Zone & Co Extends AP Automate With Staria Flow Acquisition
Zone & Co has announced the acquisition of Staria Flow, an accounts payable solution for NetSuite. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Staria Flow was developed by Staria, a Helsinki-based advisory services and solutions firm with whom Zone & Co has also forged a strategic partnership. The deal also includes Staria Banking and other components of the Staria AP automation solution.
Staria FlowAP is an inbound invoice processing solution for NetSuite. It is a hybrid SuiteApp, which enables organisations to process and authorise AP invoices. Without having to subscribe to additional NetSuite Licenses. The product is “Built for NetSuite” and is available on SuiteApp.com.
Zone & Co will integrate the solutions into its own robust AP automation solution. Thus adding new capabilities for finance teams to automate their processes. The acquisition is the second this year after the company acquired financial reporting vendor Solution 7 in May. It also acquired Infinet Cloud in May 2023. This brought a fully featured payroll for several markets, including self-service employee portal capabilities.
Thomas Kim, CEO at Zone & Co, commented, “Over the past year we’ve significantly expanded the breadth and depth of our end-to-end platform, including the addition of GenAI functionality and the acquisitions of Solution 7 & Infinet Cloud. This announcement marks yet another great investment to accelerate our platform’s capabilities, in line with our broader vision that continues to support our organic growth. By combining our capabilities, we create more value, faster for our combined global customer bases. Enabling them to streamline their procure-to-pay process from start to finish with a single login.”
What is Zone & Co buying?
Zome & Co are not buying Staria, nor are they buying all the software solutions that Staria owns. It also has localisation suites for various countries for NetSuite. Enterprise Times asked Kim what then is being bought. He replied, “Zone & Co is not acquiring the full company. It is only acquiring the product, Staria Flow, and the technologists behind the innovative AP automation solution, which includes Staria Flow, Banking and Capture IP, and customers using the solutions. By merging the Staria product capabilities, Zone & Co is accelerating its AP Automation roadmap.”
The additional staff will bring the Zone & Co employee count to around 300. The acquisition will also cement Zone’s AP automation capabilities and cement its position as one of the broadest financial automation add-ons for NetSuite. Over the last few years, it has brought together leading solutions that can provide NetSuite customers with a comprehensive suite of add-ons to their ERP solution.
Artti Aurasmaa, CEO at Staria, adds, “We are excited to join forces with Zone & Co to bring our customers the best of both worlds: Staria’s unparalleled service offering and Zone’s cutting-edge technology.
“Integrating Staria Flow and Staria Banking into Zone’s suite of products will enhance the payments and accounts payable experience and create a seamless financial management environment for our users. Furthermore, it allows us at Staria to focus on bringing our customers top-notch services and solutions within global accounting, ERP consulting, and BI & planning.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
There is fierce competition for AP Automation within the NetSuite ecosystem. However, Zone appears to have taken a slightly different direction than others by looking at a more holistic solution. This acquisition strengthens its AP automation capabilities. However, finance teams operating NetSuite are often smaller and multidisciplinary. Zone provides a suite of solutions that will automate many of the processes across the function.
However, Staria’s solutions are slightly different from others, such as Zone Billing, in that they are hybrid rather than Native and built on NetSuite. It will be interesting to see how it plans to combine its solutions into an integrated whole. There are also other opportunities for integration. Will Zone integrate the Staria Flow with ZoneApprovals, enhancing the approval capabilities for organisations that need that functionality?
