Kristia Poppe June 3, 2020 The payments industry has been central to business innovation for the last generation, one defined as the technology revolution. From the dawn of the internet, with ecommerce as the driver for payment gateways, and the advent of the smartphone, a vehicle for mobile payments, to wireless developments like near field communication as a boon for contactless acceptance, the payments industry has always been first to make those driving technologies really work and reach their potential to turn our wildest dreams into everyday reality.

What’s interesting to me about this dynamic among the payments industry and its adjacent technologies is the varying speed with which societies around the world adopt the payment methods afforded by new frontiers of innovation. And as advanced as we think we are here in the United States, we often lag—by years—adoption of new payment technologies behind our counterparts in Asia and Europe, especially.  

Adapting to Survive

Now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, American business is responding to the crisis by adapting to survive. In March, our company launched its own COVID-19 Survival Kit, which features a set of currently available technologies that many small and mid-sized companies had simply failed to integrate. The pandemic has made fringe or “nice-to-have” technologies central and essential.

Among these technologies are advancements that we in the industry may have taken for granted and quietly acquiesced to a slow-march of adoption, instead of hustling, as we are now, to make these tools more accessible to our customers and bank partners. These tools include:

·      Contactless/NFC payments like ApplePay

·      Digital Gift Cards

·      Payment Gateways

·      Mobile Payments

·      Point-of-Sale Systems with integrated management applications

·      Virtual Terminals

If You Build It, They Will Come

The beauty of these technologies is that we’ve been building them, as an industry, all along, based on our knowledge that early adopters would fund the existence of each respective technology until the time arrived where they would be universal in application. Unlike many industries, those of us in payments were actually ready for COVID-19! What we had to adjust was our mentality, particularly with regard to each merchant and their needs.

Before COVID-19, we may have underestimated each merchant’s needs for solutions that would “weatherproof” their business for virtually any economic season, whether it was a housing-fueled downturn, cyclical cooling of the economy, or, as we’ve seen, a 100-year public health crisis. And due to the lack of urgency associated with good times, perhaps we could afford to underestimate the situation.

Changing Our Mindset

Not anymore. Now, the small town boutique not only needs a good card terminal at the counter, but also a mobile solution to do curbside transactions, a payment gateway to enable ecommerce, digital gift cards to enable easy community investment for the future, and contactless to protect the health of its employees and customers, not to mention an integrated system that keeps financial and operational performance in-sync. 

Fortunately, we were ready, and we’ve mobilized quickly. While we haven’t triaged every American small business, just as the federal and state governments haven’t gotten assistance to every individual and business affected by the pandemic, we are well on our way. Just give us time. And by the time we’re finished, looking at those comparative technology adoption rates among countries will be remarkably different. But if I can certify one thing for our partners and merchants, it’s the fact that we will never stop innovating, so that we can be ready for you and whatever you’re facing.

What I love most about our industry is how tightly aligned our survival is with that of our partners and merchants. Unlike some industries, the payments industry feasts only when our customers do, and when they starve, we do, too.  Knowing that value proposition, and living with it every day, keeps us honest and keeps us moving forward.

Together.

All too often, we try to distill the concept of leadership into a philosophy or a set of values. While these are certainly components of establishing a company culture where people thrive, I subscribe to the concept of leadership that’s behavior-driven. Most of all, I think those of us privileged enough to be in positions of leadership must think about everything we do—in addition to everything we think—in order to have people follow us and accomplish great goals.

The notion of “walk the talk” is an oversimplification of what I’m describing. As our company’s chief operating officer and co-founder, I can’t do every single person’s job alongside them. Rather, it’s more about how I act in my own position and how I relate to them that’s relevant to leadership.

My accountabilities in fostering a performance-driven, inspiring company culture at Celero align with how I act toward others here in three key areas:  showing integrity, creating and keeping lines of communication open, and being a good human being.

Showing Integrity

Personal integrity refers to one’ ability to live in accordance with their code of ethics, or values.  When we live by our values—when we walk the talk—we are strengthened by our own internal sense of integrity and are perceived by others as having high credibility. 

When we strive to live with integrity and are perceived by others as having high credibility, this overlapping or alignment of values is what we desire.  For me, it means being authentic, following through on my commitments, and keeping promises. It also means saying no to opportunities that compromise us, our people, or our partners in any way.

