Centrex Software is a powerful white-label fintech platform that brings CRM, loan origination, servicing, syndication, and digital wallets into one fully integrated ecosystem. Built specifically for brokers, lenders, and fintechs, it helps teams scale faster while delivering smarter, more engaging customer experiences.
Joining us for the 100th episode of the SourceForge Podcast is Trey Markel, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Centrex Software. The episode delves into the importance of platform consolidation in the fintech industry, highlighting how a unified platform can streamline operations for lenders, brokers, and financial services companies. Trey shares insights on the challenges fintech companies face when using multiple disconnected systems and the benefits of adopting an all-in-one approach. The conversation also touches on the role of AI in enhancing internal processes and the future of fintech platforms.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- Platform consolidation is crucial for scalability in fintech.
- Using multiple specialized tools can lead to inefficiencies.
- Frustration often arises from the complexity of managing disconnected systems.
- Fragmented data complicates reporting and decision-making.
- Best of breed solutions can lead to increased IT costs.
- Collaboration is enhanced in a unified platform.
- AI can automate decision-making processes in finance.
- A cohesive digital ecosystem improves user experience.
- Investors benefit from streamlined data sharing in a unified platform.
- Continuous feature development is essential for software companies.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to Platform Consolidation in Fintech
02:40 – Understanding Centrex Software’s Ecosystem
07:31 – Challenges of Disconnected Systems
12:58 – The Impact of Fragmented Data
15:30 – Best of Breed vs. Best of Suite
19:54 – Collaboration in a Unified Platform
22:50 – AI Integration in Fintech
33:48 – Future Trends and Opportunities for Centrex
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:01.043)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. The conversation today will center around platform consolidation and why that matters in the fintech industry. This idea of consolidation and having an all-in-one approach for a SaaS company is something that frequently comes up here on the SourceForge Podcast. And I would say for good reason, right? The benefits sort of speak for themselves.
In the fintech space, especially, it’s attractive for lenders, right? When you’re starting out, a FinTech lender might use one CRM to track leads, you know, they might have a separate loan origination system, another tool for servicing and payments, you know, a third party borrower portal, and then spreadsheets and various, you know, workarounds to hold everything together, the glue for everything. And I think that might work pretty well at first, but I think you will start to see the friction and the cracks start to appear as the company scales, sales can’t see what’s actually happening once a deal leaves the origination stage, ops teams have to manually reenter data between systems. have fragmented portals and so forth and so on. And so that’s why a unified platform that handles all the important relevant pieces together can be really attractive. And I think that’s where our guests today for the show comes in. We have Trey Markel, vice president of sales and marketing at Centrex Software, a leader in unified fintech platforms designed for lenders, brokers, banks, and other financial services companies.
Trey was actually one of the first three employees at the company and has over two decades of experience in the fintech industry and enterprise software. So we’re really excited to have him here to unpack why platform consolidation matters in this space. So without further ado, Trey, welcome to the podcast. Glad you could join us.
Trey Markel (01:45.353)
Yeah, Beau, thanks for having me. It’s pleasure.
Beau Hamilton (01:47.685)
Absolutely. Now, Trey, got to say you really did knock it out of the park with the podcast set up you have. I think listeners listeners are only audio channels. This might be the episode you go you stop what you’re doing and you go check out our YouTube channel because it looks extra sharp. All right. Enough of my blabbering. I want to get I’m going get right into this. Trey, I mentioned in intro you’re one of the first employees of the company you have been working in the enterprise software space for over two decades. You obviously know the ins and outs quite well, especially of Centrex. Can you briefly describe what it is that Centrex offers for listeners who may not be familiar?
Trey Markel (02:40.61)
Yeah, you know, we set out 15 years ago to try to build an ecosystem that the industry could live in. There’s a lot of different software platforms out there that do one thing and one thing really great. And you really have to spend a lot of time and effort and capital and resources to get all those to work together. And 15 years ago, which I think was kind of bleeding edge back then, arguably still today, we really wanted to figure out a way for finance organizations to really live in one place. Their staff, their investors, their brokers, their borrowers, maybe their attorneys, their accountants, how can we get into one platform with easier scalability, easier communication, faster time to close, better communication? And I think that was the goal and that’s what Centrex is trying to provide.
Beau Hamilton (03:25.171)
Now, why do fintechs start out using separate tools in the first place for, let’s say CRM servicing origination? What’s like the reasoning behind that sort of approach?
