SKO - Serko.com

[blobbles]

Serkos products are reasonably disruptive, but not overly so. They have chained together a few interesting products (combination travel is a good one - hotel/flight/cars etc in one go), then back it up with a simple expense management solution. More than anything their product makes it a whole lot easier to do travel and expense management. They are reasonably responsive to function requests and appear to have a pretty good engineering team behind the product.

How do I know? The organisation I work for has implemented both their travel software and expense management products. Reports from users are very good and it is cutting down on our costs and annoyance. They seem to produce "oh, is it that easy" products that require very little hands on massaging to get it right. Plus according to our finance people its a pretty good cost saver. They have integrated workflows too to make approvals easy.

Those are the sort of products you want to have, that require barely any manpower to manage and are easy for users. Fairly seamless from a user perspective is what you really want and Serko delivers that 80-90%. Based on this experience, which is often painful for a lot of organisations, I would recommend their products. In most organisations this stuff is a PITA, so to find something that "just works", is a god send and makes an entire organisation more productive (better for front end users, better for back office finance & IT, resulting in cost savings all around). Actually after seeing it in action it makes you think "why wasn't it always like this?".

Reproducible? Yes. And some huge corporates have probably created their own in-house Serko products, or at least bits of it. But not without some effort. Their products would be useful for any corporate that finds this stuff hard, which is a LOT of corporates. But its not sexy. Its not going to win middle management huge prizes as a result of massive cost savings. But still, the appeal is definitely there and cost savings post implementation will flow after a year or two of operation. As they sign more and more customers their recommendations engines and potential for further big data analysis will ramp up quickly giving them heaps of future potential growth options.

They are a fresh company with active developers (which you can actually talk to!) and what looks like solid architecture. We have had one bug with them, which was fixed within 3 days of finding it. That is sensational response time for a company (Microsoft bugs we have had can take > 6 months to resolve!).

I am generally a tech FA investor (who works on the leading edge in IT) and own Serko shares as a result of seeing their products in action. Having worked for a stack of corporates, I have seen how painful this stuff is, so seeing it done well is fantastic. The oppourtunities in front of them are huge, they only need to sign up a few big corporates and revenue will take off. But my feeling is it will be a slow burn. Their cost control is great, but I wouldn't mind seeing them go large on growth. I believe they have a US sales team which will be actively pumping the benefits over there, which transition to pretty much anywhere in the world.

I can imagine them being bought by a company like Microsoft or Intuit and their products being integrated into their finance systems (or creating a slight offshoot/extension). Or a takeover from another travel company. Going it alone is biggest bang for their buck, but it will probably take some time.

[Beagle]

Serkos products are reasonably disruptive, but not overly so. They have chained together a few interesting products (combination travel is a good one - hotel/flight/cars etc in one go), then back it up with a simple expense management solution. More than anything their product makes it a whole lot easier to do travel and expense management. They are reasonably responsive to function requests and appear to have a pretty good engineering team behind the product.

How do I know? The organisation I work for has implemented both their travel software and expense management products. Reports from users are very good and it is cutting down on our costs and annoyance. They seem to produce "oh, is it that easy" products that require very little hands on massaging to get it right. Plus according to our finance people its a pretty good cost saver. They have integrated workflows too to make approvals easy.

Those are the sort of products you want to have, that require barely any manpower to manage and are easy for users. Fairly seamless from a user perspective is what you really want and Serko delivers that 80-90%. Based on this experience, which is often painful for a lot of organisations, I would recommend their products. In most organisations this stuff is a PITA, so to find something that "just works", is a god send and makes an entire organisation more productive (better for front end users, better for back office finance & IT, resulting in cost savings all around). Actually after seeing it in action it makes you think "why wasn't it always like this?".

Reproducible? Yes. And some huge corporates have probably created their own in-house Serko products, or at least bits of it. But not without some effort. Their products would be useful for any corporate that finds this stuff hard, which is a LOT of corporates. But its not sexy. Its not going to win middle management huge prizes as a result of massive cost savings. But still, the appeal is definitely there and cost savings post implementation will flow after a year or two of operation. As they sign more and more customers their recommendations engines and potential for further big data analysis will ramp up quickly giving them heaps of future potential growth options.

They are a fresh company with active developers (which you can actually talk to!) and what looks like solid architecture. We have had one bug with them, which was fixed within 3 days of finding it. That is sensational response time for a company (Microsoft bugs we have had can take > 6 months to resolve!).

I am generally a tech FA investor (who works on the leading edge in IT) and own Serko shares as a result of seeing their products in action. Having worked for a stack of corporates, I have seen how painful this stuff is, so seeing it done well is fantastic. The oppourtunities in front of them are huge, they only need to sign up a few big corporates and revenue will take off. But my feeling is it will be a slow burn. Their cost control is great, but I wouldn't mind seeing them go large on growth. I believe they have a US sales team which will be actively pumping the benefits over there, which transition to pretty much anywhere in the world.

I can imagine them being bought by a company like Microsoft or Intuit and their products being integrated into their finance systems (or creating a slight offshoot/extension). Or a takeover from another travel company. Going it alone is biggest bang for their buck, but it will probably take some time.

Great post, thanks for sharing.

[Joshuatree]

Yes thanks all, ive never really looked or understood this stock. Will keep an eye on it. I take it anyone in has been in for a while and no-one would buy art this price.

[janner]

Yes thanks all, ive never really looked or understood this stock. Will keep an eye on it. I take it anyone in has been in for a while and no-one would buy art this price.