Communication, Communication, Communication

When people know they can count on you, the next step is to simply stay in touch, whether that person works next door or in a remote location relative to your own.  Often it means just being seen, present, and accessible.  When we sit down and talk to people, it’s imperative that we’re present, focused, and actively listening.

Communication in a growing company takes on a lot of forms. People need to hear from their leaders when big things like acquisitions happen. But they also need to hear from us frequently on the many projects and pieces of work that drive us forward each day.  If things are going well, they need to hear that praise and credit given appropriately. And if things aren’t going so well, they need us to keep it real and keep it direct. Folks can’t improve at what they’re doing without something real and true for holding themselves accountable.

I have to admit, communicating frequently and appropriately about our progress together is one of the larger challenges of a fast-growing company like Celero.  Better communication is a goal for me this year at work and at home.

Being a Good Human

It’s hard to remember sometimes that we’re all just people. We get wrapped up in everything we’ve got going on, as well as meeting the expectations of others and ourselves at work. Another way for us as leaders to make people feel like they are at a home away from home, a place where they can work safely to achieve their goals, is to offer them constant reminders of our humanity.

This means keeping your door open, figuratively and literally, where people can share with you anything and everything that’s troubling them and impeding their progress, both on work projects and growing as an individual. It’s also important, while you have that door open, to keep yourself open; that is, show all aspects of your personality, whether it’s your sense of humor, irreverence, or alternative ways of thinking. When we as leaders show our complete selves—as opposed to “Work Jeff” versus “Home Jeff”—our people will be more comfortable in their own skin, and our team, our customers, and our partners will see more benefit as well.

When people work in an environment facilitated by honesty, communication, and treating people in ways where we can all express our full humanity, great things happen. We don’t just talk about these things, but rather, we do them. While I’m certainly not perfect, abiding by these principles and acting upon them mindfully as much as I can leads to much of my personal success in working with others.

Kevin Jones January 27, 2020 I recently had an opportunity, a long time in the making, to go back to my hometown in Ashe County, North Carolina and address the latest graduating class of a wonderful regional leadership development program, Leadership Ashe.

While I certainly took a few moments to reminisce about the past, I found it appropriate to think along with these impressive, selfless folks about how we shape the future by how we approach the present. While not an original concept—it’s often attributed to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and seen in faith devotionals—I love the idea that “today is day one.”

What a great idea that is for approaching the new year that’s upon us, the notion that today is day one. It’s about so many things, depending on your context. In a faith journey, for example, today is day one often means shedding the burdens of yesterday, those areas where you fell short of your best, the ways in which you hurt others, or the guilt you carry from these times of your life. Being our best selves means not being self-defeating.

I consistently think of the today is day one concept and try to apply it to my work here at Celero. And when I do so, it’s almost the opposite of that faith journey, where you’re setting yourself free of yesterday’s troubles. Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for leaving failure behind, after taking your necessary lessons from that to make yourself stronger. Rather, it’s more about the concept of the value we bring, to our company, to each other, to our customers.

As we sit here in January of 2020, the beginning of year two at Celero, after a very successful first year, it’s still day one. The journey still lies ahead of us. The mistakes, beliefs, and achievements of the past certainly help dictate our starting point, but it’s all in front of us yet again. And most importantly, to stay fresh as leaders, we have to come in and look at things with the perspective that it is our first day on the job. That’s how new leaders and consultants are initially impactful. They don’t have the legacy skeletons, pride of authorship, relationships, and barriers built slowly over time. They come in with fresh eyes, identify the issues, and solve them.  I challenge myself and my generals to do the same every year:  “What would you do if you knew nothing and no one and this was your first day?”

I love how this concept applies to everyone, whether you’re a young high school student, somebody’s grandmama, or a 48-year-old fintech executive like me. Thinking about one of my favorite Avett Brothers lyrics—”Decide what to be, and go be it”—my own concept of day one means that we start all over again. We start all over in proving our value to others, fulfilling our individual purpose, providing for others in our lives, and impacting our communities.  I must do all of these things in my role as CEO at Celero, and day one means being accountable to everyone in my life and my pre-ordained purpose in this world, to use my gifts and the qualities others develop within me to shape a better future.

Yesterday’s gone, today is right in front of us, and tomorrow is coming like a rocket. What will you do today, on your day one, to shape a better future?

Somebody recently asked me what I love about working at Celero, and I thought of an answer much as you’d expect a veteran marketer to give.  Anyone and everyone in the marketing world has accepted the basic foundation of the profession as the “Four Ps.”  The concept that balancing price, product, promotion, and placement is the secret to managing your marketing mix has been marketing canon since 1960, and it’s just as relevant today.

For anyone interested in knowing what working at Celero is like, I’d like to advance that we have our own Four Ps.  The first P for me is People.  From our CEO down to our newest employee, everybody brings something special to work every day. Everyone here is committed to building a high-performance culture, where we set new standards for customer-centered innovation and our commitment to be a high-tech, high touch company. We are a diverse group of women and men, people fresh out of school and industry veterans with decades of experience, from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds, and as my colleague Abigail Lucier has so eloquently noted, we take that diversity and unify with our sense of purpose to make our company great.

My second P is Productivity.  Our people are driven, and I love working with people who are determined to be successful and are willing to live by daily measurements of success. Those measurements could put a bad P—pressure—on us at times, but at our company, we have a highly collaborative culture. We have big goals, but only because our customers and partners have big needs to fill. At Celero, we want to become the household name for small and midsized merchants looking to grow quickly and sustainably, which is a monumental challenge as we enter year two of our existence. But here’s the rub, and it’s good: You never feel like you’re in it alone, because this team always has your back. We succeed together, and we sometimes fail together, but in all things, we produce together.

The third P of working at Celero is Passion.  We have people who seriously love what they do. We have multiple people at every level of the company who have been working in payments and fintech for decades, and they act like it’s their first day on the job. They love making a difference in the success stories of our small and medium-sized business customers.  They love making our various partner financial institutions more effective for their merchants as well. This passion isn’t just palpable at our offices across the country, it’s also contagious, and it drives you to give your best, too.  

Perhaps most exciting is our fourth P, Possibilities. A driving ethos of our team at Celero is to never accept that we’ve “arrived.” When you’re in the business of technology and working to solve problems for customers, applications and challenges will continue to evolve. Being arrogant about our success will be the first element of our failure, so we are committed to being humble and go about our work each day creating possibilities for the future, for our partners, our merchants, and our people.

I’m sure others could come up with their own ways of expressing why they love working at Celero, but the Four Ps work for me!

Abigail Lucier December 20, 2019 In the digital era, society has created what I think of as a cult of leadership. Whether it’s somebody like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (and I could go on and on), we’re groomed to worship these super-geniuses. As I think about culture, it dawns on me that we never hear about any of the thousands of people who work for these companies. Do you really think that Steve Jobs, or his successor, Tim Cook, had or has all of the great ideas at Apple? That’s silly, but it’s also where we are as a society.

As we are celebrating Celero’s first year, I’ve found a particular aspect of our emerging culture not only noteworthy, but also something that’s actually changed how I choose to interact with my colleagues here. I’ve witnessed this dynamic on a daily basis, so I know it’s not a fad or a fluke. What I’m talking about is selfless leadership.

Many of us are taught that in order to compete and win in corporate life, we need to be a little selfish and make sure we take credit for successful outcomes. What I witness here, from leaders like Jeff Brown, Kevin Jones, and many others, is a simple sharing of the wealth or giving credit to any and all who deserve it and doing so openly.  

My job is in project management, and at a startup like Celero, those projects can be anything from overseeing an office buildout, managing an integration, or guiding a workstream. When I think about getting in the weeds of a project, the day-to-day grind, and the overall amount of calories that we’re all spending together on a project, I often pause to also think of the amount of people, intellect, and the overall amount of blood, sweat and tears that can go into every project all the way through to completion. It’s humbling to think of all the people that are involved in everything we do. And then I think about the number of times that I have heard our leaders Jeff or Kevin, or Scott Farace or Jim Harris, call out people who played pivotal roles in a project’s success.  When they give this credit, they not only do so publicly, but also never take credit themselves. For our leaders, it’s all about the team. While they are all industry veterans and actual thought leaders in payments and fintech, you’ll never see cults of leadership developing around them, because they prefer to share the success.

To me, this selfless leadership dynamic is perhaps one of the most inspiring things that I’ve witnessed since joining Celero. To see how natural it is for these guys to sit there and publicly give credit where it’s due, and to really make it a point to not stand up and say “I did it, it was me,” and to actually do the opposite of that. To not take credit for anything, to stand back and say, “I could not have done this without you, you, you, and you,” well, that’s significant.

Furthermore, the people they recognize are often those who probably think that their names would never be recognized or brought up in conversation. For me, this kind of recognition, whether fulfilled or neglected, can be what makes or breaks an employee—I firmly believe that. So being able to win as a team and to lose as a team, but to also give credit and to pat someone on the back when they have done an incredible job is incredibly noteworthy. This culture of the selfless leader is one of the driving forces behind our culture at Celero, and as we grow, our leadership will naturally expand to include many others. I am confident that this element of our culture is something that we will continue to embed in who we are and prove foundational to our success as we move forward.

Kevin Jones November 26, 2019 Growing up in the High Country of my native North Carolina, I’ve always loved to ski. For a mountain boy like me, being on a snowy slope with friends or family is truly my happy place.

I can remember the first time I went skiing with a few good friends, included among them was Travis Mash, my best friend to this day. My first trip to the local slopes was a big one—we skied for three days straight. The first day, we all fell down A LOT, and we laughed about it together that night. The next day, Travis and I continued to fall quite a bit, while one of our friends fell a little, and two guys in our party of five didn’t fall once!

On the final day, Travis and I still fell down a ton, one guy fell a few times, and those same two guys didn’t fall at all.  You’d be accused of being reasonable if you thought that the two guys who quit falling after day one were the smart ones in our group. And maybe they were, in the eyes of some.  But only two of us were skiing the most difficult slopes—known in ski parlance as black diamonds. And while I don’t know about those other three, I’m still skiing those black diamonds.

There are a few good lessons here. First, you need to set high goals for yourself, and everyone knows this to be true. But the second lesson is just as important, if not more so:  to succeed, you have to be willing to fall down to progress. Third, it’s always easier to push yourself to take risks and succeed when you see others around you doing the same. Thanks, Travis, for inspiring me way back then and even today. 

As we continue to talk about building a high-performance culture, I’m often asked what the driving ethos of a company should be, in order to reach this aim. Many people mistakenly think that it’s simply down to setting big goals and holding people accountable to them. While pushing people to achieve big things is certainly a fundamental behavior to success, every behavior stems from a mentality or philosophical approach.

Not all of these mentalities or approaches are good. Many are as simple as giving big rewards to those who close business and firing those who don’t—think of it as the Glengarry Glen Ross philosophy (“Coffee is for closers!”). While that makes for a fun movie experience, it’s not a recipe for leading people to big, sustainable success. Neither is the “getting people to buy in” approach—leading people to achieve new heights isn’t about persuasion.

So, what’s it all about? If you think about it, building a business successfully, whether you’re performing a role here at Celero or working in a small business, is about freedom.  It’s about the freedom to think, the freedom to create, and the freedom to necessarily reinvent yourself and your strategy on a daily basis. To achieve sustained growth, you can’t just repeat what made you successful yesterday. Every business in America has competition, and those who rest on yesterday’s ideas get their lunch eaten today and tomorrow.

So how do we get this freedom we’re talking about, if we’re not the CEO or business owner. In the case of Celero, it’s about granting every person here that freedom. And it’s not just saying, “Be free and have success!”  That’s as silly as it sounds when you read it aloud. Rather, it’s the opposite—we have to free each other of fear. We can’t be afraid to take risks, make mistakes, and be bold.

I say those three things—taking risks, making mistakes, and being bold—in a certain order for a reason. My team has set some pretty high goals for themselves by which we measure our performance. In fact, like most good teams, we’re constantly raising our standards, based on where our competition lies and especially on customer needs. In order to maintain this commitment to continuous improvement, we don’t need buy-in. We need for people to take risks. It’s only when we take risks that we can better what we did yesterday.