Trey Markel (03:38.583)
You know, it’s funny because, it’s really easy to get to be impressed by something that does one thing and one thing really, really, really well. I fall into that bucket myself, right? I look at a vendor that does one thing, one thing, well, they have all the bells, have all the whistles, they have everything. And then of course, at the end of the conversation, I always find myself asking, okay, what’s your API look like, right? Because that’s the road you’re going to have to go down to Frankenstein is what I call it, all these different systems together so they can all communicate, you know, all the time, which is not easy in a full time job.
So I think most organizations, and I don’t blame them, get impressed by the one trick ponies and they say, hey, I love these five vendors. I love these 10 vendors. Okay, now the job is how do I get them all to work together? So I think that’s probably the main reason why is they get highly impressed, right? These vendors, they show off, they do a good job showing off. I like these vendors. I wanna talk to my cousin, my brother, my employee, my staff. How do I get all these to talk together?
Versus really looking at the bigger picture and understanding what it means to have one ecosystem to go everywhere where maybe that system doesn’t do individual things really, really, really well. They don’t have those resources or those features, but what you’re going to save from an overall long-term perspective and growing that finance company, I think just sometimes that’s overlooked.
Beau Hamilton (04:56.647)
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, my mind, I don’t know, from a consumer software level, like I think I remember back in the day when I was weighing options for a music streaming platform, right? I was thinking of, I was thinking of like, Spotify, like Spotify stood out because that’s, that’s basically all they did. It was like standalone service, right? Compared to, I mean, now you have Apple music. That’s like one of many different services they offer. And it’s like, it still kind of stands out. I’m like, Spotify, that’s all they do. So it has to be good. And they have to kind of really stay competitive and keep rolling out new features.
But, yeah, no, it’s, also figure, I figured too, like with the B2B, you know, fintech space you’re operating in, I figure maybe it would be because there’s not a lot of like other all-in-one solutions available, or if there are, have their own sort of prohibitive fees or learning curves associated, with it.
Trey Markel (05:52.481)
Yeah, you know, it’s one of those things too, where a lot of these vendors don’t need to be finance specific, right? If you take a finance organization and you look at their entire, their entire entity and what that entity must do on a daily basis, there are some features in there that you don’t really need to be finance specific. And there’s other features, in my opinion, I’m a little biased, where you should have them be finance specific, because that’s the sector that you’re in. And that that just makes the most sense.
So I think, you know, to your point, this one organization does one thing really, really well, but it’s not really finance specific. Okay, I like that. Let’s bring it in and bolt it onto my ecosystem, right? And I, again, I think it’s a very, very, I don’t want to call it a mistake, but it’s a very easy trap slash mistake to kind of get into thinking that’s the path where these days we have entire ecosystems you could live in where the connectivity points are everywhere, right? And running that business becomes quite a bit more simple.
Beau Hamilton (06:44.169)
Yeah, it’s kind of like a, almost a near sightedness problem in a way where like founders are there, there may be, moving fast. They’re worrying about one problem at a time, but they’re not necessarily thinking about the long term outlook and like how much less of a headache it is if you have sort of an all in one approach, all the platform.
Trey Markel (07:03.23)
No, totally. And look, I get passionate too. Like I see these demos. I’m a tech person. I see these demos and these tech platforms. I’m like, that’s really cool. How can we work with this organization? No, no, we can’t. You know what I mean? Because we got look at the bigger picture, right? So it’s totally understandable. And if you can take a step back and zoom out, if you will, right? And see the company as a whole and how everyone’s going to use your tech stack and your system, sometimes it’s better to look at that consolidated approach.
Beau Hamilton (07:31.273)
So let’s talk about some of the issues with these disconnected systems. What usually starts breaking down first and who does that impact the most?
Trey Markel (07:41.165)
I think what you typically see first is frustration of the business owner or ownership or the management team. It doesn’t happen fast, unfortunately. A lot of the demos we get into of organizations that are either smaller or they’re growing quickly, they’re like, hey, I’m in a rush. I want to get this up and running. I want to be up and running by the new year, next month. And a lot of those organizations, they want to see progress fast. And I think the problem with progress fast is, you’re just going to disappoint yourself because enterprise technology just simply doesn’t work that way.
I find it hilarious when organizations come to us and say, I’m looking for something simple to run my finance business. Like, are you? You have a not simple business that has complex math calculations and lots of different workflows, but you want something simple. It’s not how it doesn’t compete, not how it works. You offer a complex product, you’re going to need a complex solution to run that business and that product. We’re not making baby bottles. It’s something much more complex.
So I think the first issue you run into is the frustration of the executive team and the ownership because of how long it’s taking and how much money they’re spending to produce that, right? And you know, the ownership or the executive team oftentimes doesn’t know, they didn’t do all the research on the vendors, they’re relying on a team or they’re relying on a partner, so on and so forth, and they just don’t understand. And what you don’t understand, you know, makes you frustrated. So I think the cracks start with why is this taking so long?
Why are we not up and running yet? And why has the budget now tripled? Well, it’s because we’re trying to Frankenstein 15 different softwares together to get what you want because we were impressed by tons of one trick ponies, right? So I think that starts to crack first. And then I think quickly after that, when you now start to implement those platforms across your entire organization, the adoption rate is really slow, which now goes back to why is this taking so long? Why am I spending so much money? Is because you have to train your staff, even on all 10 of your systems, but you’re gonna have to train most of them on at least four of them or five of them and have different tabs open, different windows open on your desktop or your laptop or whatever, to figure it out.
So I think quickly, out of the gate, the implementation, like the setup of the account, frustration, cost, and then think quickly after that’s the implementation into your team. You can easily be a year into a platform and still not have it figured out, right? So I think that the first two are those.
Beau Hamilton (10:04.073)
Yeah, no, that makes sense. That’s a good, that’s a good answer. I think, just keep having these shifting goalposts and from, sort of these, like, I think we kind of, I kind of discussed in the intro is just like these fragmented portals. You’re trying to enter in information, to different systems. And it just bogs the whole system down, let alone the, maybe the trading and like the learning curve of adoption in the first place.
Trey Markel (10:25.549)
And it’s tricky again to not fall in this trap as you go through the implementation process with a lot of these one-off vendors, you’ll start to learn all the things they can do. And you’re like, I didn’t know it can do that. I didn’t know it can do that. I didn’t know that. And then you go down this massive rabbit hole because it’s kind of hard not to, right? The next shiny object and all of a sudden the core goal, which was getting our tech stack up and running becomes kind of secondary, right? Because you got all impressed by all these dangly shiny things that these vendors offer.
It makes it a lot easier when you’re in one core operating system and that operating system either has the feature or it doesn’t. Most organizations like Centrex will figure it out, will hit Zapier or n8n or, you know, figure out some sort of automation tool. But it’s almost nicer when you don’t have all the options, right, versus, hey, this is the path I have to go down. I’m going to focus on this path. That’s going to create a successful implementation versus here’s my 15 vendors, my gosh, I’m learning all the things that these vendors can do through implementation and I’m getting distracted. And that’s one big thing we see a lot and why we take organizations off that kind Frankensteined approach.
Beau Hamilton (11:31.943)
Yeah, no, one of my favorite, like catchphrases that my friends and family tease me about is, I’m always like, what are my options? like to have options and options are a good thing, but they do make it more difficult to form a decision. I feel like I’m kind of like torn between, you know, not making a decision because I want to weigh my, all my options, but the same time that also makes it so I don’t make a decision in the first place, or at least it slows down that process.
Trey Markel (11:57.678)
Right. I’ve noticed options with finance business owners are really, really great if they’re laser focused. And that’s hard to find. That’s hard to find. When you’ve got a lot of things going on, being laser focused is tough. If you’ve got a big budget, investors, you’re a startup, OK, maybe there’s things you can do because you’re not worried about putting numbers to the top line just yet. But if you’re mid-growth or you’re mid-business and you’re trying to switch enterprise platforms, it can be tough. And you’ve got to choose wisely.
Beau Hamilton (12:28.359)
Now, a lot of it centers are obviously around data and that’s the big kind of aspect around these unified platforms versus the specialized software. Can you think of any decisions, the day-to-day decisions or the operations that fintechs have to make when it comes to having data spread across all these different systems that aren’t talking to each other? What’s the impact of that sort of approach and framework when you don’t have data talking to each other?
Trey Markel (12:58.569)
Yeah, I think fragmented data or segregated data across multiple platforms is definitely a challenge. The nice part about APIs these days, if you have a knowledgeable team, the data is not totally difficult to get as long as those APIs are documented and they’re easy to read and look at. But at the same time, that takes time, that takes money, that takes effort. You have to take data from all these different software platforms and pull them into one system somehow. And then once that’s done, okay, now how do we query that system to pull out the reports that we want to see or to do our job, right? So I think at end of the day, it’s resource, money and time. And do you have someone capable on staff or from a contractor perspective that can really do all that?
