Covid-19 has generated exceptional cash tensions, with agreements made every day to defer certain payments by one or two months, or sometimes longer. Faced with the challenge of late payment, private equity funds have found it hard to evaluate the impact of Covid-19 on their portfolio companies, with zero cashflow visibility due to the limited information available to them.
The economic damage is palpable, and Hyman Capital, a London-based boutique merchant bank, recognises the importance of moving quickly to avert cashflow problems in businesses where ‘Cash is King’. Hyman Capital, which provides transaction support and advisory services for businesses, has partnered with AI firm Sidetrade to support the cashflow challenges of its business clients and private equity contacts.
Clive Hyman, founder and CEO of Hyman Capital, said: More than ever, a strong cash management and a solid cash position are the top priority for businesses. In this context, Sidetrade is the ideal partner due to its leading AI technology and 20 years’ business experience of unlocking cash from working capital.
Sidetrade AI technology provides a dashboard of balance-sheet and cash-flow diagnostics that can be shared virtually over any confidential platform to help maintain oversight and focus on the most important levers. Mr Hyman continued: Having a cash culture is important for any company that a private equity investor has invested in, especially now. With Sidetrade, we’re enabling AI technology to assist private equity investors who want to optimise cash flow from their investee companies and secure a competitive edge for their portfolio.
Sunil Pandit, partner and alliance lead at Sidetrade said: Private equity funds want more visibility around working capital and how it’s financed. They need rapid assessment of risk and identification of cash levers. We are supporting these challenges by offering agility in the management of working capital in their portfolio companies. Unlocking cash is the cheapest source of finance to reduce borrowings. After taking initial actions to recover and stabilise their cashflow position, portfolio companies can focus on growth!
Sidetrade today announced it has launched its Cash Culture app on Salesforce AppExchange, empowering sales and customer service teams to resolve invoice disputes faster, and utilize a single source for customer payment cases within Salesforce. Cash Culture increases productivity and real-time collaboration between sales, delivery, and finance, leveraging customer financial data and machine learning powered by Sidetrade.
Built on the Salesforce Platform, Sidetrade Cash Culture is currently available on AppExchange.
Sidetrade Cash Culture app
The Cash Culture app introduces the management of customer financial cases within Salesforce. Cash Culture connects business and finance with streamlined communication and enhances real-time visibility of account information for a personalized customer experience.
Comments on the News
Rob Harvey, chief product officer at Sidetrade said: The swift resolution of disputes and discrepancies will save businesses time and cash, and importantly, create a high-quality customer experience when it comes to collecting payment. Cash Culture is an effective case management solution bringing a natural extension for collaboration between customers, finance and operations.
Sidetrade’s Cash Culture is a welcome addition to AppExchange, as it powers digital transformation for customers by enabling finance, sales and operations to more efficientl, said Woodson Martin, GM of Salesforce AppExchange. AppExchange is constantly evolving to enable our partners to build cutting-edge solutions to drive customer success.
This week sees the conclusion of the European Sustainable Development Week (SEDD). Since 2014, this special week has highlighted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Objectives and encouraged every one of us to contribute to a shared vision which commits to “putting an end to poverty, saving the planet and building a peaceful world”.
The UN’s 17 sustainable goals have been adopted and form part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. More precisely, the Agenda lists 169 targets to be achieved by this date. The period between 2020 and 2030 has been named the ‘Decade of Action’. Indeed, though significant progress has been achieved, urgent action is still required on all fronts.
In the context of this worldwide effort, staff at Sidetrade have taken collective action, linking their more local sustainable initiatives to those on a worldwide scale by means of a challenge organised in partnership with the NGO Tree Nation.
Daily eco-friendly actions literally become… a forest in Madagascar!
On the 18th September, the opening day of the European Sustainable Development Week, we set a challenge on B-Side, a communication platform which enables us to share useful information with our people, such as press reviews, information about our competitors, highlights of our working life, job offers, or new product launches…. The challenge invites Sidetraders to share all their small or larger-scale daily actions which contribute to the protection of the planet.
For each ‘like’ received, Sidetrade offers a tree to the employee who thus becomes a ‘planter’ and so is contributing to Tree Nation’s reforestation project in the north-west of Madagascar.
