Jörg Wiemer (TIS): Nobody likes to be the first customer
Jörg Wiemer, CEO, presents Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS), a fintech leveraging cloud-based solutions to ensure frictionless payment.
10 years ago, TIS was founded and entered the market. You were Senior Vice President, Head of Global Treasury at SAP. Why did you found TIS?
We wanted to solve a customer problem which I had when I was a Treasurer myself: offer a secure and frictionless payment process. We started on a green field and we believed that cloud technology was the way to go. Erol Bozak, the co-founder of TIS was at that time a cloud expert at SAP, so the domain expertise and technology know-know were there from day one. The start was challenging though, as we needed customer references. But no one wanted to be the first customer of a new solution. It took a bit longer than expected. Looking back, we definitely made the right bet 10 years ago on cloud technology. When you look at the current market, security, connectivity and scalability are more important than ever before.
“We know where the money is, how much we have, in which currency it is available… worldwide payment activities are visible from one single platform. We enjoy working with TIS every day.”
The cloud technology was a new area back in 2010 and many had doubts on it. How did you deal with this?
Yes, there was a competitor who even said “Payments in the cloud will never ever work.” But we had a clear vision while putting together the business plan and our research showed that many treasurers could think of working with cloud technology. It was important to me that we have a highly scalable solution without having to kick off a huge IT project on client side. Today, we are happy to see that our vision has become reality and cloud technology is market standard.
Can you give us an outlook on your plans and tell us a bit more about your vision?
We’re constantly working on our vision. What differentiates us from competitors is that we have a very clear focus on payments in connection to data analysis. We believe that for most companies, a clear-cut multitenant architecture is a better solution than going with a vendor who is a jack-of-all-trades. And when it comes the technology behind the cloud, we are definitely at the front. Our payment format library is extensive, and we are leaders in bank connectivity and SAP integration. We can guarantee a speedy rollout for the customer. We believe in a best-of-breed approach, where treasurers can pick and choose specialized solutions from different areas and connect them via API. This way customers will get the exact features they need to efficiently reach their goals. Therefore, we recently started a cooperation with the Finnish software vendor Analyste.
Jörg Wiemer, CEO, Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS)