Epstein, Former CFO and Current Board Member to Number of Leading Enterprises, to help AppZen Continue its Quest to Revolutionize Back Office Functions

SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, January 10, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ -- AppZen, the first Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered solution for back office automation, today announced that Jeff Epstein, Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) and former CFO of Oracle, has joined the company as an advisor. Epstein, who specializes in B2B cloud computing and software, and has more than 25 years of experience in senior financial and general management positions at leading enterprises, will help support the company’s product strategy, as well as marketing efforts.

“We’re thrilled to have Jeff, whose expertise in enterprise SaaS and financial controls is second to none, as an advisor,” said Anant Kale, CEO and Founder of AppZen. “As the former CFO to a number of leading companies, he clearly understands the needs of high performing finance and accounting teams and how technology can be a differentiator in achieving operational excellence, compliance and governance. Jeff will be an invaluable resource to our team as we continue to grow and revolutionize back office functions with AI technologies, and we’re looking forward to tapping into his advice and guidance.”

Epstein also teaches the Lean Launchpad class at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Engineering and serves on the Board of Directors and Audit Committees of Kaiser Permanente, The Priceline Group, Shutterstock, Global Eagle Entertainment and several private companies. Jeff also who works with BVP portfolio company CFOs and CEOs and will be a key factor in growing AppZen and its current automated expense audit platform.

AppZen’s expense report auditing and compliance tool uses patent-pending Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to review expense report data and cross-check it with external sources and social media in real-time to detect compliance problems. Because AppZen automates the expense review process, it lowers expense processing costs up to 80 percent and identifies up to 10 times more financial risks.

Over the past several months, AppZen has thrived in the automated back-office space. Since announcing its $2.9 million seed funding round led by Resolute Ventures in late June, AppZen has forged partnerships with Concur®, the leading provider of spend management solutions and services, and NetSuite, a leading integrated cloud business software suite.

"As a former CFO, I can say from experience, there is huge value in being able to automate back office expense reporting,” said Epstein. “Auditing and compliance is a rather tedious process that is expensive to do correctly – and very expensive when something slips through the cracks. If CFOs and compliance departments have the ability to put AI to work to automate this function, they can catch more fraud and save a ton of money and resources. And this is just the tip of the iceberg for AppZen, which is working to automate many more back office functions with AI. I’m excited to be a part of the team and looking forward to helping them grow.”

In addition to serving as Executive Vice President and CFO of Oracle, one of the world’s largest and most profitable technology companies, Epstein’s served as Chief Financial Officer of several public and private companies, including DoubleClick (sold to Google), King World Productions (sold to CBS) and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Earlier in his career, he was an investment banker at The First Boston Corporation.

For more information about AppZen, visit: www.AppZen.com.

About AppZen:
AppZen, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is the first artificial intelligence (AI) solution for back office automation. The company, which graduated from 500 Startups and raised $2.9M in funding, including from Resolute Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Silicon Valley Bank, MasterCard and FundersClub, uses patent-pending Natural Language Processing machine learning algorithms to analyze data and automate back office functions. AppZen’s enterprise level automated expense reporting and auditing product reviews expense report data, cross-checks it with external sources and social media in real-time, and detects compliance issues and fraud – a half trillion dollar issue in the U.S. The company works with a number of enterprises, including Hitachi, SunRun and Cantor Fitzgerald, and has partnered with technology companies, including Oracle. For more information about AppZen, visit www.appzen.com.

Jonathan Chizick
AppZen, Inc.
408-647-5253
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AppZen - Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time Expense Report Audit