When you take risks in business, as Travis and I did on those black diamonds, you sometimes make mistakes and fail. I happen to believe and know that we hire really intelligent people at Celero—people like Deidra Parsons make sure of that. One thing I’ve observed through the years is that intelligent people aren’t submissive, and they don’t shrink from the challenges they face simply because they’ve failed or made a mistake. They come back harder and stronger—they’re emboldened by their failure to produce and what they’ve learned from it. While nobody likes failure in the moment, the kind of people I’m describing—those true high performers and leaders—begin relishing the challenge all over again even before the wounds have healed.

The best people, who are leaders no matter where they function within an organizational chart, are what I like to call “battle-hardened,” and you can’t be battle-hardened without losing a few along the way. Losing breeds resilience, and resilience is what fuels us for the long haul in life and in business.

Every day, I approach my teams and individuals, listening to their approaches—to see if they’re thinking big enough—and watching how they go about achieving their goals—to see if they are taking those necessary risks to achieve more than they did yesterday. If they’re not thinking big enough and risking enough to sometimes make mistakes, it’s my job to give them that freedom all over again.

And while for each of them it’s about that freedom, for me, it’s simply about cashing that check that I’ve written. The way you give freedom often has less to do with encouraging risk than it does to do with punishing failure. While we can’t tolerate recklessness, we have to give grace to those who abide by these principles of taking risks, making mistakes, and being bold. I find that when you give people even just a little room to see their ideas through, their wild successes far outweigh any temporary setbacks.

Abigail Lucier November 8, 2019 A lot of companies talk about their culture, and it’s often a misapplication of the term, when they are really talking about values or drivers of their work. Values without daily action is just an empty gesture, but the way we live our values—and do so together—is when you begin to cultivate a culture. 

When I think of culture, in the world as well as in the workplace, the one word that comes to mind is unity. I think of people coming together with genuine acceptance of one another and individuals being recognized and appreciated for who they are.

Celero is a large and fast-growing company with a wealth of diversity in thought and backgrounds. It’s this unique combination of individuals coming together that makes working at Celero special. I’ve developed an appreciation for this diversity that helps me become a better project manager.

It’s important to recognize that diversity brings many life and work perspectives to the table. We see the value of diversity, in our operations at Celero, on a daily basis. Each employee has something different to offer the company, whether they have 20 years in the industry or are coming to Celero fresh from other sectors.

I think that we, not only as a society but also as a working team, must recognize that it is through our differences and our individual qualities that we can actually become united in one thing. And that one thing is that we are all different, and we all have something unique to offer.

At Celero, unity doesn’t mean we all have to think or believe the same things; it’s quite the opposite, actually. We welcome a variety of thoughts and opinions, and we believe that our differences make us a stronger team. A strong, unified sense of teamwork can be felt in both our internal communications as a company, and in what we do for our clients.

When it comes to culture, I don’t believe that one person is more impactful than the other as none of us can do this independently, without the help or assistance of other team members. The moment you try to identify the impact one can have or contribution one should make, based on something like title, is the moment you will start to limit one’s ability to make an impact. This could be counterproductive to establishing a strong culture as I believe a healthy culture is one that empowers each team member to be held to the same standard.   

The power of having a strong company culture shouldn’t be underestimated, as there is a remarkable amount of trust that transpires for this to happen successfully. We don’t just work alongside each other at Celero; we take individual ownership in what we do. Each person is expected to carry their responsibilities by owning them. We’ve found that team members are genuinely happier, as well as more productive, when they can cultivate freely. When you are trusted to do a job, you feel empowered and inspired to do more and this is a significant indicator of what our culture is like at Celero. 

Every company culture is going to be different.  Regardless of the individual characteristics that make your company special, unity is an inherent part of any strong company culture. It is through these differentiating, individual characteristics that we can come together as one team.

Kevin Jones - August 22, 2019 As I look across the banking industry, I often see trends that I find disturbing. Over the last few years, I’ve observed a widening gulf in the amount of deposits that community banks attract versus the loan dollars they generate, mostly to small businesses.

A specific statistic that illustrates this point comes from a market study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities grow sustainably from several angles, including banking, broadband, energy, and waste. According to the ILSR, community banks issue a whopping 52 percent of all small business loans, while they hold only 16 percent of the nation’s assets.  

