Georgia Technology Summit 2025: Yogs Jayaprakasam with Deluxe

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Georgia Technology Summit 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center. This is Business RadioX. And now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from Georgia Technology Summit 2025. So excited to be talking to my next guest Yogs Jayaprakasam with Deluxe Corporation. Welcome.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: Uh, for the two people out there that aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Deluxe? How you serving folks?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Fantastic. Uh, Deluxe is a 110 year check printing company. So our founder invented the first checkbook that we all still use. And, uh, we are a $2.2 billion publicly traded company. Beyond check. We now also make, uh, digital payment Processing platforms. B2b payments and data driven marketing solutions as well. We work with 4000 financial institutions and millions of small businesses and mid-sized companies across the country.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your role with Deluxe?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I lead their technology and digital organization for the company, so my team is responsible for driving the technology systems.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: That’s a great question. So I started my career back in India after my post-graduation in computer applications. So I have background in working for startup companies that built web websites and mobile products. Then I was in consulting for a bit, but before taking this exciting job with deluxe, I worked for American Express for 13 years. So I believe a lot of the listeners would know American Express. It’s a fantastic card brand. So there is a lot of similarities between what the transformation Amex went through. If you don’t know, Amex used to be a traveler’s check company that evolved into digital payments Months now, Tada deluxe is transforming in from check company to become digital payments and data, uh, which is a commonality that excited me to come be part of this transformation.

Lee Kantor: So what’s it like for a legacy company like deluxe where like you like you said, the first checkbook. Yes. And to to have the foresight and still be relevant today is an amazing achievement, right. To be able to kind of move with the times to the point we are today where we’re getting into, you know, less and less checks. Right? So how do you like how important was the culture of, of innovation that that the deluxe must have? And how are you helping lead that culture through this transformation?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I think that’s a fantastic question. Um, because culture eats strategy for breakfast is a very common, uh, saying, and I personally believe in that. So what I mean by that is if you pay attention to as a company what you do, you do certain problem solving for your customers. And as things move with time, the way you solve that problem keeps changing too. It’s up to the people and the culture. You have to pay attention to what is changing. So in the context of deluxe, if you really seriously think about it, our initial problem solving for the customer is issuing a check, which is an alternative form of form of payment from the currencies that we have. So now the payment mode from paper check to credit cards and digital payments and everything. We are still solving the same problem and that’s what we are trying to do. As tech becomes less relevant, how do you replace that with the solutions that is relevant to the customers too? So we focus on our customers and we focus on our communities because we believe as we help small businesses and mid-size companies succeed, they contribute to the economy and they contribute back to the workforce, which creates a virtuous cycle.

Lee Kantor: But to make that shift, a lot of companies weren’t able to kind of make that change and really get to the heart of what it is, the value they’re delivering to customers. A lot of companies get hung up with, well, this is how we do this so that the, the how we do it is the thing and it’s really not the how we do it. It’s the why we do it.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I, uh, that’s that’s a very insightful, uh, statement that you just made there. If you really understand why we exist and continue to be true to that purpose, then solving that problem becomes easier. To what I mean by that is, of course, every company exists to make money and contribute to their shareholders. That is a judicial job that we all have to do. But it it cannot be at the cost of forgetting what you’re supposed to do for your customers, right? Focusing on your customers and then focusing on your employees takes care of focusing on the shareholder promises that you make to. And that’s what we fundamentally believe in.

Lee Kantor: So how do you like what advice would you give an organization that might have maybe fallen in love too much with the nuts and bolts of their product or service and are kind of forgetting, like, okay, what are our customers really need? And what uniquely can we be delivering to them that’s different and special?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: My advice would be, uh, shift your focus from falling in love with what you are good at doing to falling in love with the problem you are solving for your customer. If you are very clear on the problem you solve for your customer. Just like how I explained, the problem we solve is creating alternative payment solution for our customer. Then you will start to find what is the best way to solve that problem. And that changes with time, with process, with technology evolution. You will constantly experiment to find the best solution to solve it. And that’s my recommendation. Stop falling in love with what you are good at. Start falling in love with what you are committed to. Solving the problem for your customer.

Lee Kantor: But I, like you said earlier, that’s a cultural issue because a lot of times it’s going to require some of the times it’s going to require you to abandon things and to, you know, the sunk cost is real. And a lot of people don’t want to pay that price when it comes to sunk costs, especially in technology or things they’ve invested a lot of, or even maybe brand identity, you know, to make that shift. It takes a lot of leadership.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Yeah, I think that’s a very good point. Often companies that are focused too much on today’s profitability forget that for you to sustain your own profitability. Sustained investment in technology and innovative culture is critical. So what I mean by that is if you don’t invest today and over a period of time, you either become too expensive to maintain every old things that you have inside your company, whether it is old systems and databases and everything. But if you invest to stay current, the managing those technology becomes cheaper and cheaper as you go as well. So for example, we used to be on so many data centers running all of our own servers before. So now we consolidated our footprint to a much smaller data center and moved to public cloud. It not only reduced our cost, of course, initially you have to make some incremental investment to do that, share.

Lee Kantor: The change.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: It. Right now it reduced the cost, but also because we are already on public cloud, we are able to innovate faster because the public cloud providers are already enabling generative AI, artificial intelligence, machine learning, all the cutting edge thing that is coming to become available now, you are paying for the use of it. You are not making one time big investment like you used to make as well. So even though the thought of it looks daunting, unless you go through that process, you are not going to have the same profitable growth that you can enjoy in the future as well.

Lee Kantor: So now, why was it important for you and deluxe to have you become part of the Tag board of directors? Like what was the thinking there?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: So there are two reasons. One, uh, our CEO has this, uh, pretty much a mandate or a requirement. Part of our goal that every one of our executive leadership team should sit in a not for profit organization. And, uh, Tag is a relevant organization for me and my role. Because being a technology leader, you cannot solve it all by yourself. You got to be connected to the industry where you have like minded people who can bring similar problems that you are trying to solve to. So tag made all the difference in the world for me to be part of that as well. So it is 2 in 1 opportunity. So there is a need for me to be in a non not for profit board. But being in a technology driven, not for profit board is very relevant for me and the company as well.

Lee Kantor: So, um, what did you spoke here at the summit or have you spoke yet?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I’m going to be speaking at 1250. In a panel discussion that talks about, is AI going to change the CEO’s job, or should we let AI to change the job of CEO?

Lee Kantor: So any spoilers? Is it going to change the job?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: I think I will change how we do our jobs. So it will replace people who don’t use AI to do the job with people who know how to use AI to do the job better.

Lee Kantor: So, uh, your advice is to lean into AI. Don’t run away from it.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: My advice is not only lean into AI, but also be part of shaping how AI should be used because the narrative today is, oh, it is going to come and change my job. If we let any technology, not just AI, it will do what you don’t want it to do. We got to be part of shaping what are the things we want AI to do? What are the things we don’t want AI to do? As an example, I don’t want my nurse’s job to be fully done by. I want a human telling me how I feel. What is my health? All of those things, and those are the things we need to consciously contribute and shape the laws shape as a tag, as it plays a bigger role, because we can influence the community and then go influence the law as well.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about deluxe, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Yogs Jayaprakasam: D e l u Xe.com Xe.com is our website and we share all the great products that we do, how we are modernizing, what problems we are solving for our customer. We would love to talk to anyone who is interested in what we do to help them solve their needs.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Yogs Jayaprakasam: Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor back in a few. At Georgia Technology Summit 2025.