When all your data is in a consolidated area, right? And you have different objects. Maybe I have the borrower, I have their loan, I have their advance, I have their e-marketing structure, I have their SMS, I have their documents. You can access those data points in a lot of different areas in that one ecosystem, right? And you don’t need a software developer and you don’t need someone who knows crazy tech to be able to see that in that ecosystem. It’s all just there for you out of the gate. That’s better for report building, that’s better for filtering data for outbound marketing, right? Running reports, productivity, right? So it’s just it just becomes a little more easy to access, if you will, versus the cost of accessing your own data.
Beau Hamilton (14:17.993)
Totally, yeah, it creates this ripple effect of benefits, I would say. Now, in the software space, there’s this approach called the best of breed approach where software buyers or users select software based on how specialized it is and how well it’s able to perform a specific function. And I think that it kind of makes sense. It follows that same sort of energy over the playbook you hear from maybe some of those motivational, the motivational business community influencers. It’s all about like focus on one thing and do that one thing really well, because if you do too many things, it’s going to water down the brand or water down the end result, you know, there’s like only so many resources you can, you can dedicate to anyone problem, anyone time, etcetera, etcetera.
But I’m curious, like at what point does the, best of breed approach stop helping and start actually slowing teams down. And I don’t, know you kind of like touched on a lot of these kind of fragmented data portals, but so I don’t want to beat a dead horse with this topic, this particular question, but anything that comes to mind here with like how this approach can stop helping teams, you know, and start actually slowing them down?
Trey Markel (15:30.313)
I think what I’ve seen in my career is when you find yourself growing your IT staff, right? Versus your sales staff or your marketing staff, right? That that should be a not a red flag. It should be a yellow flag, right? Like, hey, here’s a warning. Here’s a warning sign, right? The warning sign is you’re using all these different these vendors that sure they do one thing, they do one thing really, really well. They’ve got great API documentation, but you now have to hire a small army, right? To make them all work all the time and function together all the time. I love when people come to me and say, well, when it’s built, it’s done, right? I wish that was reality. Once you’re done building a piece of technology, it requires maintenance, just like our freeways require maintenance, just like our country’s infrastructure requires maintenance, just like your car requires maintenance, right? It’s not a set it and forget it thing. Code breaks, things don’t function, right? Especially a platform that’s growing and building more features all the time.
So I think, you know, when your IT staff starts getting bigger because you’re spending so much effort and so much money and so much time really trying to figure out your IT infrastructure, now if you become really big, that becomes a reality regardless, right? But I think, you know, these middle sized organizations or these smaller organizations, that should be your yellow flag. With the introduction to AI and ecosystems like Centrex, you really shouldn’t have to have this monster IT team to run your finance organization. It should be a few dedicated reps and you should be able to accomplish everything you need to.
So I think when the IT budget really starts to go up versus either flatten or go down, I think that’s when you’re saying to yourself, okay, love the one trick ponies, love the best in breed, but I mean, this is becoming too much. I don’t even need the 3,000 features this one vendor offers, I only need five of their features, right? So you start analyzing your own tech stack, what features am I actually being provided versus what features am I actually using? You look at that ratio and say, okay, where can I cut my costs? Where can I cut systems? Where can I consolidate, right?
Beau Hamilton (17:36.768)
Yeah, that’s where you sort of pivot to the best of suite approach that you guys are championing, right? Where you have this all-in-one software platform that provides, you know, a broad range of tools and features under one sort of umbrella.
Ideally, you kind of recognize this scaling, you know, part of the equation and you start kind of you start with this umbrella, you start with this best of suite approach as opposed to the best of breed approach out of the gates. Cause that, that transition that comes later after the fact, I have to realize, I’m like, my teams are talking to each other. My goal goal, goalpost keep moving. that just creates a headache. Ideally you recognize the potential where things could go wrong and you adopt a platform that allows you to scale in the first place, right?
Trey Markel (18:29.36)
Yeah, 100%. If you’ve got the foresight starting a finance business or being a young, small finance business, knowing that a one-stop shop ecosystem is better for the long run than Frankensteining a bunch of stuff, mean, God bless you all. That’s a phenomenal way to think because it’s tough to think that way when you’re being shown all these shiny objects that do one thing really, really well.
And Beau, you’re right. Silicon Valley gave these one trick ponies, these monster evaluations, focus on one thing, do it really well, sell it, get out and go live your life, right? And it really takes a visionary. It really takes someone like some of the ownership and some of the executives I work with every day on the Centrex team to say, no, look, that’s not the feature. The feature is not to go to five different retail stores to buy your products. The future is to go to one retail store, buy all your products, right? Walmart, Target, Costco, so on and so forth. And that’s where we’re seeing the consolidation really start to happen from a tech perspective.