There are many contributing factors to this dynamic, which isn’t in itself sustainable, as banking is predicated on a balance of maintaining appropriate levels of deposits, both demand and time, with the issuance of loans and lines of credit to individuals and businesses.  The community banking conundrum is driven by multiple converging factors, among them competition from big banks for deposits—especially those of a commercial nature—as well as geographic limitations (many community banks have operated more consistently in less wealthy communities, going to places the big banks have avoided). The localized lending that community banks do is a cornerstone of enabling financial inclusion and energizing the American dream.

As a fintech leader, I find it disturbing that one of the larger perceived pressures of community banking comes from our sector. Technology companies in areas such as lending are threatening areas of profitability for community banks. It’s one thing to have your deposit base eroded, but it becomes difficult for community banks to survive this phenomenon in tandem with the erosion of their loan base, especially in small business lending.

I see this differently.

One person’s threat is another’s opportunity.  While I’ll let other fintechs speak to their own models and motivations, I can tell you with complete authenticity that Celero and its brands are developing leading-edge technology, in payments, software-as-a-service, analytics, business intelligence, social monitoring, and sales tools, and we are doing so to fulfill our commitment to help our community bank partners and their small business customers compete and win.

And we don’t limit ourselves to simply selling our own products and services. In our role as strategic partners and advisors, we not only help our community bankers realize a more expansive relationship with their clients, but we also help them connect the dots with regard to all of the tools at their disposal. My colleague and co-founder, Jeff Brown, exemplified this ethos recently, as he explained how our bank partners can increase fee income and deposit balances through payments and funding accounts earmarked for asset-based lending. Deposits are the launchpad for lending capability, and community bank loans provide a significantly healthier injection of capital than alternative lending options. As I stated before, these loans fuel innovative small businesses in towns all across America.

We are convinced that in order for community banks to fulfill their mission and continue to better serve rural Americans, as well as those in small towns and underserved urban neighborhoods, they need the right strategic partners, the right products, and the right tools to succeed.

Last year, when I began acquiring the strategic pieces of Celero and combining that with my dream team of executives, managers, and performers, I was grateful to find that our stakeholders completely embraced our vision to bring enterprise-level technology in terms of best-in-class payments capabilities and consumable technology tools, to small and mid-sized companies across the country. It’s obvious to me that when you give community bankers—some of the smartest people who are driven to help their business clients as much as they can—the tools to help their customers succeed, you can achieve your own bottom line goals, while helping your partners and their customers achieve theirs, too. Accelerating the growth of our partners and business customers is the core focus. Combining community bank products and services with our fintech offerings creates a formula that positions these small to mid-size businesses to not only survive and compete, but to lead and thrive in a sustainable way.

Aligning your own success to that of your partners and their customers isn’t original, nor should it be particularly noteworthy. But at this point in our history, our community banks need all of us operating on this principle, doing everything we can to work together to serve American business. According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, firms with fewer than 20 employees account for more than 89 percent of American businesses. That statistic alone tells you the magnitude of what we’re facing here, but I’m glad to know we are partnering with some of the most capable people in business, and commit that Celero will strive to hold up its end of the deal, passionately cultivating the success of our bank partners.

Jeff Brown-July 25, 2019 If you read anything by or about Celero, you’ll see the word “integration” in lots of places. That’s one of the hallmarks of our company, a diligence we take into everything we do. It’s about delivering value on multiple fronts for our partners and merchants.

We normally speak of integration with regard to helping small and mid-sized merchants get a competitive edge, by merging payments with SaaS solutions, analytics, and other tools for financial management, operations management, and business-building. And while we are laser-focused on developing the ultimate one-stop commerce solutions shop for SMBs, that doesn’t mean we’re not looking for similar synergies for our partner institutions, chief among them community and regional banks.

That’s where our recent acquisition of Elmhurst Financial really makes sense.

While we really liked everything about this company—the exclusive focus on community and regional banks, the white glove service, great technology, and their ability to walk in their partners’ shoes—what I liked best about this team was their ability to bring all of that together and deliver an experience that makes doing business with Elmhurst easy.

Perhaps the best example of how Elmhurst approaches solving challenges for financial institutions is their BANKMAX program. This team seems to take nothing for granted. While I know we have competitors with good pricing and solid training programs, Elmhurst’s BANKMAX is the most comprehensive approach to partnering we’ve seen in this industry. In addition to competitive products and services and access to an elite inside sales team, what’s special about this program is how it helps regional banks create an ethical sales culture.

