineers will make up Sidetrade’s R&D team by the end of 2022, compared with 62 today.

2 – Expansion: Strengthen its #1 position in Europe and enter the Top 3 in the United States

Strengthen its #1 position in Europe

The European sales teams, which are already organized around two regions, one covering Northern Europe from the United Kingdom and the other covering Continental Europe from Paris, will be further organized by major industries in order to be as aligned as possible to clients’ requirements and to streamline relations with major consulting firms. To reinforce its number one position in Europe, the company’s investments in its sales force will increase by 45% over the next two years, from €10 million in 2020 to €15 million in 2022

Join the Top 3 Order-to-Cash software companies in the United States

Following the creation of Sidetrade Inc. in January 2020, prior to the pandemic, the official launch of commercial operations in the United States has begun in earnest at the beginning of 2021 with the recruitment of an experienced management team in charge of replicating the European commercial organization within our North American territory. The sales and marketing team will soon grow to a staff of around 20 employees in 2021, and an investment program of $10 million (or €8.8 m) over the next 24 months will significantly support our aim of quickly becoming one of the Top 3 local players.

3 – Opportunities for acceleration

While the Fusion100 strategic plan is part of an offensive strategy clearly oriented towards growth supported by significant investments, it will still preserve Sidetrade’s financial equilibrium with the goal of remaining a profitable and cash-flow generating company.

With virtually no debt and nearly €25 million in cash flow at this point (including 68,000 own stocks), the company has the financial resources necessary to seize any external growth opportunity that could strengthen and accelerate the execution of its Fusion100 plan.

Sidetrade is entering 2021 with solid fundamentals, a clear vision for its future and the means to realize its ambitions.

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Christeyns is a Belgian group, known across the world for making innovative hygiene, laundry and disinfection products for the healthcare, agrifood and cosmetics industries, as well as for public services. Christeyns does business in 30 countries in Europe and South America. In France, which accounts for 20% of their revenue, the group has a major production center. They are known for flexible and custom services. They pivoted quickly early on in the COVID crisis, increasing their production of hydroalcoholic gel tenfold to meet emergency needs.

The strength of the French market is expected to partially offset the slowdown in the group’s other business. Anticipating developments due to the pandemic, and looking ahead to the post-crisis period, the health protection specialist uses Sidetrade’s exclusive Artificial Intelligence technology to secure cashflow and revenue generation.

Putting technology to work for people

Faced with a huge surge in payment collection processing -over 33,000 invoices a year, and 500 dunning letters a month- Christeyns turned to AI to accelerate cashflow and automate cash generation. With such a staggering volume, no company can make meaningful receivables forecasts on spreadsheets anymore. Needless to say, “getting the cash in” has become even more critical in the present crisis.

To secure collection, and cut down on payment disputes, we decided to automate our collection process. In the present day and age, managing relations with 5,000 customer accounts manually is no longer conceivable.
-Peter de Grove, CEO of Christeyns.

Using the Sidetrade solution, Christeyns aims to cut DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) down to 62 days within two years.

After a market analysis, we opted for Aimie, Sidetrade’s comprehensive order-to-cash AI solution. Aimie allows us not only to accelerate cash generation, but also to anticipate customer payment behavior. Aimie augments human capacity by de-automating our people’s work. Spreadsheets have been relegated to the past.
-Peter de Grove.

AI bolsters Finance teams

The Christeyns Collection team can now view the day’s priorities on a dynamic planner. Aimie prioritizes collection actions according to objective criteria, and, if desired, can automatically send out reminder dunning letter. Aimie thus supports the team by freeing up valuable time.

What’s more, the No.2 cause of overdue payment at Christeyns is customer disputes. By speeding up internal processing of these disputes, Sidetrade’s solution significantly reduces DSO. Finally, Aimie automatically turns out weekly cash reports, emailed to all the staff concerned.

Christeyns is an innovative firm that has proven their agility during the crisis, and contributed to our hospital system by effectively supplying essential hygiene products. We are proud to have helped them through this critical period, which has been an extreme stress test for all businesses.
– Jean-Claude Charpenet, Sales Director France at Sidetrade.

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Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) and Sidetrade are pleased to announce a global strategic partnership, combining A&M’s expertise in performance improvement with Sidetrade’s unique know-how in Artificial Intelligence solutions for B2B.

Alvarez & Marsal has selected Sidetrade as their intelligent Order-To-Cash Partner to help their clients seamlessly link financial operations and improve working capital.
Businesses are increasingly recognizing that, to improve working capital, they need advanced technology to accelerate cashflow. The A&M-Sidetrade partnership brings together deep financial experience in business and strong AI technology to help companies through successful order-to-cash.

Ben Tatham, Managing Director of A&M, said: Alvarez & Marsal believes in technology innovation, automated business processes and most of all providing the customer with the right solution. Partnering with Sidetrade to deliver intelligent Order-To-Cash will allow us to support the next generation of sucessful organizations. Our partnership with Sidetrade is an important step in helping our clients move forward on their digital transformation journey. Sidetrade AI provides a unique opportunity for businesses to accelerate cashflow generation.

A&M work with their clients to solve problems and deliver results. This includes offering the latest proven technologies that deliver real benefits through automation and transformation. This is Sidetrade’s strength.

Mr Tatham continued: With Sidetrade, we will unlock the full potential of payment behavior and place our clients on the best path for success in the new working capital landscape.

Sunil Pandit, partner and alliance lead at Sidetrade said: The A&M-Sidetrade partnership is a powerful combination. A&M working capital experts uncover and implement the right solution, at the right time, in the right way. They help businesses to solve complex challenges, create greater value, and identify cash opportunities. Sidetrade will enable A&M clients to address key gaps in cash performance. I’m very excited to be working with Ben and his team, as A&M’s clients are looking for ways to improve financial operations and processes, and Sidetrade can help.

Sidetrade is particularly pleased to continue expanding their European footprint. Other strategic Sidetrade alliances include cooperation with-

Sidetrade and their partners provide the best solutions to navigate a rapidly changing business landscape.

Home » News » Page 19

Home » News » Page 19

Home » News » Page 19

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