I am extremely proud and honoured to announce that Chaser’s CTO, Pedro Sampaio, has been recognized as Technology Innovator - Person of the Year at the 2021 Credit & Collections Awards. This award is a testament to Pedro's hard work, dedication and passion for developing innovative solutions that have changed the industry forever.
The award recognizes individuals who have made a significant impact on the credit and collections industry through their innovative solutions or technological advancements. Pedro is being recognized for his efforts in developing Chaser's award-winning platform, which is now used by over 900 customers globally.
Since 2016, Pedro Sampaio has led a fully-remote team of software engineers at Chaser who have achieved astonishing results. Starting as Lead Software Engineer, Pedro’s passion for solving end-users problems and his innovation saw him quickly progress to Head of Engineering in 2019, and Chief Technology Officer in September 2020.
As tech lead at Chaser - the highest-rated receivables software, Pedro has a passion for helping small-and-medium businesses (SMBs) put an end to late payments, and building cost-effective solutions to help them do so. He shares Chaser’s vision to create ‘A world where all businesses have the confidence they will get paid for their work’, and has innovated numerous product developments and integrations to help achieve this.
Chaser has over 3,000 SMB users and has supported them in chasing over $5billion to date. The system can facilitate this level of transactions due to Pedro’s leadership and work building, diligently testing, and monitoring the software.
Major releases in 2021
Payment Portal
- To allow greater ease for users when getting invoices paid, Pedro led the research and suggested implementation of an in-app Payment Portal. Released only this year, the portal already has 80 regular users and has sped-up 596 transactions - helping users collect £199,775 in late payments.
Debt recovery tracking in-app
- To support businesses during the pandemic, Chaser launched a debt recovery service as an add-on to it’s accounts receivable software. With a clear understanding of our target market, Pedro rightly suggested there is stigma around collections among SMBs, as collectors often communicate in an aggressive and threatening way - putting reputations and customer relationships at risk.
- To offer peace of mind for collections users, Pedro implemented a receivables ‘CRM’ tracking functionality in the Chaser software, letting users see every interaction collectors had with their customers (messages sent, any replies, any call notes).
- Now, 119 SMEs use Chaser Collections and actively track communications with their customers - reassured that all cases are handled in a polite and professional manner.
- “We have never had a complaint from a customer, everything is out in the open and handled very nicely, the emails sent from the debt collectors look like something we could write ourselves” - Tom Hays, Head of Finance at Huttie Group who has recovered £15,600 with Chaser Collections.
Credit Checking
- Chaser’s newly released credit checking helps to streamline this entire process, by giving our users the ability to get full credit reports within the application.
- These include the registration details of a business for verification, the credit score and recommended credit limits, and an in-depth look at the financial performance of a company. This empowers our users in the UK to make better business decisions, particularly when onboarding new customers.
- Credit checking is an important step for Chaser, however it is only the beginning of this journey - in the coming months, we will be looking to expand the functionality further, deepening the integration with our user´s customers as well as the potential to expand to other regions.
Integrations
- In 2021 Pedro initiated and led the implementation of 8 software integrations for Chaser. Chaser works by syncing customer and invoice data in users’ accounting systems, so, by expanding integrations, Pedro has helped give more businesses worldwide the confidence that they will get paid for their work.
- Chaser’s total addressable market has increased by 700% since 2021 due to Pedro’s newly-implemented integrations, and with new users joining off the back of his innovative features, our MRR (monthly-recurring-revenue) has increased by 76% since 2020.
ChaseImport
- Pedro conceptualised and set up a .csv import tool, Chase Import, to allow any business globally to benefit from accounts receivables automation no matter the accounting platform they are using.
By actively considering end user needs, innovating, and ensuring the software is available to more businesses that need it every year, Pedro has enabled Chaser in becoming the highest-rated receivables software available, with 400+ reviews - at a perfect 5.0 stars.
Whilst the award recognises technology innovation, without question, Pedro’s solid leadership skills have been instrumental to Chaser’s growth and success over the course of the past year.
Pedro is the perfect combination of knowledgeable, hard working and compassionate - all encompassing of Chaser’s values and culture! He is truly a wonderful leader! Looking forward to many, many years ahead!