COVID-19 has changed everything for SMBs. Chances are, these businesses have been having difficult conversations with their staff, their partners, and their bank managers. 

9Spokes (ASX:9SP) is a platform that fuels digital transformation for businesses and banks. By enabling businesses to share more data with their banks, the banks can offer more tailored and relevant services in the changing business environment.

The platform comprises of 3 key components:

1. Tracker helps businesses make informed, data-driven decisions to propel growth.
2. Connect helps businesses discover and connect to apps, services, and bank feeds so they can streamline their operations.
3. Engage is an always-on marketing-as-a-service program to drive customer acquisition and engagement.

“9Spokes is a business hub that pulls it all together to make life easier for SMBs,” said Co-Founder and CEO, Adrian Grant in the Meet the CEO webcast.

Operating in the US, Canada, UK, Singapore, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and partnerships, 9Spokes has partnerships with major banks, including Bank of America, BNZ, and OCBC Bank.

“The banks want to provide [cash flow lending to SMBs], but without the access to data that enables them to manage their risk profile, it’s difficult to provide cash flow lending. But if they don’t start providing that capability, other fintechs will take their space. Traditional bank services will be compromised. That’s one of the primary reasons these organisations are partnering with us,” said Adrian.

In recent times, 9Spokes has been focusing on building strategic partnerships with multinationals including VISA, Microsoft and Fundation.

“We wanted to create partnerships so we could leverage the brand strength of multinationals with the brand relevance of the 9Spokes platform. So over the last 18 months, we’ve put most activity on hold to build partnerships that we know will endure and allow us to scale much faster,” said Adrian.

9Spokes is planning to reach profitability within the next two years by continuing to improve ARR as well as investing in research and development.

“We’ve had a very clear bias into putting our revenue into our R&D function. While we have cut spending across the business, we have maintained similar levels of investment in R&D with $4.3 million spent in FY20. As a percentage of overall spending, that’s an increase from 28% to 38% in R&D compared to last year.” said Adrian.

Last week 9spokes CEO Adrian Grant joined us for our ‘Meet The CEO’ Live Investor Briefing. You can watch a recording of the session below, or you can click here to book into our next ‘Meet the CEOs ‘ session. We will be joined by the CEOs of (ASX: TD1) TALi Digital Limited, (ASX: TNT) Tesserent Limited and (ASX: ATX) Amplia Therapeutics.

The ‘Reach – Meet the CEOs’ webcasts are a great way to hear directly from the CEOs of fast growing Australian businesses. You will get valuable insights to their industries and companies future prospects.

Meet the CEOs – Event Details: Date: Wednesday 21 October Time: 12 pm AEDT Format: Online, 3 x 15 minute presentations

This is a free event. Click here to book your spot.