Ryan Walicki is  the Founder & CEO of RELISH. During this conversation, he discusses being an early adopter of GenAI, capital-effective ecosystems, a passion for results and enjoying the journey over the destination! 

RELISH apps strategically extend enterprise applications to maximise investment. They fully understand enterprise software gaps and are obsessed with building a scalable solution to remedy them. 

 

1. What is RELISH’s mission? 

Our mission is to help our customers maximise the value of their IT investments and infrastructure. Enterprise software is powerful, but it’s not always a perfect fit for every geography, vertical, or industry. These gaps are well-known to both customers and providers. Our goal is to step into these spaces, create value, and tailor solutions that align with our customers' specific business needs. Delivering that final mile to achieve meaningful outcomes is at the heart of what we do.  

Nearly our entire team comes from a consulting background, having spent 15 years deploying these solutions before founding RELISH. We’ve seen the challenges firsthand struggling with ROIs, payback periods, and solutions that didn’t quite meet all needs. Those years of experience, countless boardrooms, and co-meetings gave us deep insights into where the problems lie. 

Our team stands out for three key reasons. First, we’re deeply rooted in business process and outcome consulting. Second, our long tenure in the industry has helped us build strong relationships with some of the world’s largest enterprise companies - many of whom were previously our consulting clients. Third, and most importantly... 

 

We’re driven by an absolute passion for delivering results.

 

For us, winning means ensuring our customers achieve their desired business outcomes by using Relish alongside platforms like SAP, Coupa, Workday, or others. What truly differentiates us is that we care - about the outcomes, first and foremost, at every level. 

 

2. What have been the most significant milestones in RELISH’s journey so far? 

The first milestone was simply starting the company. As you know, deciding to start a business isn’t easy, so that was a significant step. In our first year, we focused on validating product-market fit across industries, verticals, geographies, and both public and private sectors. We tested multiple products and proved we could successfully upsell them to our customers. While it wasn’t a strong financial year, it was an eye-opener - we realised there was a real business here. By the end of year one, we were confident we had a growth-focused business. 

Another milestone came at the end of year three, when we completed a Series A investment. It wasn’t just about the funding but also the validation it brought. Outside investors scrutinised the business from every angle and told us they believed it was a rocket ship and wanted to invest. That gave us momentum and confidence moving forward. 

This year, we’ve achieved several key milestones - significant growth in monthly processing volumes, customer acquisition, and overall customer expansion. These milestones stand out as pivotal moments that have shaped our journey. 

 

3. What do you look for in the perfect customer? 

Our best customers are those who come with a clearly defined business outcome that we can help drive. Looking back at our projects, some have been highly successful, while others have faced challenges - that’s just the nature of business and technology. However, the most successful projects are always led by a sponsor or leader who can clearly articulate their desired outcome and the results they want to achieve. 

With that clarity, it becomes much easier to define requirements, design solutions, and map everything back to a specific metric or set of KPIs. That’s when you know you’re on the right track.  

In recent years, I’ve seen the procurement, supply chain, and finance communities become much more sophisticated in understanding and articulating their desired outcomes. To me, that’s what makes a great customer: someone who knows exactly what they want and is ready to collaborate to achieve it.

 

4. What are the foundations of growing a great team? 

The first thing we did was establish three core values, or ‘tenets,’ that guide our hiring and team culture.  

 

 Beyond technical or business aptitude, we focus heavily on trust, teamwork, and character.

 

 
We believe in trust first, prioritising individuals we can rely on from the outset and who, in turn, trust their teammates.  

Being a good teammate is equally important. Many of us have sports backgrounds, so this principle resonates deeply. It means being accountable to yourself and others, supporting your colleagues, and consistently contributing positively to the team. 

The third tenet is high character, which we value above all else. This involves demonstrating integrity - owning mistakes, stepping up to help, and maintaining strong ethical behavior in all situations.  

With these values in place, we’ve built a cohesive team that, despite diverse backgrounds, shares common ground in these principles. When challenges arise, we return to these tenets to guide us - whether it’s about being a supportive teammate, showing high character to a customer, or reinforcing trust. These values form the foundation of our team and drive everything we do. 

 

5. How do you incorporate GenAI/advanced technologies, and what will be your next major digital innovation? 

From a GenAI perspective, we were early adopters, starting our journey back in 2018 - long before it became a mainstream trend.  

 

AI is crucial for us, particularly in learning from documents to create repeatable processes and enable autonomous operations.

 

This involves closely monitoring the market and collaborating with leaders like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google to understand and leverage custom AI models. For us, the real value lies in how AI and machine learning (ML) can transform enterprises. Our definition of ML centers around learning from customer data. For example, the vast history of purchase orders, invoices, sourcing events, and contracts can be analysed to predict future outcomes. Beyond prediction, AI and ML enable complete transaction automation - for instance, matching a purchase order to an invoice seamlessly through free-text recognition. 

We approach AI with a holistic, three-dimensional strategy. First, we focus on empowering our customers to become more predictive and efficient. Second, we consider the often-overlooked supplier side, helping suppliers transact more efficiently with buyers. Many networks and portals are buyer-centric, leaving suppliers to bear the cost of connecting to numerous systems. Third, we aim to bridge the gap between buyers and suppliers, fostering better collaboration to unlock greater economic value. Late payments, for instance, often result from lost or unapproved invoices - not intentional term extensions. By improving communication and transaction efficiency, we can generate significant working capital benefits, potentially unlocking trillions of dollars globally. 

