Steve Karp has been appointed as Unanet’s first-ever chief innovation officer.
He previously served as the company’s senior vice president of financial solutions, and in his new role, he will shift his focus to center the adoption of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence from a customer service perspective, Unanet announced from its Dulles, Virginia headquarters on Tuesday.
Unanet CEO Craig Halliday, a 2024 Wash100 Award winner, said Karp is an ideal selection for the position “because he understands that AI and other developing technology must complement people rather than be a replacement for ingenuity, creative thinking, and problem-solving.”
“His ability to define a vision and execute against it will enable our customers to run their businesses faster and more efficiently,” Halliday added.
In his previous role at Unanet, Karp helped grow the company’s portfolio of financial offerings with the deployment of its AR Automation and AP Automation technologies.
As chief innovation officer, he will supervise the development of new tools to optimize Unanet’s enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management platforms while embracing novel technologies and updating processes.
“Businesses are grappling with the influx of new technologies while also trying to manage the evolving and growing operations within their own dynamic marketplaces,” noted Karp, who emphasized his commitment to keeping customer needs in mind when delivering technology products.
“We understand that any new technology Unanet delivers must be easy, simple to use, and help customers wrangle their challenges, not create added complexity,” he said.
Karp is a 30-year veteran of the software-as-a-service and financial technology industries. Before joining Unanet in late 2022, he served in leadership roles at a number of organizations, most recently as chief product officer at EverView. Other positions he has held during his career include general manager of payments at Upserve, senior vice president and head of retail relationship management at Cardtronics and vice president of strategy and operations at Fattmerchant, among others.