In two weeks ‘Sidetraders’ have greatly increased their own sustainable development initiatives, contributing to Madagascar’s reforestation by indirectly making possible the planting of 556 trees. For the individual who contributes, each tree is a special and unusual gift. Also, each tree is a victory for the deforested areas of Madagascar, contributing to a more resilient environment, and is a pledge of our commitment to a better future for us all.
The challenge we set up has quickly won a lot of support from our teams. Some have chosen to replace their light-bulbs at home with LEDs, others to buy local or organic products, yet others to go by bike to the office or the gym, or to give up using plastic bags… Ideas have been flowing, so our initial aim of planting 500 trees has quickly been achieved.
Actions we can all take
For our group of ‘planters’ the challenge has often become an opportunity to consider – or reconsider – the Sustainable Development Objectives and to forge a link between these, their own initiatives, the company’s actions as regards CSR, as well as the more global issues of sustainable development.
For many of our people, the protection of the planet has become a concrete reality in their daily lives, both at the office and at home. This initiative will add to the many positive links which already exist between Sidetraders.
As well as the positive energy and huge dynamism created by the challenge, it has also shown that involvement in the protection of the environment is within everyone’s reach, especially when action is taken and shared with enthusiasm.
As one of the participants neatly put it: “The challenge has shown that many of us are involved in taking action to help the environment, and that each action counts”. These efforts could inspire more still to follow.
From the suggestions made by participants, let’s pick out a few here. Sidetrade could partner with an NGO to protect biodiversity or with local fruit and vegetable growers. It could launch a clean-up of the local environment, or set up workshops to teach about recycling…
We are a technology business. We are also a responsible and committed business which is convinced that the well-being of our staff and the protection of the environment are the keys to our future, both individually and collectively.
The result of the challenge Sidetrade set up with Tree Nation provides both clear recognition and proof of our commitment, but also an incentive to go even further. The strength and influence of our company are great advantages in helping to boost CSR initiatives. We must seize this opportunity as we go forward.
Delphine Vantours, Chief People Officer at Sidetrade
Olivier Novasque, founder, and CEO of Sidetrade, had this to say:
Even in the midst of a deep-seated health crisis, in a quarter which tends to be slower than the rest of the year, we managed to achieve double-digit growth. More than ever, in this period of unprecedented uncertainty, Sidetrade has shown the resilience of its SaaS growth model. Our Artificial Intelligence offerings are tailored for today’s global businesses. This is a vast market with untapped potential, and we intend to take the lead.”
Continued double-digit growth. Q3 revenue up 14%
| SIDETRADE (millions of euros) |
T2020 Q3 | 2019 Q3 | VARIATION (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 7,3 | 6.4 | + 14% |
Following up on two excellent quarters, Sidetrade continues with outstanding double-digit growth in Q3, a period which in fact tends to be the slowest in the year. 2020 Q3 revenue was €7.3m, up 14% against the same period last year.
Key events
The period saw several prestigious new clients come on board, including Azets (international auditing and accounting) for their Northern European operations; K2 Partnering Solutions (recruitment of technology consultants) for their British and US operations; and a promising pilot project for Vinci Construction in France.
One of the most exciting events in the quarter was confirmation that the American group Tech Data would be rolling out Sidetrade technology for all their business in the US, as well as in 26 European countries. This is no small feat, to say the least, considering that Tech Data is a multinational leader in the distribution of IT products and services, with revenue of 36.78 billion USD and ranked 88th on the Fortune 500. The go-ahead stems from the successful 2019 pilot phase in the US, France and Switzerland. On an annual basis, this new client represents an additional B2B transaction flow of around $45b to be managed in the Sidetrade cloud, making Tech Data one of Sidetrade’s biggest accounts.
In other news, Midcap Partners, a broker and investment bank specialized in small and midcaps, initiated coverage of Sidetrade on 9 October 2020, considerably boosting Sidetrade’s visibility to European and North American investors. You can read the report by Midcap Partners on the Investors page of the Sidetrade website.
Sidetrade confirms their perspective of double-digit growth in FY2020.