Making Accounting Sexy with Laurent Charpentier of Yooz

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00

Alright, so if you had to guess

‍Unknown: 0:08

this is Auto Collabs

Kyle Mountsier: 0:10

how many different ways people in my lifetime said my last name?

Paul J Daly: 0:16

Different Oh man. I'm gonna guess there's definitely definitely four that I could like. There's a makeup case for three hands where I think it's surprise you that people get my last name wrong too.

Michael Cirillo: 0:29

What do they call you?

Paul J Daly: 0:30

Ali? Dally Dolly? Daily. It's Unbeliev they spell it wrong. They spell wrong all the time. All these eyes and ears in there. But not like yours.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:41

Not like mine.

Michael Cirillo: 0:43

You had to set the record straight in high school French teacher that just had to say last name. Just had

Kyle Mountsier: 0:49

to do it. But I got monster Mazzi air Monsour they monitor like if you missed the whole ass. It's Mountsier to set the record straight. It's very English sounding unlike our guest today, which has a very not English. No,

Paul J Daly: 1:06

but your name would no no, but I didn't even know because you be like mole ca rice. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:11

There. You could go.

Paul J Daly: 1:13

Today's guest you say his name better than any of us like Laurel,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:16

Charpentier Come on, is going to be joining us. Not from France, but from Texas State sake. He is the CEO of us. And we hope that you enjoyed this conversation probably about nothing. All right, hanging out here with Lebron of us. Thank you so much for joining us on Auto Collabs today, first of all,

Laurent Charpentier: 1:44

my pleasure, guys.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:46

Alright, so by your first name and your accent, people will very quickly tell that even though you live in Dallas, Texas right now, you are not from Dallas, Texas. Give us a little bit of background of like, why coming from France to the US was important to you. Like I'm gonna dive right into that. So

Laurent Charpentier: 2:08

you mean my accent didn't hide it? Accent no born born and raised in France and I and well, why? You know, I've got my education. In computer science engineering, I went to the US studied for a couple years at MIT actually in in Boston. And this was an amazing experience maybe made me we love the US built a great network while I was there. And so came back to France after that spent some time doing some some consulting work with Accenture in in in Paris. And then I started getting these, this envy to come back to the US. And this is at that time that I found the US adventure with a nice success story and fast growth in France. And the project for us was let's go international. And the choice was let's go in the US to grow to grow the company and bring the product to the to the US market. So this is when I joined very different experience from Accenture going from going from a very big company to startup mode. But there was an amazing thing to build. And, you know, remember, I was probably number three or four when I joined the US branch and and today using the US has about 100 People 400 People in our French team with the product development being all located in France. So it's been a great, great ride.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:40

So one question that I have because this is not something that you typically that you see a lot of at least in my experience is someone moving from like purely engineering, both via education and career path into the executive seat? How did that kind of like come about for you? Did you always desire that type of leadership? Or was it kind of like a growth a coming of age through, you know, the engineering, you know, career path that you had? Yeah,

Laurent Charpentier: 4:11

you know, it was it was always a little bit in the back of my mind. I mean, my my family's kind of, you know, entrepreneurial, you know, what US was born as part of a larger company in France that that actually had been founded by some of my family members. So it was it was a little bit of my blood but the the ID for me was I wanted to do my own thing right I wanted to build something and this is why you know, I I did my I guess my my training or if we can call it this way at Accenture this was a great a great methodology to learn. And then coming to the US being number three or four. To launch the US side was a great way to build something from from the ground up and started with definitely my engineering background. You know, pre sales support implementation. And as the company grew, you know, took the leadership role to to manage the US operations first. And I didn't invent the business side, I recruited some talent leaders on the marketing side on the sales side to compliment my technical background. And we've built a great team, you know, companies are about people uses about, you know, the work family that uses and it's, it's about the team, right?

Paul J Daly: 5:32

I think it'd be easy to miss this if you weren't at NADA, or you haven't interacted with the use team in in any way shape, or form. But you know, when you think accounting, you typically like the image that is conjured. Like if we plugged it, you know, like, show me an account Brawl until I give. Everybody got everybody knows where I'm going. However, when we were at your booth at NADA, there were flamingos, bright colors, lively, attentive staff, young faces, just excited to be the, the the young, the young man, I can't remember his name. But he was telling me how he's like, really good friends with Leon bridges, the musician. So it's, it's like I think the personality of the company, is you pair that with a technical savvy. And I really think it is indicative of like the future of how people are thinking about accounting and technology and interaction. And I just want to make sure we start talking about those things on this podcast as well. Because the personality behind the process, and the mentality, I think goes a long way as auto dealers are constantly thinking in more progressive ways how to use technology and automation to improve their business and solve some problems. So we're the flamencos. Your idea?