How do they accomplish this? Technology. When you’re able to help your merchants find real savings in the payments ecosystem, giving them real data in contrast to the smoke-and-mirrors approach they see in other quarters, that’s a commitment to doing business the right way for both merchants and the banks they trust, day-in and day-out.  

BANKMAX is all about putting our partners in position to win, since their victories are aligned to the success of their merchants. Happy merchants—those who have the payments capabilities they need at competitive prices they can understand—will see their bankers as partners who share in their success, rather than simply trying to maximize their own income at product level.  

If you’re into the numbers of this business, like we are at Celero, it’s hard to look at the tools and reporting included in BANKMAX and not geek out at the insights available to financial institution partners. The level of detail captured in sales and merchant reporting, as long as the ongoing portfolio analysis, is certainly equal to any technology that commercial bankers enjoy at large banks with in-house merchant departments.  That’s precisely our value proposition, and why we’ve felt so aligned to our teammates from Elmhurst from day one, that quest to give community banks the technology and tools to compete with much larger competitors, so that they, in turn, can equip small merchants in ways only large companies take as routine.

We welcome the Elmhurst team to Celero, and we are excited by all of the possibilities for us to all grow together.

Jim Harris-July 11, 2019 My long-time friend and our CEO, Kevin Jones, talks often about the importance of integration when it comes to helping small and mid-sized businesses compete and win. What he’s referring to is a natural fit that occurs when great financial technology from different corners of the market—payments, SaaS, and analytics—comes together to bring a one-stop shop for SMB management, both from financial and operational perspectives.

While Kevin’s vision is unmatched in the industry in this regard, I focus my role on something that’s even more foundational, and I’m pleased to tell you that what’s behind every great integration is a great partnership, whether it’s a collection of brands like UMS Banking, Elmhurst, Tandem, and RazorSync, or you’re talking about partnerships of the external, strategic variety.

For me, there are many great partnership opportunities for a company like Celero and its subsidiaries like UMS. We’ve seen a wonderful partnership develop internally as we integrate our teams on a shared services platform that will offer incredible value to SMBs. We also see this dynamic in our work at local community banks through UMS, as well as larger community banks and regional banks through Elmhurst.

At UMS and Elmhurst, we work through commercial bankers and the many teammates who support their work, from branch managers to tellers. Partnerships work and only work when both sides can win. When a community bank brings in a payment processing partner like UMS or Elmhurst, both teams can do what they do best, share the revenue accordingly, and give their mutual customer, the SMB, the tools they need to compete. Commercial bankers are at their best when they can focus on building client relationships and leave their partners to simplify otherwise complex aspects of their clients’ businesses.

The same can be said for software providers. There are many SaaS providers out there that are focused on specific industry verticals. A great example is our own RazorSync, but there are many others out there, too. Again, the developer can stick to what they do best—writing great software, while we can come in with a frictionless integration and onboarding experience for the SMB that’s as easy as clicking on the browser icon on your new computer’s desktop. While I suppose it’s possible that you can build a great app without payments integration, having the revenue stream connected to your financial and operational management means a lot more data and a lot better decision-making along your business-building journey.  

Another great value proposition is that of associations. Again, a partnership must deliver value on both ends. When we can engage with associations, we have the opportunity to grow exponentially the number of merchants we serve. In exchange, the association—a member-driven organization that needs to think of new ways each year to deliver greater value to its member companies—has a program that offers competitive rates and terms that help its members grow.

One of the things I love most about our industry is that it’s full of people who are collaborative by nature. That doesn’t mean that we’re not competitive, but rather that we’re able to focus not only on what we need in business, but what our partners, be they financial institutions, software developers, associations, or others, need as well.  What we are building here at Celero, while it may not be unique, it’s nonetheless special. It’s special because of the integrity we have in aligning our success to that of our partners. They find out very quickly that if we are going to invest ourselves, our financial resources, and our capabilities into a partnership, it’s because we’re betting on them to win.

When you base your partnerships on being fair to your partners and positioning them to win big, you can expect great results for your own team as a result, too.