Beau Hamilton (19:29.469)
Yeah, I’m curious, before, I want to ask kind of the, yeah, the customer side of things and the benefits they see some more. But I want to also talk about like the, from the inside, internal perspective, what about collaboration, right? Like, what differences does a single platform like Centrex like offer for collaboration across internal teams, would you say?
Trey Markel (19:54.766)
Yeah, and you know, when we say collaboration, it’s not just the zoom call or the chat feature, right? When we look at underwriting, we look at client communication, bar work communication between the broker or the attorney or the CPA, and then of course, the lending institution, right? You don’t oftentimes have one person doing the entire process. If you’re a real small, small boutique shop, sure, you you close a handful of deals a year and that’s, you that’s phenomenal. But you know, you’re, you’re, dealing with the entire process. A lot of organizations have multiple representatives or individuals need to come in and need to work, work that file or be a part of the process.
And collaboration isn’t just that real time collaboration. It’s the data collaboration on top of that. So where can I go to see all the communication? All the workflow, all the history, everything that’s been done on this account? So as a fresh person or someone coming in or I’m a different department, I can come in and I can actually see everything that’s happened, right? I can even consolidate or review all the documentation with an AI button, right? To say, hey, here’s what’s happened for the last two years or six months or nine months trying to close this SBA loan or whatever with this organization.
And I think a consolidated software tech stack approach is truly the only way you can get that unless you’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars Frankensteining all that data into one place. And then what is that one place? And should you have just done that to begin with, right? So I think, the real time communication collaboration integrations with Zoom and Google Meet and, you know, chat features are phenomenal, Especially with like mobile app technology where everyone’s on their phone all day. But you know, it’s not just that, it’s all the data and the process around it and how do you access that quickly and in one spot to move forward.
Beau Hamilton (21:41.939)
Totally. Yeah. You mentioned that like having that AI button and at my mind just went to that. I mean, the AI side of things with all these different sort of AI software offerings. I mean, consolidation is got to be on everyone’s mind. I mean, that’s the kind of where everything’s going. And I think that you’re going to see, you’re already starting to see kind of like the prod, the platforms, the big providers out there kind of start to stand out and really, you know, start to, just have more kind of upside. feel like there’s always a sock of this bubble and like not everyone we have, we see now is, is going to, is going to last, right? And so a lot of these things are going to be kind of absorbed and consolidated into other platforms.
And I don’t know what, that necessarily looks like in the FinTech space. I feel like you have more kind of regulations and maybe AI is not even that much of an equation with Centrex, but maybe I’m wrong. Like, are you guys working? Are you guys keeping aware of some of these AI features, automations, or do you just worry about the nuts and bolts and the basics for now?
Trey Markel (22:50.872)
You know, it’s a lot of both, right? I think the strategy that we took here internally at Centrex was we wanted to focus on AI for our own internal use first. Let’s really maximize what we can do as a software company internally and improve our own processes and help us review code and find threats and so on and so forth, right?
So we started off about a year and a half ago, two years ago with trying to use AI a lot internally, right? And to really kind of understand the landscape of AI and what it can do for a software company. You know, we use our own software platform to sell software every day in the sales department and the marketing department. We use our own systems to do all that. You know, we don’t use Salesforce or HubSpot as our serum. We use our own serum.
So a lot of the features that we’ve used for ourselves internally have now become things we’re starting to externally to the Centrex Software client. So yeah, we are absolutely looking at them. We are in the middle of massive integration right now with n8n, which is a monster AI workflow automation tool. They allow you to natively embed their systems into your platform. We’re very, very excited about that. That’s going to be a big game changer for the Centrex Software system.
We’re looking at agentic AI on the frontend with customer support and what does your balance look like and what’s your next payment date? And you know, can I skip a payment? And I think that’s some of the things we’re currently looking at. And then a lot of just quality of life features, right? In our notes, nested notes tab at the contact level, etc. You’ve had a client for years and you’ve got just all sorts of notes. One button that kind of summarizes all the notes. One button that summarizes all the emails, right? One button that summarizes all your alerts or your calendar events, right? We’ve also built a very basic just chat bot into the mobile app version of Centrex so that, you know, if you’re selling into a sector that maybe you don’t know a whole lot about, hey, give me the 10 top data points on this industry, right? So that when I go into that office or I go into that meeting, I have far more intelligence than before, literally 10 minutes before the meeting, right? So I think there’s a lot of just quality of life things as well that we’re looking at.
