Payment Wedges Drive Vertical ERPs
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Matt Brown, Co-Founder of Bonsai, on the rise of vertical ERPs
The best ERPs understand that they want to absorb all that workflow, but in a very strategic and incremental approach.
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The winning vertical ERP wedge is usually a single painful task that sits right next to money movement. That is why these companies do not start by rebuilding the whole business in software. They start with the broken handoff, the paper form, or the payment step where a user already feels pain, then use control of payments, payroll, banking, or lending to pull more of the workflow into one system over time.
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In restaurants, the obvious wedge is not generic back office software, it is the messy flow of orders, tips, payouts, payroll, and delivery fees. Once software owns that money path, it can add adjacent tools like marketing, loyalty, staffing, and capital.
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HoneyBook followed this sequence with independent service providers. It first handled leads, proposals, contracts, and payments, then added checking, debit, and money management. The move works because invoicing and getting paid are already central moments in a freelancer's workflow.
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EquipmentShare shows the same pattern in a heavier industry. It began around equipment usage and rentals, then layered in telematics, rentals, equipment sales, financing, and contractor operations software. The product gets stronger because the software sees both the work being done and the dollars attached to that work.
From here, more vertical software companies will look less like bundles of admin tools and more like operating systems for industry cash flow. The companies that win will keep moving one step outward from the first monetizable wedge, adding the next product that removes another handoff between work and money.