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CompanyProfile

Swift and pioneering analysis

hat happens when a talented payments
sales guy teams with an accomplished soft-
ware maker to solve an age-old payments
W automation problem? In the case of Ion
Craciun and Adrian Talapan, the founders of Wayne, Pa.-
based startup Fee Navigator, the answer was a ground-
breaking sales tool.

Craciun is Fee Navigator's chief revenue officer and co-
founder. He was a former financial forensics investigator ISO/MLS contact:
and also one of First Data Corp's most decorated salespeo-
ple. He launched Fee Navigator's precursor company Fee Ion Craciun
Notice, but never fully accomplished his original vision to Chief Revenue Officer
automate the statement analysis process.
and Co-Founder
Craciun introduced his problem to Talapan, a serial soft- 844-333-4888, ext. 213
ware entrepreneur whose company specialized in ex-
tracting health record data and analyzing it to identify ion@feenavigator.com
behavioral patterns. Talapan, Fee Navigator's chief ex-
ecutive officer and co-founder, recognized the gap. "As
I learned, the nature of the opportunity was how much
it would benefit agents and independent sales organiza- The company prides itself on a turnaround time that far
tions to move quickly," he said. exceeds industry standards. "It takes an average of 30
minutes to do a manual analysis, and with Fee Navigator,
"I also realized why many companies had put a ton of it takes five seconds," Craciun said. "If the agent chooses
money into trying to build something like this, but it nev- to edit the file, it's still only a three- or four-minute pro-
er went anywhere," Talapan continued. "The statement cess."
analysis process is extremely difficult, and this is the rea-
son nothing was available." Craciun also noted it's easy to offer merchants analysis
on the fly. "With the bot, you don't need a computer, and
Talapan also noted building an application like this re- can just show the merchant the analysis from your mobile
quires a few key ingredients. "We were able to do it by phone," he said.
applying a big-data strategy and hiring incredible people
to work with us," he said. More in the works
Eliminating friction, gaining traction According to Talapan, since the application's October 2019
launch, 150 to 200 sales agents have begun using the soft-
According to Talapan, the Fee Navigator software is an ware. Talapan also said the platform is evolving, with up-
agnostic tool with three main capabilities. "There's a bot dates constantly being added. "What we're building is a
for analyzing statements on the road in seconds, a drag- platform, and we have a few elements already there," he
and-drop tool you can use in front of the computer, and a stated. "You can email a statement to your own bot we've
merchant lead generator launched in December that helps nicknamed AMA (short for automated merchant analysis)
agents easily gain future clients," he said. and our lead funnel gives agents a widget to add to their
website."
Craciun indicated these tools replace what has tradition-
ally been a drawn-out process for comparing statements. Talapan also sees a promising future ahead. "As we have
"People have to do this manually," he noted. "There are a more information, we will turn on the part of the plat-
few consultants that will help you within 48 to 72 hours, form that aggregates the data," he said. "At that time, there
and inside groups that help, but it still takes the time." will be access to trends such as average ticket pricing and
effective rates by merchant code."
The tool produces a statement analysis file in Excel for-
mat. Agents have full editing control to adapt the final Talapan and Craciun indicated they intend to help move
product to their liking. Fee Navigator owners also indicat- the needle for the industry. "We're excited for this year,
ed they designed the results page as a single page for easy because we believe we can really make a huge impact,"
downloading and/or conversion to a sharable PDF. Craciun said. "The agents can now do more with these
new capabilities."

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