And then I think, you know, long term scenario, everyone wants automated decisioning, right? Even if you’re a broker and you want to do some soft decisioning before you send it to your lender to get the deal close faster, or you’re a direct lending institution and you want to you want to really increase productivity, increase the numbers, but keeping your cost and your team tight. AI is going to start spitting out automated decisions. Yes, no, here’s how much capital, here’s the stipulations on the capital. And I think that’s yet to come. But that’s coming.
Beau Hamilton (25:20.909)
Super exciting. Yeah. So you’re absolutely, you know, incorporating AI and not even, not even, you know, AI, but also AI agents, like the next wave that we’re starting to actually see being deployed this year. I mean, I feel like the last year or two has been, you know, talk about, you know, what these agents are capable of doing. Now, I feel like this year, we’re actually gonna see them deployed at a larger scale.
But yeah, no, sounds, I was kind of ignorant of a question to ask because, you know, I mean, if you’re in software, you’re absolutely thinking about AI and working on ways to deploy it, different tools here and there. But I just was curious about like the, you know, the, from the financial, when you’re dealing with, with, you know, FinTech companies, how that works. I know that like talking with a software client who was in the networking space, he was saying that like, you know, AI’s, everyone’s talking about AI AI AI AI, but he’s working with so many legacy software providers are like, companies with so much so much legacy software that like these tools aren’t even, you know, capable of really handling AI and they’re not really focused on that as much as they are just like getting them kind of updated to even like, just the cloud kind of they’re still going through that sort of phase. So yeah, it’s it’s interesting to hear kind of what you guys are working on.
Trey Markel (26:46.189)
Yeah, you know, it’s so wild because we go into we go into finance companies that are still on Excel spreadsheets and handing paper leads to their reps on their desk, right? I mean, really, really, really haven’t embraced technology at all, right? And then literally, we’ll have a conversation one hour later with a different finance company that has built some of their own AI bots they want to integrate into our Centrex ecosystem. And we’re like, beyond impressed. So the width of tech stacks that we see right now is wild from on-prem installations on your own server like Microsoft DOS all the way up to some of the coolest stuff that we’ve seen. We went into a big mortgage company in New York last year and on there it was like on some crazy floor in New York and these guys had what they called God’s eye because they could tell you like if your car was yellow and you were born on a Wednesday and you like your coffee black then your chance of defaulting is 0.9 % higher. It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
So, you know, there’s a lot of that going on. And I think with the help of AI, you’re getting from point A to point B faster. You know, I think with AI too, one of the things I’d recommend fintechs and business owners to really kind of look at, we have a lot of conversations where people say they want AI, but they don’t know why, right? It’s just a massive buzzword. Do you have any AI built on the software? Okay, well, what are you trying to accomplish? I don’t know. I just want AI, right? And we have a lot of conversations like that. And it’s like, well, I need some understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish with AI. Do you want to automate the front end sales side? Do you want to automate your workflow? Do you want to automate, you know, what are you trying to accomplish here? Do you want to read documents? And that’s where getting into the details with organizations on what they want an AI tool for really helps software companies like us, because now we can go execute, right? And what you’re trying to ask for us.
So it’ll be interesting. You know, some of the stuff is pretty spooky right now. It’s pretty wild on the crazy things that it can do. And then other stuff is just quality of life. Like this is great. I just updated my iPhone to the liquid glass. I don’t know if I’m a huge fan just yet, but they moved the search box to the bottom of the phone for everything. Phenomenal. Love that.
Beau Hamilton (29:17.239)
That’s true. That’s true. But no, I think that’s I think with the AI and like showing the value, it’s interesting because you really do have to kind of, I don’t know, educate the client or the consumer of like what how these these AI tools and features can actually, you know, improve their daily life. And then once they see it, I think that goes with a lot of things, though. But once they see it, they can, you know, really start to embrace it some more and maybe, not be so dismissive of it because there, that’s kind of the sentiment I feel like, lately has been like, I dunno, seeing some of the focusing on the kind of the negative side of things. And I think there’s definitely some real concerns there. Don’t get me wrong, but…
Trey Markel (30:22.609)
Right. Yeah, you know, got to look at both. You got to look at both. There’s no doubt that AI helps the daily worker. I don’t care if you’re a C-level executive, an owner, a staff member, a brand new W2 employee at an entry level. There are tools out there that can 100% help you do better for yourself, for your business, for the customer. I mean, there’s no doubt.
However, as Americans, we love to push the envelope when we are passionate about a new piece of technology and we see it grow fast. We want to see its limits, right? And there is some scary stuff to that, right? And what it has access to and what it can do and what it can’t do. And hopefully the powers will make sure there’s legislation in place to put some of those roadblocks in. But no doubt, from not only just a finance perspective, a general populational health perspective, you know, warning signs on and all different types of things in this world. Definitely good for humanity and let’s see if we can control it.