Ultimately, our mission is to enable buyers and suppliers to work together more efficiently, creating a more capital-effective ecosystem for everyone. 

 

6. What’s the vision for RELISH? What does great look like in three to five years’ time? 

We've been very focused on the procurement and supply chain space because that’s where we come from. But now, we're starting to expand beyond that. We’re branching into use cases in HR, Treasury, and different areas of finance. In other words, we’re continuing to support the enterprise and solve problems both linearly and horizontally. 

Additionally, we’re now placing more focus on the supplier side. If you think about the source-to-pay process, we’re flipping that to order-to-cash. There's a lot of inefficiency in how buyers and suppliers interact today, particularly in terms of visibility. So, we’re focusing on solving that as well. 

I think the biggest challenge is that suppliers are increasingly demanding more consistency in how their transactions are handled. It’s really quite simple, even for a company like ours. We probably send invoices to 10 different places - portals, networks, whatever - on a weekly basis. We have to manage all of those separately. 

If someone came to me and offered a solution where I could go to one place, and regardless of where it was sent, I could see the status, payment date, and more details, that would be a game changer. Just like buyers have platforms, suppliers will likely want a single point of contact with all their customers. Technically, it’s challenging, and it has been attempted by a few others in the past. But it will take the supplier community coming together to create some momentum around this. 

On the orchestration side - especially around suppliers, but really in any orchestration - it's crucial. We’re big fans of intake and orchestration, and we work with some of those providers. They offer breadth, while we provide the depth. 

What we've learned at RELISH over the last four years is that every supplier's information management process, performance process, and risk process is different, for very good reasons. Some are driven by regulatory requirements, others by global compliance, and some are specific to sectors like defense, public, or private sectors.

 

 

So, the real challenge with suppliers is that they have to manage different processes for different customers, with varying requirements. The question is, how do we streamline this into one system where suppliers can interact in a consistent way, while orchestration solutions like RELISH handle the rest?.

 

 

INSTANT INSPIRATION 

1. What is your favourite book/blog? 

I have two favourite books. One is The Black Stallion, which I read in grade three. For some reason, it really stuck with me throughout my life. The other is Good to Great, which is a more adult version of something I should probably have read earlier

 

 

2. Who is your favourite inspirational leader? 

Maybe it’s my background in sports, but I really admire Nick Saban, the former head coach of Alabama football. Although his work is very sports-focused, I find that everything he says seems to have a life lesson built into it. I follow him quite closely because of that.  

 

 

 

3. What is your favourite piece of technology? 

I have to say, outside of work, my favourite would be ChatGPT. Although I also use it for work, it's something I find myself using more and more. I know it’s a common answer, but the more I use it, the more I discover new use cases. It’s surprising how many things it can do - things I didn’t think it could handle, but then I try it, and it works. 

  

4. What is your favourite cocktail or guilty pleasure? 

My favourite cocktail is Tito's vodka and soda. The slight backstory is that I like to see what I’m eating or drinking, so I prefer something clear. It just feels better to me than something that’s more opaque.  

 

5. What is your favourite way to celebrate success? 

Personally, I like celebrating success by acknowledging others. I'm the type who enjoys the hunt more than the victory itself. When the win happens, I'm not really the 'jump up and down' kind of person. I love the process. Winning, for me, feels more like a quiet 'ah,' because I was enjoying the journey. But when teammates do something big and are at the center of why we won, I love sitting back, celebrating them, and seeing how they react. 

 

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS  
 

1. Maximising IT Investments: There is an increasing need for solutions that help organisations close these gaps and maximise their IT investments by tailoring software to specific business needs, improving ROI, and achieving meaningful outcomes. 

2. The Evolving Role of AI and Machine Learning: Companies are leveraging AI to automate transactions, improve data analysis, and predict future outcomes, with a focus on using historical data like purchase orders and invoices to enhance decision-making. 

3. Supplier Collaboration and Efficiency: A holistic approach to supplier management, including better communication and transaction efficiency, can unlock significant capital and economic value for businesses. 

4. Predictive and Autonomous Operations: Businesses are increasingly using AI to automate tasks such as purchase order and invoice matching, as well as to predict future purchasing behaviors. This shift aims to streamline processes, reduce errors, and improve overall operational efficiency. 

5. Holistic Approach to Digital Transformation: Companies are now focusing not just on improving the buyer's experience but also on streamlining the supplier’s side, creating a more consistent, transparent, and collaborative process across the supply chain. 

6. Customisation and Flexibility in Business Solutions: Businesses are increasingly seeking solutions that can be tailored to their specific challenges and business processes, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all models. 

7. Importance of Team Culture in Digital Innovation: Companies should focus on core values like trust, teamwork, and high character when hiring and growing their teams. These values are critical for navigating challenges, building long-term relationships, and ensuring that technology-driven projects deliver real business value. 

 

About RELISH  

RELISH apps strategically extend enterprise applications to maximise investment. They fully understand enterprise software gaps and are obsessed with building a scalable solution to remedy them. 

 

 

 

About ProcureTechSTARS  

ProcureTechSTARS are the digital procurement CEOs and Founders who are transforming procurement and the enterprise. In an open conversation with these leaders, Lance Younger discusses the highs and lows of building the future, the challenges they’ve faced, their perspective on the latest developments, and what motivates them.