In 2025, amid the changing economic landscape, your business is more important than ever. You have customers to serve, revenue opportunities to capture, and an internal culture to foster. Success breeds opportunity and, while your leadership and board are all happy, they are challenging you to find new opportunities beyond US markets. A domestic footprint is ready to become a global one.
Growing companies like yours have the potential and aspiration to acquire a global footprint, but this kind of growth is not without risk. Scaling beyond the US borders requires expertise – not just in tactics, but in evolving technology.
Are you aware of what challenges lie beyond your shores? How are you planning to prepare?
“Companies are increasingly aware of the challenges associated with scaling globally, but the degree of preparedness and the sophistication of their approach can vary,” Paul Henderson, Chief Accounting Officer of Tipalti, says.
To understand risks, companies should ask the following questions:
- What is the target country’s GDP?
- Does the country have a friendly policy toward foreign ownership?
- What is the country’s regulatory environment?
- What is the country’s tax structure?
- What kinds of cultural hurdles might there be?
Awareness and strategy around these risks are the historical table stakes. However, most growth companies looking to scale global operations still rely on ad hoc approaches, rather than internal resources. But each of the risks listed above add new layers of complexity. A complex tech stack comprised of ad hoc solutions, rather than a unified one, threatens workflows and systems that will hamstring global expansion.
The new risks
In 2025 and beyond, the right technology is not only a new part of those table stakes, but the providers of the technology are now increasingly viewed as partners and strategic enablers. Companies require trustworthy technology partners who offer advanced global operational capabilities across multiple countries, end-to-end automation all managed from one system, and built-in financial and regulatory controls and data security that reduces cross-border risk.
If you don’t have the right financial operations and technology in place, you are inviting even more risk. Out-of-date, paper-based, manual accounts payable processes can lead to recurring inefficiencies and errors. You might struggle with scalable payout solutions to banks, vendors, and creators. Expenses may start to spiral due to lack of a streamlined and comprehensive review process.
It is not merely a question of having a technology solution to solve these threats. It is imperative to have the right solution to balance growth while remaining in control of your trajectory. Most companies end up feeling like they have to pick one or the other: move fast or stay in control.
However, this doesn’t need to be the case. “Manual operations, disconnected tools, and patchwork workflows create a tradeoff that shouldn’t exist,” Tipalti’s Henderson says. “A stronger approach is to embed automated workflows and risk mitigation into the core of finance operations in a unified way. This increases visibility and allows data to flow quickly between systems.”
But this is just the start. It is necessary as well to implement cross-border functionality – global compliance, fraud detection, sanctions screening, tax validation – into your operations so you can keep up as you scale. It’s about transforming your operations from manual to automatic, not simply automated. “When speed and control work together, teams don’t just move faster – they move smarter. And scale stops being a liability,” Henderson says.
Instead, scaling with the right technology becomes a pathway for a unified growth experience. It enables you to develop the necessary financial infrastructure that can operate autonomously while connecting globally. You can prioritize visibility, compliance, and user experience (UX). You will remove friction from operations and processes. The system can pay anyone, anywhere, in any currency, in minutes. And your finance team’s size does not have to be proportionate to how your business is growing. The right technology and the right technology partner will redefine your teammates’ reach, flexibility, and efficiency.
Where are you now?
- Does your current financial software have an automated accounts payable workflow?
- Can you effectively send payments to all your vendors, regardless of location, with minimal friction and a high degree of certainty?
- Do your employees feel they have the autonomy to make real-time decisions based on accurate data?
The right approach to scale has to prioritize visibility, compliance, and user experience – not just moving money but removing friction. One unified system that can pay anyone, anywhere, in any major currency is the solution you need to protect what you’ve built and fulfill its potential. But the technology also has to be able to simplify multiple compliance tools and remove manual checks, make currency conversion and local payments simple and transparent, and pay vendors or payees in minutes, not hours.
A real-world example
JLab, an e-commerce and retail company, had growing invoice volume, manual accounts payable processes, and international payment complexities that overwhelmed its small finance team. This stress led to approval delays, inefficiencies, and compliance concerns. JLab needed help quickly or else it would see its global process halted.
JLab chose Tipalti Accounts Payable to address these mounting problems. With Tipalti, JLab was able to automate invoice processing and streamline global payments while modernizing workflows and enhancing efficiency.
JLab’s AP team boosted productivity by 68% and managed 35% more invoices without adding headcount. The team now spends less time on manual AP work and more time on strategic initiatives that drive business value. Link to the full customer story.
The right solution
Global scale is knocking at your door. Are you prepared to open it and walk through to build your global footprint?
Tipalti is ready to help you expand internationally, while streamlining financial operations, automating payment processes, and remaining compliant with local laws and tax regulations.
By automating your invoice processing, accounts payable approvals, and reconciliation, your finance teams will be free to pursue strategic initiatives, including which country you want to expand to next.
Partnering with Tipalti removes operational barriers that can mean the difference between international market penetration and watching your business be outperformed by competitors.
It is time to take your business international with Tipalti, a can’t-miss strategy to growing and scaling your global footprint.