
North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 464)
Pedram Afshar joined host John Ray to discuss the automation and artificial intelligence technology Amaka employs to serve small business owners and their advisors. Pedram discussed how automation and AI can be used to improve customer service for a business, the tools Amaka offers to give businesses a better, faster look at their financial picture, why their tools enable advisors to better serve their small business clients, and much more.
North Fulton Business Radio is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.
Amaka is a business automation platform, that leverages APIs to bring business and accounting automation for small and medium-sized businesses. 
It is for accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners with the need to automate their data entry. You can save tens of hours by automating the data aggregation process between POS, online stores, and accounting softwares.
Company Website |LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Questions and Topics in this Interview:
- Automation and the future of SMBs
- Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the impact on employment more generally
- Process improvement in SMBs, and how to improve profit margins
- What is your tech stack, and how do you leverage technology, to provide the most amount of value to customers
- Startup journey and what skills founders need to succeed
- Customer service as a differentiation
North Fulton Business Radio is hosted by John Ray and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.
Special thanks to A&S Culinary Concepts for their support of this edition of North Fulton Business Radio. A&S Culinary Concepts, based in Johns Creek, is an award-winning culinary studio, celebrated for corporate catering, corporate team building, Big Green Egg Boot Camps, and private group events. They also provide oven-ready, cooked from scratch meals to go they call “Let Us Cook for You.” To see their menus and events, go to their website or call 678-336-9196.



Amol Nirgudkar helps dentists grow their practices and reach their goals.
work with artificial intelligence and machine learning to empower dental teams to deliver a better patient experience and build even more successful practices.



Provost Bolman has focused his career upon the profound need for a substantial and diverse workforce within Arizona and the nation. As its long-standing provost, Dr. Bolman has built the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) into a unique, all-STEM institution that marries the best of a traditional, small, private college with the genetics of innovation that come with agile technology organizations. As an educator, he has focused on cultivating a base of technology students and future inventors.
Chuck Vermillion is an industry pioneer in the Information Technology Managed Services space, as a CEO in the industry for over 23 years. In 2016 Chuck founded AccountabilIT as a MSP and MSSP focused in the Phoenix market. Since that time, AccountabilIT has grown by adding 2 offices in Arkansas and an office in San Diego.
After graduating from Bolivar-Richburg High School in rural western New York and joining the United States Army, Kelly Greene learned quickly to adapt to her surroundings to be successful. She attended Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio and played shortstop on the Tiger softball team while earning her Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education.
Valentina Lopez is a 3rd year Chief Science Officer currently attending Basis Goodyear.


Rebecca Clyde is the CEO & co-founder of Botco.ai, an intelligent chat solution for the healthcare industry. With more than 20 years as a marketing executive in the technology industry, she is passionate about advancing women in tech.
Molly Castelazo is CEO & Chief Content Strategist at Castelazo Content, a B2B demand generation and sales acceleration agency. Since 2008, Molly and her team have helped drive hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for clients ($69 million in the last year alone) through purpose-built strategies that leverage content to walk buyers through their journey – from pre-awareness, to decision, to evangelization.
Elliot Manson is the Director of Analytics & Advertising for KEO Marketing, a leader in B2B lead generation. His focus is on paid media channels, using data to help companies make strategic decisions to drive their business forward.
Steve Zylstra serves as president and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council, a role he assumed in 2007. He is responsible for strategy, operations, finance and policy development. Zylstra is a vocal spokesman for the value technology can provide in raising social and economic standards in Arizona.
Karen Nowicki is a successful author, speaker and the creator of Deep Impact Leadership™ and SoulMarks Coaching™. She is a two-time recipient of the prestigious national Choice Award® for her book and personal development retreat. Karen was crowned the first-ever “Mompreneur of the Year” Award in 2010 for the southwestern states. She was recognized for her leadership, business acumen, and work-life balance.


While still an engineering student at India’s Birla Institute of Tech and Science (BITS Pilani), Samay Kohli began attracting attention as an innovator in robotics as the founder and leader of a team of students who invented a humanoid robot, AcYut, at the institute’s Center for Robotics and Intelligent Systems.
What Samay and Akash understood that others didn’t is that tacking robots onto software built for earlier times improves fulfillment performance some…but not nearly enough. After all, those robots are simply hardware appendages limited by the capabilities of the software systems to which they interface.



Flavio Villanustre is CISO and VP of Technology for 














