Kynection Partner Spotlight: ProSpend

In this edition of our Partner Spotlight, we sit down with Phillip Vella, Director of Sales and Partnerships at ProSpend, and Marianne “Maz” Wichman, Channel Partner Manager at ProSpend. In conversation with Phill Da Cruz, the pair share how ProSpend has grown from a six-client start-up into a platform trusted by over 1,000 organisations, and why trust sits at the heart of everything they do.

From Start-Up Roots to an Established Platform

ProSpend was not always the business it is today. When Phillip Vella joined over 12 years ago, the company was operating as Expense Manager with a handful of clients and the energy of a true start-up.

“ProSpend was Expense Manager way back in the day when I joined, and it was a proper start-up. I was literally the very first employee way back when.” – Phillip Vella

Vella started in support and implementations before moving through sales, partnerships, and eventually into his current director-level role. That full-circle experience gives him a rare vantage point on how far the business has come and where it is heading.

For Wichman, the path to ProSpend was shaped by over two decades in accounting, payroll, and ERP environments, including running her own business in New Zealand for ten years. She was drawn to ProSpend because of a simple but powerful observation: every business has expenses, and most are managing them poorly.

“Every business has expenses that they need to pay. This product streamlines not just the finance team, but it provides a solution for a whole company, whether it is expense management or whether it is AP.” – Marianne Wichman

From the Mines to the Desk: Field-First Functionality

ProSpend is, at its core, an expense and invoice automation platform managing everything from corporate credit cards to purchase orders and accounts payable. But the environment significantly changes how people use it.

For both Kynection and ProSpend, field-based, high-vis, blue-collar industries present a particular set of challenges. Workers are rarely at a desk, approvals need to happen on the move, and complex accounting logic should never get in the way of getting a job done.

“If we’re talking about a dirty sector, like construction, they might be in a mine, and they get to their desk maybe once every two or three months. So they want to do everything from the phone.” – Phillip Vella

The ProSpend mobile app is built with that reality in mind. Workers in the field can raise purchase orders, approve expenses, and manage cards entirely from a phone or tablet, without needing to understand the accounting logic behind it.

“All that is set up in ProSpend, so all they’re doing is making it really easy for them. They don’t have to understand the accounting and the background and fill out the spreadsheet.” – Marianne Wichman

It is a philosophy that aligns closely with Kynection’s own mobile-first approach: fewer fields, fewer taps, and a user experience designed for people who are there to work, not to navigate software.

Building Partner Ecosystems That Sets ProSpend Apart

ProSpend works with a wide range of software vendors, ERPs, and hosting providers. What makes those partnerships last is not just the product, but the relationships that form around it.

Wichman cited the longevity of ProSpend’s partner network as proof of something more than a transactional arrangement.

“Some of these partners have been with ProSpend for six, seven, eight years. Teams of people have moved on and new staff have come on board, but they are still supporting ProSpend because of the relationships that have been formed from before.” – Marianne Wichman

For Vella, partnerships and sales share the same foundation: people buying from people they trust.

“We want to partner with companies who are going to do the right thing when no one’s looking. We partner with organisations that keep the customer at the forefront of everything they do.” – Phillip Vella

That customer-first mindset also means being honest about fit. ProSpend does not pursue deals it cannot fulfil well, because a poor implementation reflects on the partner as much as the platform. Transparency over the line, rather than at any cost, is how you build sustainable ecosystems.

Change Management in Practice: Bringing the Whole Team Along

Resistance to change is one of the most consistent challenges in technology adoption, and ProSpend encounters it across every industry and every level of an organisation. Vella noted that the problems being solved today are often the same ones that existed a decade ago, even inside large, sophisticated businesses.

“I’ve been in front of a huge multinational organisation, ASX listed, 1,000 employees, and we talk about what their process looks like today, and it’s completely manual or paper-driven.” – Phillip Vella

His advice is to start with the problem, not the technology. Understanding what is actually causing friction, for the end user, the manager, and the finance team, is what makes a business case land.

Wichman added that getting the right people in the room early is just as important as the technology itself.

“It’s not necessarily always going to be the owner of the business or the CFO. Sometimes it can be a huge benefit to have somebody who’s going to be using the product there as well, so management understands what their frustrations are.” – Marianne Wichman

Both agreed that phased adoption is often the most effective path. ProSpend allows organisations to start small, such as managing ten corporate cards, and expand from there into accounts payable, purchase orders, and beyond. As Wichman put it, the key is not eating the elephant all at once.

A Customer Success Story: Postage Bills That Paid for the Platform

One standout example from ProSpend’s history illustrates just how far manual processes can go before someone questions them.

A company with around 500 staff and corporate cards had a fully manual expense process. Employees would print their expense form, complete it by hand, staple receipts, and then take the whole package to the post office, physically mailing it express post to a manager in Perth, who would then forward it on to the finance team in Sydney for manual data entry.

“The money they spent on postage literally paid for ProSpend, plus more.” – Phillip Vella

The transformation was not simply about digitising an existing workflow. It brought immediate visibility to the finance team, eliminated weeks of lag time, and removed dozens of manual steps that no one had questioned because they had always been there.

Expense Management and AP Automation in One Platform

In a competitive market, ProSpend’s point of difference comes down to breadth and experience. Very few platforms handle both expense management and accounts payable automation within a single system, and that combination is increasingly what clients are looking for.

“I think we have a lot of competitors on the AP product. I think we have a lot of competitors on the expense management side, but there are very few who do both.” – Phillip Vella

The platform’s decade-plus implementation history also brings something that newer tools cannot replicate: proven best practice across hundreds of industries and use cases. When a new client is setting up approval workflows or purchase order processes, ProSpend’s onboarding team can draw on what has and has not worked for organisations of a similar size and structure.

“It’ll be your first time putting an expense or invoice automation tool in, but it’s not ours. We’ve done this over 1,000 times before.” – Phillip Vella

For companies managing large numbers of fuel cards, ProSpend can also work with card data feeds directly. Increasingly, though, clients are transitioning to virtual cards, which can cover fuel, accommodation, emergency repairs, and more, offering greater flexibility for field-based teams.

The Road Ahead: Technology, AI and Staying Curious

ProSpend is actively developing new modules and features, with significant changes already visible over the past 12 months and more on the way. For Vella, who has watched the platform evolve continuously over more than a decade, that pace of change is part of what keeps the work engaging.

“The ProSpend of five years ago, or 12 months ago, is completely different to the ProSpend we’re in today.” – Phillip Vella

Wichman drew a comparison to the early days of the internet, when the scale of change felt overwhelming but ultimately opened up possibilities no one had imagined. The conversation around AI today feels similar: unfamiliar territory that is producing more opportunity than it is eliminating.

“It’s all evolving, and that’s the exciting part about it.” – Marianne Wichman

The Trilogy of Trust Behind Every ProSpend Partnership

Wichman’s guiding principle behind every partnership, every implementation, and every client relationship can be summed up simply. The trilogy of trust is a triangle, with ProSpend, its partners, and the client each occupying a point. Break the trust at any one point, and the whole thing falls apart. It is a principle she has carried for over a decade, and one that defines how ProSpend operates.

“Trust in that triangle is phenomenal, and it’s really important, and we can’t break it.” – Marianne Wichman

Thank you to Phillip Vella, Marianne Wichman, and the ProSpend team for joining the Kynection Partner Spotlight. It was a genuine and insightful conversation about what it takes to build lasting partnerships, support field-based industries, and help businesses move beyond manual processes for good. We look forward to continuing to grow together.