Beau Hamilton (31:21.329)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s like, I feel like the societal, it’s the societal impacts and just how fast this technology has come. Like I remember, I mean, it’s literally a few, a few years ago, with ChatGPT like 2.5 or whatever it was that rolled out. And like, remember reading an article and at the end it was like, by the way, this article was written by AI. And I was like, wait, what? No way. And then actually seeing, you know, I was like, I didn’t believe it until I actually got to play with the tool, but it came out later and see it write kind of what I wanted it to write for me. And I was just mind blown. And just thinking about the effects on society and how quickly that things have to change or are changing is the scary part, I guess.
Trey Markel (32:04.945)
Yeah, and I think, you know, there’s a lot of talk around, it going to take my job or is it going to do this? And I’ve seen this quote come up multiple times. It’s like, AI is not going to take your job. The person using AI is going to take your job. You know what I mean? And let’s be realistic. Of course, AI and technology will consolidate certain job positions and stuff like that. But learning how AI functions, you got to spend some time on it. You really got to, you know, it’s the future is not going anywhere and it can help. It can help a lot.
Beau Hamilton (32:36.401)
And it’s, it’s, I mean, it’s, subject, hobby agnostic where like, can find ways to incorporate into what you like to do with it. you know, and, and that’s find a way to, I don’t know, like vibe code, something that has to do with what you’re interested in and just have fun with it. that’s what I’m getting into recently.
But I’m curious, so you obviously talked about AI, but are there any other trends that you’re currently monitoring that are sort of shaping the roadmap for Centrex?
Trey Markel (33:48.805)
Yeah, you know, AI is definitely a big one. I think the continuation of consolidating systems into one ecosystem so that you really kind of have to live there. And it’s your day to day kind of place. It’s kind of your day to day ecosystem and how you build and customize that ecosystem around how you do business, right?
I think when I speak a lot on stage at trade shows, one of the things I talk about a lot is, look, there you have built in your life certain ecosystems that make you comfortable and happy. One of those ecosystems is your home. You’ve put a couch and carpet and dishes and art on the walls and you’ve designed your home in a way to where that’s your breath of fresh air. That’s your peace place, right? You’ve built an ecosystem, I’m sure, in your automobile. Whatever car you drive, you know, do you have your CDs and your sunglasses and your chewing gum, right, in certain areas? And another one is your office. What does your office look like? Whether it’s a cubicle or it’s a desk or it’s a full office, you’ve built an ecosystem because that’s what you like. Your digital ecosystem should be no different, right?
So here at Centrex Software, when it comes, we’re based in finance, but when you have a finance organization and you log into that ecosystem every day, you should be able to move things and customize things and build it in a way that makes you feel comfortable based on how you want to do it. What’s the best way for you to do it? Right? So a lot of our competitors, you have to call them to make changes on a lot of different areas of the system to customize templates or to customize phone numbers or to do all sorts of things. We allow that right in the UI for you to change things as you wish. And we’re gonna continue down that road as much as we can to make sure that your ecosystem is moldable to how you wanna run a finance business. Or maybe your rep wants to do it different than his sales manager, right? And he wants to see it differently. Okay, we’re gonna allow for that, right?
So I think implementing AI, useful tools and tips and quality of life features like AI. But I think on top of that, really continuing to look at the ecosystem and how we’re structuring that ecosystem for finance companies to thrive. So that’s their experience. And we’re trying to build a similar type of what I like to call habitual platform experience that you you can’t get enough of. You want to live in it all the time. That’s your business. Everything’s there for you. How do we accomplish that?
Beau Hamilton (36:11.121)
I’m curious, like looking ahead. So, where do you see the biggest opportunities I would say for platforms like Centrex over the next couple of years. And I feel like you could take this question any which way you want, but when you like another way to phrase this is like, when you look back at this point in time, let’s say two years from now, if we can even, you know, consider what the landscape will look like two years from now. What shifts or maybe decisions do you think will matter most in hindsight?
Trey Markel (37:00.314)
You know, it’s always a delicate balance between what we build for ourselves internally and for our own staff versus what we build for clients and what they get to use, right? It’s an incredible, difficult conversation we have all the time, right? Where do we put our resources and efforts externally to clients or internally or both? So I think Centrex has done a wonderful job, in my opinion, on building external systems, external features. We’re going to continue down that path.