7 trading days ago 8/8/18 the total for the day was 2,375 239

Shares not dollars.

[winner69]

Somebody told me what Serko did was rather disruptive and probably had a good future. Stil don’t fully understand how they make money but squiggly line on chart looks good

But it was really Balance’s passion for Serko early on that got me in

Thanks mate

[percy]

Somebody told me what Serko did was rather disruptive and probably had a good future. Stil don’t fully understand how they make money but squiggly line on chart looks good

But it was really Balance’s passion for Serko early on that got me in

Thanks mate

A lot of people I respect [RTM,KW,Balance and Janner] buying into SKO aroused my interest.
And yes SKO's chart was looking exciting.

[silu]

Serkos products are reasonably disruptive, but not overly so. They have chained together a few interesting products (combination travel is a good one - hotel/flight/cars etc in one go), then back it up with a simple expense management solution. More than anything their product makes it a whole lot easier to do travel and expense management. They are reasonably responsive to function requests and appear to have a pretty good engineering team behind the product.

How do I know? The organisation I work for has implemented both their travel software and expense management products. Reports from users are very good and it is cutting down on our costs and annoyance. They seem to produce "oh, is it that easy" products that require very little hands on massaging to get it right. Plus according to our finance people its a pretty good cost saver. They have integrated workflows too to make approvals easy.

Those are the sort of products you want to have, that require barely any manpower to manage and are easy for users. Fairly seamless from a user perspective is what you really want and Serko delivers that 80-90%. Based on this experience, which is often painful for a lot of organisations, I would recommend their products. In most organisations this stuff is a PITA, so to find something that "just works", is a god send and makes an entire organisation more productive (better for front end users, better for back office finance & IT, resulting in cost savings all around). Actually after seeing it in action it makes you think "why wasn't it always like this?".

Reproducible? Yes. And some huge corporates have probably created their own in-house Serko products, or at least bits of it. But not without some effort. Their products would be useful for any corporate that finds this stuff hard, which is a LOT of corporates. But its not sexy. Its not going to win middle management huge prizes as a result of massive cost savings. But still, the appeal is definitely there and cost savings post implementation will flow after a year or two of operation. As they sign more and more customers their recommendations engines and potential for further big data analysis will ramp up quickly giving them heaps of future potential growth options.

They are a fresh company with active developers (which you can actually talk to!) and what looks like solid architecture. We have had one bug with them, which was fixed within 3 days of finding it. That is sensational response time for a company (Microsoft bugs we have had can take > 6 months to resolve!).

I am generally a tech FA investor (who works on the leading edge in IT) and own Serko shares as a result of seeing their products in action. Having worked for a stack of corporates, I have seen how painful this stuff is, so seeing it done well is fantastic. The oppourtunities in front of them are huge, they only need to sign up a few big corporates and revenue will take off. But my feeling is it will be a slow burn. Their cost control is great, but I wouldn't mind seeing them go large on growth. I believe they have a US sales team which will be actively pumping the benefits over there, which transition to pretty much anywhere in the world.

I can imagine them being bought by a company like Microsoft or Intuit and their products being integrated into their finance systems (or creating a slight offshoot/extension). Or a takeover from another travel company. Going it alone is biggest bang for their buck, but it will probably take some time.

Excellent post blobbles. Very informative and I appreciate your input - please keep on sharing your insights. fwiw my interest in Serko was awakened by talking to a friend's husband who travels a lot and loved the software. I like your comment "to find something that "just works", is a god send and makes an entire organisation more productive". I'm in a different industry but I it is not that easy to find software that just works. That was one reason why we didn't switch over to Xero. I found it not easy enough to use to work with it for several hours a day.

Have you had an opportunity to see Zeno at work? When I mentioned that Serko is disruptive it was with regards to this new AI Bot software. I've been told that this type of software is hard to replicate.

[Balance]

Somebody told me what Serko did was rather disruptive and probably had a good future. Stil don’t fully understand how they make money but squiggly line on chart looks good

But it was really Balance’s passion for Serko early on that got me in

Thanks mate

Pleasure, mate.

Wish we could get them right all the time but 4 out of 5 ain't too bad?

[silu]

fwiw

Darrin Grafton
@darringrafton
3m3 minutes ago
More Darrin Grafton Retweeted Serko
When we built Zeno, we took time out to look at what the future technology play would be that would disrupt us. We set out a plan to build just that. To see it resonate in the USA/Canadian markets was a cool experience. It takes a team to be successful.

will definitely be at the AGM to hear for myself how Zeno was received and if contracts followed.

[blobbles]

Excellent post blobbles. Very informative and I appreciate your input - please keep on sharing your insights. fwiw my interest in Serko was awakened by talking to a friend's husband who travels a lot and loved the software. I like your comment "to find something that "just works", is a god send and makes an entire organisation more productive". I'm in a different industry but I it is not that easy to find software that just works. That was one reason why we didn't switch over to Xero. I found it not easy enough to use to work with it for several hours a day.

Have you had an opportunity to see Zeno at work? When I mentioned that Serko is disruptive it was with regards to this new AI Bot software. I've been told that this type of software is hard to replicate.

We aren't using Zeno, not big enough. Bots aren't hard to make, have built one myself. But getting the data that drives the bot is the tricky part. Requires lots of soft AI/ machine learning/sentiment analysis stuff which is tricky. If they have got this right with Zeno, then it is a big barrier for new entrants.