Derek Kaplan 
Comments
July 1, 2020 
Most business owners know their industry very well, however, only a handful are truly financially savvy. So, while the heartbeat of a successful enterprise is ideating innovation, the fiscal blood must be kept pumping by a fundamental comprehension of money matters.
That’s where an inimitable fintech like Sageworks comes to the rescue—and lives up to its moniker by providing the wisdom a company needs to get the most from their financial statements. Taking it one step further, these monetary gurus stand out by handling complete credit and portfolio risk management for commercial lenders.
Sageworks’ core mission has always been to take complex, numbery information and make it easier to grasp, something creators Sarah Tourville and Brian Hamilton have been passionate about since originating the company in 1998.
Prior to that time, Hamilton was teaching a Continuing Studies class at Duke University. Programmer Tourville was eager to work with him on his pioneering concepts of simplifying the general metrics of a company’s cashflow. Hence, being on the vanguard of developing artificial intelligence for commerce, the two trendsetters ventured forth to program an engine that could turn financial analyses into palatable reports on the state of one’s business.
Seek and Ye Shall FIND
The first flagship patent introduced by Sageworks was FIND (Financial Information into Narrative Data). Utilized by accountants and advisors to private companies, the software was designed to generate straightforward financial reports for the private sector. It was eventually implemented by much larger financial institutions at the turn of the millennium. Today, the prized FIND engine has the agile ability to dole out 32 trillion different reports for business owners the country over.
“Most business owners know their trade really well, but not the mechanics of financial statements,” relayed Hannah Rapp, Media Relations and Research Associate for Sageworks, to RewardExpert. “FIND puts the numbers into perspective. Through this engine, we have aggregated the largest real-time database of private-company financial data.”
To that end, Sageworks makes their detailed analyses—“private company indicator” reports—available through many national and trade publications, breaking new ground with their precious profitability insights in the marketplace.
“Users of our software apply the data to understand how certain industries are performing,” remarked Rapp. “The Sageworks database gives these media outlets a unique look into how private companies—a sector you can’t otherwise report on—are doing.”
Banking on Risk Assessment
In 2006, Sageworks amplified their information solutions by aiding community banks and credit unions in streamlining their lending to commercial borrowers. They started out working on global cash-flow, by assisting financiers in better comprehending commingled funds and the revenue-to-risk ratio associated with them. But, due to changing tides in the banking market, their focus has shifted to the proficiency of the borrower’s umbrellaed experience.
Rapp commented about this move, saying how Sageworks “is still helping banks mitigate risk, but also grow the loan portfolio profitability. We have also evolved our product roadmap to accommodate specific compliance needs, including our allowance for loan and lease losses product launched in 2009 and made CECL ready in 2016.”
Sageworks’ reports have been instrumental for small business banks, on up to sizable institutions like Citibank, with whom their many conducive analyses have been used to maximum advantage in commercial and SMB borrowing. For this reason, Sageworks’ product suites are leveraged by more than 1,200 financial institutions that boast a regular 38 percent higher loan growth than its competitors.
Culture of Clients
Customer service satisfaction is paramount to this North Carolina-based establishment—and that means they actually pick up the phone to talk with you. The Sageworks management team meets with a typical 400 plus clients a year just to find out how their doing and the ways they can improve upon their services. This kind of forthrightness has led them down a prosperous road, and helped the company enlarge its roster of solutions to meet the needs of their clientele—be they big or small in scale.
Being privately owned themselves, Sageworks is proud of their acute ability to benefit other private companies with personal success.
“We run the company in a way that allows us to maintain our culture,” noted Rapp. “We are focused on speed, direct communications and customer service above all else. That translates into fast product development and responsiveness, which have helped us achieve the growth we’ve seen so far.”
To learn more about how Sageworks can make your financial decisions in business easier to navigate, visit sageworks.com.