More than 250 Corcentric customer representatives from North America and Europe convened at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes, FL, for the company’s two-day 2023 Symposium in February. The theme of the 20th Anniversary gathering was “Focus,” and attendees had an opportunity to learn from a variety of speakers about its importance in both their businesses and personal lives.  

Doug Clark, Corcentric founder, Chairman and CEO, and Matt Clark, President and Chief Operating Officer, opened the Symposium by talking about the state of B2B commerce, margin compression and the need to do more with less.

“Business to business commerce has to be more than transactional,” said Matt Clark. “You need a holistic end-to-end solution of source-to-pay and order-to-cash and you need to keep both sides in mind. It does no good to have a solution on the buy side of the equation that harms the sell side.” Clark reminded attendees of the catalyst for change equation: dissatisfaction x vision x clear first steps > a resistance to change. “If that is not true, you will not make the changes needed.”

 Kick-off speaker, Jon Acuff, New York Times bestselling author, said,” A goal is the fastest path to where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow.” He also explained that we all have soundtracks in our heads that influence our behavior. “To get peace of mind, you need to retire the broken soundtracks and identify what is holding you back. Then replace it with new soundtracks.” He then said we can choose our thoughts and great leaders choose “thoughts that are actionable.”

Senior editor at large for Forbes, Geoff Colvin, focused his remarks on trends and the need to create a business model for the future. “Business model innovation is about creating value in new ways,” he said. He encouraged the audience to “be open to new ideas that are startling, especially those in the tech space.”

Colvin then welcomed James White, U.S. Treasury bond trader/manager, and financial professional Mark Zinder for a deep dive into data they are using to inform themselves on how they see the economy unfolding and whether there will be a recession.

Additional speakers included:

• Dr. Ann Kulze, founder and CEO of Just Wellness
• Mike Walsh, CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy
• Ty Bennett, founder of Leadership Inc
• Jeff Butler, author and workplace strategist
• Robert Richman, a culture strategist

Annual Transform Awards Presented

Winners of Corcentric’s 2023 annual Transform Awards were also presented during the Symposium, recognizing customers who advocated for and implemented new programs and processes to address problems, improve costs, and provide greater enterprise efficiencies.

Accepting the award for their companies were:

• Ryan Gaughan, Terry Giannoudakos and Demetrios Varnasidis of Hub Group
• Sara Harder, Joseph Harvey and Jason Turner of Commerce Bank
• Ovidijus Dikcius of Doosan Bobcat  

The next Corcentric Symposium will take place March 12-14, 2024, in Orlando, FL.