Laurent Charpentier: 6:48

Yes, it was one of our marketing leaders. But But I was, I was really fan of it, because the company started in the south of France. And it's, there are a lot of famous places in South of France, where flamingos, you know, migrate or spend some time. So it was like, Yeah, this is a nice place to our origins. Let's try to use that as our mascot. So we're starting to leverage that and the bright pink colors, of course, and we try to bring differentiation and unique benefits in our product. And we try to also bring differentiations in, in, you know, how we, how we interact in our culture and all of that as well. It's very important to us as well.

Michael Cirillo: 7:26

You brought up something that resonates with me, I wrote this down, you said companies are about people. And obviously I mean, this is Auto Collabs part of automotive at Union more than cars. This is something we care deeply about. At what point do you make the realization as a leader that oh, that's actually what the company is about? We Yes, we have a product, but the product is only going to be elevated to the degree that our people are elevated? Have you always felt that way? Does it stem from a family business mindset? Where does that? Where does that come into play? For you? How did that come about?

Laurent Charpentier: 7:59

Yeah, it's been, it's been the root of the company from from very early on. And, you know, I, I cannot say it's fully from me, but I like to believe, you know, I'm playing a strong role. And so, so do all of our team members today, nurturing this culture, maintaining it, especially as we grow, and the company is getting much bigger than, you know, then then 18 years ago. So yeah, pretty early on, we've realized that we're like, oh, you know, we, we want to, we want to work with people that we have fun working with, that we enjoy. And if we if we have a great product and great people, then then it's going to elevate the company is going to elevate the customer experience. And it's going to generate innovation. And that's that's what it's all about.

Michael Cirillo: 8:40

I've got one more question if I can about this.

Paul J Daly: 8:42

Yeah. Two questions, Michael, as I

Michael Cirillo: 8:46

see you guys later. as the company grows, right, I think, you know, when you go in, when you're in a startup phase, it almost seems like that family ask vibe, that real people centric vibe is easy to maintain. You know, a lot of companies I talked to when they reach that 50 100 employee 200 or to your point, if I'm seeing this, you've got you said 400 people in France and 100 people in the US so 500 person company, what are some examples, maybe from your vantage point of how you maintain that closeness? As, as you have, you know, 500 employees around the world. You

Laurent Charpentier: 9:27

know, it's, it's, first it's telling people about, hey, here's what's the DNA of the company, here's what our roots are, so they know about it. So they know about our core values. And we've defined what those core values are actually, as a team. So a few years back, we we actually sat down and brainstorm okay, what are our values? What do we want to communicate to, you know, to organization inside and outside? So we set up our core values with a set of qualities and a set of behaviors that, you know, everyone should strive to embody every day and to live by so that's That's something that he's presented to everyone. So so they know what it's about. With that said, it's, it's, it's this three but not enough, then you get to build, you know, build that closeness bring people together. So we're just trying to make sure that there is a good dynamic around the office, we actually in the US just expanded our office space, and just moved into a brand new office space. Our French crew did the same thing last year. And this is all about a lot of little things. You know, we're doing some app ers, we're celebrating some birthdays every month where you're just throwing quarterly business for us. You know, parties, things like this, that we try to bring people together and really make them bond. So it makes makes it easy for them to collaborate and then bring that level of excellence letter. So no, it's nothing I would say super innovative, but it's about having that pace and having everyone on board for doing this. From from the moment they joined the company. Really? This is your office space here in Dallas. Yes. Just north of DFW reporting. Koopalings Exactly.

Michael Cirillo: 11:03

Oh, cool. I'd love to come and visit. Yeah, you should. Yeah. Check it

Kyle Mountsier: 11:07

out. Better watch out because he certainly is going to show up with one of those pink flamingos on the stick that you just

Michael Cirillo: 11:13

dressed up like on a mango tree. He'll

Kyle Mountsier: 11:16

be a dress like I'll just stand in the corner on

Michael Cirillo: 11:19

one leg to see how long it takes someone to notice. Nice

Kyle Mountsier: 11:28

Oh, my God, oh, wrong picture. And now it just like there was way too little clothing way too tight.

Paul J Daly: 11:36

Where did that stick come from?

Michael Cirillo: 11:39

Short, stocky Italian legs that just won't work as

Kyle Mountsier: 11:45

Paul was saying earlier, like accounting, again, not the, you know, the sexy thing in in sassy products is is marketing and automation and AI and all that type of stuff. Typically you don't run down counting to be like, That's the cool new thing on the block. But you guys have really taken a different perspective on what's important within the dealership and leveraging technology to free up people. Can you give us a little bit of insight to like, where the origin story of the product of us came from? Like what was the reason why someone initially said like, that's a problem that we have to solve.

