2020 marks the 30th anniversary of Flexi Software, a provider of premium accounting software for business. With its continuous innovation, Flexi’s three decades of experience has powered the financial operations of enterprises worldwide representing Fortune 10 brands, global financial institutions, insurance companies, healthcare organizations, and other industries where superior performance and security are paramount.
From its beginnings in the early 1990’s, Flexi was no ordinary accounting software provider. Supporting one of the world’s largest banks required the ability to process billions of transactions, convert global currencies, consolidate multiple entities, and provide daily close capabilities – all with extreme precision, speed, and security.
Flexi’s flawless execution earned its reputation as a premier accounting software provider for enterprises with complex accounting environments. The company’s platform was widely regarded as one of the industry’s first accounting systems with a client-servicer architecture utilizing industry standard technologies and development tools; a pioneer of the open platform needed to seamlessly integrate accounting and financial data with other technologies and third-party systems.
This foresight and ability to be first-to-market continued to fuel Flexi’s growth. The company was among the first to introduce workflow automation capability in the late 1990’s, over a decade before the rest of the industry embraced it. With a similar lens into the future, Flexi identified the emerging opportunity for companies to gain efficiencies by outsourcing the back-end accounting operations. Flexi’s open platform, robust functionality, and ability to white label the platform made it the ideal choice for finance and accounting outsourcing companies needing an enterprise solution to support the growth potential of an estimated $420B global industry.
Innovation has continued to drive Flexi’s platform. Today the company announces its newest release of product enhancements that will be unveiled during the October 2020 User Group Conference. Highlights include:
- eRequisition, an automation application to streamline the procurement process, which joins Flexi’s suite of eApps that enable paperless, automated processes for T&E, invoicing, vendor management and more.
- A fully integrated suite of FP&A solutions for better and faster reporting, analysis and planning, building upon Flexi’s belief that giving users access to information is the key to any accounting solution.
“From the beginning, we wanted to offer the best accounting software to our clients and not be all things to all people like the traditional ERP vendors,” said Stefan R. Bothe, Flexi’s co-founder who remains at the helm today. “The industry has seen significant disruption over the past 30 years, as companies have either been acquired by much larger ERP providers or not survived. Our focus on delivering world-class accounting solutions has enabled Flexi to prevail as the only remaining original client-server accounting software providers, which included Peoplesoft and JD Edwards.”
Flexi’s focused development strategy has paid off for both the company and its customers. Customers benefit from the continuity and reliability of an accounting software that easily adapts as business and technology needs change or grow, and Flexi experiences remarkably high retention rates and loyalty from its strong customer base.
A summary of key milestones includes:
- Delivering the technology that enables continuous close for financial institutions and other enterprises needing daily close capabilities.
- Enhancing Flexi’s initial core accounting modules with workflow in 1996 to automate routine accounting tasks, more than a decade before the rest of the industry began embracing this trend.
- Greatly simplifying accounting processes in complex environments with the concept of “multi-everything:” multi-entities, multi-books, multi-currencies, or multi-GLs that must be consolidated.
- Enabling outstanding growth for industry partners that private-label Flexi’s software to bring an accounting solution to their customers across diverse industries, serving millions of end users around the globe.
- Providing cloud accounting software to give customers the flexibility to choose either cloud or on-premise delivery, making Flexi one of the most experienced vendors offering both options.
- Continually innovating, most recently with the release of FlexiFinancials 6.3 that includes additional automation applications as well as a fully integrated FP&A suite with reporting, cloud analytics and budget software.
- Achieving remarkable retention rates and a client satisfaction rate of 96% through Flexi’s commitment to deliver an exceptional customer experience with VIP-level support.
With the advent of cloud computing and the mainstream acceptance of business process outsourcing, many companies are rethinking the role of accounting and taking steps to shift away from a transaction-oriented role to a more value-added function that focuses on analyzing data and improving corporate decision making. Flexi will continue to be a force in shaping this future and the next transformative trend in the industry: accounting factories.
“The creation of accounting factories to automate or outsource the management of financial data processing will enable the finance staff to step into more visible and strategic roles of the front office,” Bothe said. “Flexi will continue to be a key player in this shift and remain committed to enabling our clients to respond quickly and remain ahead of the curve.”