I think in the next two years, what you will see from our camp is a lot of internal infrastructure enhancements, easier ways for our clients to do certain things with us because of what we’ve built internally that allow for that, whether that be collaboration or communication or new idea management, right? Custom development for a certain client, for a certain niche or product, right? If we can build a little more internally from infrastructure perspective, along with using AI and some other tools that we were looking at, we can do better for our clients and therefore they can do better for their clients, right?
So I couldn’t touch on any one specific feature. I think AI is huge right now. We’re diving into that in a pretty major way. Centrex is also putting a ton of effort right now into its mobile capabilities. And I think we’ll just see a much stronger, better infrastructure here over the course of the next two years.
Beau Hamilton (38:26.621)
Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing is you list all the different things that, you know, you could work on. feel like we’d have a two hour long podcast or more, but like, think the generally speaking though, I do, I do resonate with that where, you know, you’re, you’re reducing the friction points of, of your internal, internal systems or building that infrastructure, which I think will have external results. Like you’ll just be able to make everything just work much more seamlessly and, really ultimately, you know, just satisfy your clients all the better. And I think that’s, I think it’s going to be really exciting to see kind of what you incorporate. You mentioned one of the recent partnerships, right? With an AI provider working with, was it agentic AI or was that a different automation tool?
Trey Markel (39:16.519)
This particular, this one is n8n. It’s a massive AI workflow automation platform. It’s kind of similar to like a Zapier. They’ve gone quite a bit deeper and they allow you to natively embed their systems into platforms like ours. And because our API endpoints internally are so vast, what n8n allows us to do is really anything you want. Like we could sit down with a client and be like, what would you like to happen automatically? What would you like to happen manually? Right? And the AI automation work tool builds all that out for you. Send an eSight document here, send out a payment here, send the credit to the investor here, send a notification to the investor over here when this hits this limit, right? A lot of different things that are going to require the Centrex client to really think about how they want something so that we can go implement it, right? So yeah, it’s going to be interesting.
Beau Hamilton (40:05.545)
Yeah. And then just seeing this, I mean, seeing that, um, that partnership integration build out and seeing what else you guys come up with and, and work with who you work with and what you incorporate, I think is just gonna be really, really exciting and cool to see. So I’m going to definitely stay tuned.
Trey Markel (40:19.931)
Yeah, I think too, you know, we’re in finance, finance is a money game, right? And the investor, the investors want to have a good experience. And one of the things that we’re really excited about that we launched last year was our digital wallet technology and how investors can share data with each other, share money with each other, how funds can share money with each other, how you can log into one system as an investor and see your money spread across multiple funds using the Centrex ecosystem, right? So really, really excited about that because keeping the money happy, making sure they’re involved and engaged that that just creates more opportunity for finance companies and borrowers alike.
Beau Hamilton (41:00.211)
Totally. Yeah. Do you guys have a rough like feature release like cadence or is it kind of like you guys are constantly working on these new features and when they’re ready, you roll them out or do you have like a hard?
Trey Markel (41:11.537)
No, we’re constantly working on new features. We definitely do sprints, but I mean, we’re releasing stuff weekly, some small quality life stuff. And then when we do a big release, we’ll do a big press release. We notify the entire portfolio, any potential clients and saying, hey, here’s a new release, come check it out, put some press around it, stuff like that. Yeah, so it’s constant, it’s never ending.
Beau Hamilton (41:32.137)
Yeah, okay. I imagine, I imagine. Yeah, it’s like, it’s every week you got something and then you have the big, the big announcements. Okay. Well, very cool. I think, I think that you’ve covered a lot and I think that’s a, I think that’s a great way to end this discussion with some of those integrations and announcements you’ve just, you just made. And I’m curious for listeners who are interested in learning more about Centrex, maybe interested in learning about some of the features of the platform and some of the new announcements. Where should they go? Where would you send them?
Trey Markel (42:07.643)
Yeah, check out centrexsoftware.com. You can subscribe to our newsletter or you can fill out a demo request on our website to learn more about our systems. And then we’re weekly emails. We’re doing, you know, newsletters once a month and stuff like that. So definitely online assets and then schedule a demo with us. We’d love to love to have a conversation with you.
Beau Hamilton (42:26.089)
Perfect. All right. Well, that’s Trey Markel, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Centrex Software. Trey, it’s really been a pleasure. I really enjoyed this conversation and hopefully I can have you back one of these days and talk updates.
Trey Markel (42:38.043)
Yes, Beau. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the team. Really appreciate you guys. Always an honor.
Beau Hamilton (42:42.537)
Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all for upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.