Laurent Charpentier: 12:26

So the the very origin story about about use came from the former parent company in France, which had was building software to automate document based processes, not only invoices, but any type of document questionnaires, check capture, things like the Social Security forums, etc. So they had a product to automate a P but their product was fairly easy to deploy and kind of, you know, reserved to the fortune 500 companies. And they saw a trend where essentially the SMB space had the same pain points really was just lower volumes of invoices, but at a much smaller scale as well with less people. So really the same pain points. And this is when the ID came from, hey, let's let's bring some of our DNA in the cloud bill, the first SaaS product to automate EP and this was back in 2010, in France, one when we launched and and then if we fast forward a few years after that, when we brought that to the US, we really saw an open field on the on the mean market, and that included the dealerships, and we quickly got into a renewed a very good relationship with I don't know if I can cite their name, a big DMS player who was who picked us as the extra Steve AP automation provider, so that gave us a ton of expertise into the space because we piloted that with some of their some of their clients and we built a dedicated integration. And you know, eight years nine years later, we're now you know, very well known in the DMS in the dealership world and those that are orders that this allowed us to build not only specificities in the product for the auto dealers or the truck dealers but also really understand their world when it comes to you know, parts service sales etc. and build that expertise in our team

Kyle Mountsier: 14:22

I'm I'm like my my whole goal to get out of this is to understand from you why you think people still sign paper checks and send them in the mail in the US from that's all I want to know actually I don't care about anything else. I just want to know why that still exists in our world. Because I'm sure like there's there's this you know, there's this variable and like dealers, you know, the way that they're just thinking about the the function of a P which like for them, so much of the world is just Like, hit, you know, build.com and ship the cheque or like, you know, pay it via credit card, put it on monthly repeat but like, because of the systems and the and the processes that we've set up specifically in auto, we've created this ecosystem that like, still is, from my perspective resting on your laurels, and I'm guessing your product is solving some of that, but like, what, why do we still sit where we sit in retail auto in like, just that, that little thing? Accounts Payable? Yeah.

Laurent Charpentier: 15:37

It's a very good question. And, and hopefully, you know, that's the, I think the mantra, the majority is the modernization is accelerating in the audit world, for sure. You know, the DMS is are, are all, you know, making a lot of improvements, opening or opening up their systems with more API's, etc. And, and on our side, I think, I think it's just the status quo, you know, all the companies, like you said, they tend, they tend to make investment on what generates sales. So it's the marketing, it's front end for, you know, for selling for the sale services, etc. and AP, in a lot of cases is considered as the back office and you know, things are broken, they're working, they're working as, as the IC issued with, you know, paper processes, but they're not, they're not very efficient. And in in our world today, I mean, if you want to be competitive, you get to become more strategic when it comes to finance. And this is really what what uses organization and dealerships to do. Because then our, our pitch is really not that we're going to replace people, it's more about augmenting them and giving them you know, freeing them up of those tissues, hours spent keying data. So they can actually look at the data or look at what they're spending on a per vendor basis, or paying early instead of paying late and then opening themselves to early payment discounts things like me. So it's really about this. Why is there not more of a sense of urgency to to automate that part? I think it's just because, you know, the, the phrase always stopped broken. So why change now? And that's, that's where we're bringing a lot of education to our audience on the ROI of AP automation, etc.

Paul J Daly: 17:23

What are the who are the the dealers who switched to your platform? You know, in the last, we'll say, 12 months? What are they typically focused on? And why do they typically make this

Laurent Charpentier: 17:34

change? So in most cases, holistically, and

Paul J Daly: 17:38

if you could do like, not just an AP, like, what what mindset do the dealers that adopt your platform have?

Laurent Charpentier: 17:45

So any the this what you just said just just not from AP is very important, because really, AP automation is not only about the AP or the accounting department, it touches the the entire organization on on anyone who can approve a purchase or approve an invoice, right? So it's actually a pretty broad change in the organization. But the whole point, and the value of us is that we make that super easy, super intuitive, for the approvers. Because they can do that from their cell phone, etc. So it's super easy. The mindset of in terms of the people who are signing up with us in the past one month is really about that, you know, that automation, that that will to be more strategic, usually, it's often associated to growth as well, it's about doing more with the same, you know, the same amount of, of staff or not, in not increasing expenses there. And the dealerships, because there is so much decentralization with different locations, the pain points that you solve are quite unique, and the ROI is amazing. So this is this is really that mindset that they have do more with less and more visibility, more real time data, more strategic value tasks from from their staff.

Kyle Mountsier: 19:05

Yeah, I think that this is any product right now, in our industry that enables scale at centralization is winning, right? Because centralization is happening at an all time record pace, right, the number of, you know, acquisitions happening from mid and large sized groups is quickening, we're getting more groups with five or more rooftops and like you said, there's still decentralization as far as decision making process, as far as, you know, vendor, vendor acquisition, anything like that. But there's centralization, specifically, in things like back office processes, which is where you could leverage technology to be able to build scale without building, you know, expenses, right. And that's where I think I think that it's like, ripe for the picking for anyone that's executing a product in that type of scenario. How to like really take market share really fast. So, you know, I'm kind of giving you kudos of like, it's probably gonna pick up.

Laurent Charpentier: 20:09

And we're DMS. We're DMS agnostic nowadays. So even if, you know our clients are making making acquisitions, and they're acquiring stores are locations that are on different DMS, we can accommodate all that and, and essentially make it even easier for them to create that centralized platform, that centralized source of truth, even though they're still in a decentralized, you know, organization in terms of, you know, the locations may be the AAP staff, maybe even the systems that we're using that may not have merged yet, because of such acquisitions in terms of external growth.

Paul J Daly: 20:47

Well, it has been a pleasure getting to know you a little more hearing about just your entrepreneurial energy for the company and the segment and for auto dealers. Thank you so much for sharing some of your time with us today on Auto Collabs.

Laurent Charpentier: 21:00

Thank you very much, guys for having me. It was a pleasure.

Paul J Daly: 21:07

All right. Accounting is cool again, I mean, it's cool. Officially,

Kyle Mountsier: 21:12

Thriller is going to be dressing up like a flamingo just because he's excited about it. That's gonna I do I was

Paul J Daly: 21:17

standing standing on one foot. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:20

Well, you know, I will say this is like this is there are subsets of our industry that just do not get enough highlight because they are the back office, because they are in parts. And everybody wants to do the sexy, attractive thing and like, go get more customers with some cool marketing campaign that has a display ad, right. And so much of our inefficiency in the industry is actually in the back office tasks. And think about this, like, how does that because we're all about consumer experience, employee experience all that here. So do and you think about like, if your AR AP person is frustrated, because their work balance and the way that they actually do their work is so difficult or requires all of this manual input when they are experiencing an iPhone on their on their day to day life? how does that impact the accounting room that then impacts the time that they get the calls about titles and tag work and all of the residual impact of like, if you don't get this thing, right, and make that person's role better? Like you're missing the whole point, right?

Michael Cirillo: 22:32

Makes me think of how smart that is just as a business play, because while most might regard that as the unflashy thing, there are still some very flashy advancements that they're thinking about, in particular, inside of that sphere. But also, like, it reminded me of just an investing play. Sure, there's people that want to make big bets and high risk and all of these sorts of things. But nine times out of 10, most investors are like, you know, what, put your money into the thing that is like stable and safe and more predictable. And I just think, man, we're in an industry that loves the shiny object. And here, here, he comes through the middle, and he's like, Yeah, but this thing over here that nobody's paying attention to. That's the thing that's always gonna be there.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:18

Yeah. Have you actually have you guys ever been in a dealership because I've done this so many times, and been in like, the general managers of the dealer principal's office, and the AP person comes in. And like, it's just I don't even know how they make folders this big, but it's like all in a folder. And it's like this big and it's like, and the checks that comes down, and then what happens right after that the person just goes like, Oh, yeah. sign that one. It's like every

Paul J Daly: 23:45

once in a while, that amount will catch their eye and like, stop for a second. And they'll ask a question and the payables person like yep, you already said this, about that.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:53

Okay, sign that one. I love that.

Michael Cirillo: 23:55

Yes. I love that. I almost said yesterday. I love that in the episode when you were like, Why are we still like writing and signing checks like this? For for crying out loud? funny about this. This is a very country specific issue because yeah, even moving from Canada where my whole life I was like, oh, man, we're probably so far behind. It wasn't until I moved to the States, not in check writing. Dude, in a grocery store, I saw somebody write a check. When I moved down here. I was like, that's literally

Paul J Daly: 24:24

I just had this conversation with Miles Lee, I was so annoyed because I was going you know how like during near the food you can get by the Grab and Go stuff like the pizza and the subs and all that they have like a little register so you can check that stuff out. someone pulls up with a bag of groceries and sets them all out on that tiny little counter they have made for scan and salads. And then the guy paid in cash. And I was like, Oh, he did? And I said BIOS was like, This is what it was like, back in the day you would look to make sure someone wasn't writing a check. And you wouldn't get in that line right? Oh my god. You know all that Mavis pulls out the checkbook like full A person

Unknown: 25:01

out to make it out to I know. Well, I'm

Paul J Daly: 25:04

glad we're moving away from it. And Laurent is, at least in our industry. I hope so I hope so well, we'll be able to get time with us. On behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, and myself. Thanks for spending some time with us today on Auto Collabs.

Unknown: 25:19

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