Category Archives: ePayments

Upcoming Webinar: Harnessing the Power of AR Optimization

Accounts Receivable (AR) organizations are increasingly faced with the challenge of doing more with less as resources shrink and financial processes speed up. There are more clients to manage, more invoices to transmit, and more payments to process—all at faster speeds and lower costs than ever before. In an upcoming live webinar featuring VersaPay on Thursday, February 12th, Henry Ijams will discuss some of the latest capabilities in AR automation solutions and how they can give your organization a competitive edge.

As PayStream has found time and again in previous research, paper invoicing is expensive. Processing a paper invoice costs approximately one and a half times as much as an electronic bill. For small organizations that don’t have the advantage of scale, the potential for savings can be even greater. Electronic invoice delivery eliminates printing and paper costs, and changing postage rates become a non-issue. Beyond mere processing cost savings, the elimination of paper ripples out to benefit each segment of the invoice and payment process, not the least of which is customer service.

Today’s AR department serves a customer service function as much as an accounting function, so it makes sense that credit managers should be concerned with this aspect of the workflow. By implementing AR automation, companies simplify the payment process for their customers by providing collectors with the necessary tools and information they need to serve customers quickly and effectively, resulting in improved customer service. The reconciliation process is also optimized with AR automation, eliminating much of the time it would usually take an agent to manually match payments and partial payments to the correct invoices.

Join the conversation on Friday, February 12th at 2pm EST, 11am EST as Henry Ijams discusses new solutions that allow suppliers to automate labor intensive tasks related to reconciliation while giving customers a simpler way to pay. A few of the many benefits of automation include the ability to help agents:

Accurately match payments to invoices
Reduce days sales outstanding (DSO)
Eliminate printing and postage costs
Reduce customer phone calls and efficiently manage disputes
Optimize working capital

This event is designed for AR and finance professionals on the leading edge of the industry, ready to create change within their own departments and redefine their own roles in the process. Interested in learning how your company can capitalize on the benefits of AR automation?

Ariba Ranked Among World’s Best Supply Chain Finance Providers

At PayStream Advisors, we are continually impressed with the achievements of our innovative partners. One such accomplishment has just come to our attention, and we’re excited to share it with our audience. For the fourth consecutive year, Ariba, an SAP company, has been ranked among the world’s best supply chain finance providers by Global Finance magazine.

“Geopolitical risk has continued to rise over the past year — affecting some key basic commodities and manufacturing hubs. This highlights the critical importance of having and maintaining a secure supply chain,” said Joseph Giarraputo, publisher of Global Finance. “One key element of this is ensuring that suppliers have the funding they need in order to operate effectively and efficiently. With these awards, we highlight those providers that are best at helping clients achieve this goal.”

Kudos to Ariba for this well deserved recognition. We are excited to see how their dynamic tools continue to help companies optimize working capital management and strengthen their financial supply chain.

Upcoming Webinar: New Trends in P2P Automation

As the purchase-to-pay automation landscape continues to evolve, so too does the behavior of the decision makers who purchase P2P software solutions. Over the past year, our analysts have noticed significant shifts in terms of what they want and how much they are willing to pay for it. In our upcoming webinar on Friday, January 16, Henry Ijams will review the top 5 drivers of P2P automation purchasing in 2015. Derived from hundreds of RFP’s, surveys and consulting assignments for purchasing, finance and IT managers, these findings will shed light on how to provide the most relevant services in the current market.

Many P2P automation solution providers excel in needs-based selling based on strong, long-term relationships that benefit both parties. But there is significant room for improvement, especially when it comes to emerging factors. Providers may be underestimating the impact these new drivers are having on purchasing behavior in 2015.

Our latest findings suggest that mobile approval is in the top 5 criteria for P2P automation buyers. It’s no surprise that mobile capabilities have skyrocketed in popularity as P2P professionals demand more functionality while on-the-go, all while protecting company data from security risks. We’ve also found that ROI assumptions and payment integration are important considerations for buyers.

These capabilities are not yet fully mature and definitely not standard across solutions, and they are often not explicitly spelled out by P2P decision makers during the sales process. The resulting disconnect can lead to lost revenue. Have you ever lost a prospect at the last moment due to previously undisclosed criteria? In this session you’ll learn how to:

Bullet-proof business case; position your solution to withstand your assumption attacks
Discover and prevent these sneaky deal-killers
Understand your gaps, know when to partner

Additionally, we will review the results of PayStream’s Solution Navigator scoring model to let you self-benchmark your solution.

The session is designed to give you the tools to evaluate your solution and marketing strategies from a finance and procurement buyer’s perspective. Learn how to leverage the buyer’s emerging needs to focus your product energy on the areas that will drive the most significant sales.

Ready to learn more?

Migrating from the 80′s with Cloud Technology: The 2014 P2P for Oracle Report

PayStream Advisors’ most recent research report tackles a subject in which many of our readers may have first-hand experience: Oracle ERP business applications. For organizations that have used Oracle for their financial and business processes, much of this experience has probably been bitter-sweet. As an ERP, Oracle is a reliable and trusted service for the security and management of accounting data; as a provider of P2P solutions however, the immobile nature of their design prohibits them from giving their customers true efficiency. The 2014 P2P for Oracle report shows readers that they don’t have to settle for the offerings of their ERP system, but instead, they can leverage the dynamic capabilities of today’s next generation, cloud-based technology.

Figure 1: Oracle Users Still Report Heavy Paper Use

This report explores the trends and opinions among today’s organizations that use Oracle. Research has found that while Oracle has been a leading figure in AP automation for a reason—their suite of offerings addresses almost every business need—the system has maintained its firm place in the market by the result of long-time use rather than long-time success. Studies show that while in some areas Oracle users have more integrated processes, including higher numbers of onboarded suppliers, this is more due to the fact that companies have been using the system for quite some time—in other words, integration is inevitable in the long-run. However, the results also show that integration is not necessarily optimization. Oracle users still report heavy degrees of processing pains through their procure-to-pay life-cycles, and the most fundamental sign of AP transformation—the elimination of paper—is not as evident among companies with Oracle, see Figure 1.

The true value of PayStream’s newest report is not only in its revealing research findings. This report provides insight into a real solution for professionals who wish to end their reliance on Oracle: today’s cloud-based business process technology. These cloud platforms are highly configurable, built to adapt to many kinds of businesses and to change to those businesses’ growth and needs quickly. Much of the dilemma of companies using Oracle’s applications is found in the immobility of its applications suite, but organizations can replace these with the flexibility of newer, leverage-able cloud solutions—while still holding onto the reliability of the Oracle ERP.

In all, the P2P for Oracle report is a vital transformation road-map, offering Best Practices and strategies for companies wanting to migrate from Oracle stagnation to process optimization. There are also included several profiles on leading solution providers who show particular efficiency with the Oracle ERP. These providers are prime examples of the innovation and collaboration possible with cloud-based financial automation software. Don’t wait in an inflexible, outdated business process. Download the free 2014 P2P for Oracle Report today.

Supplier-Initiated EIPP: A Vital Compenent to eInvoicing and ePayments

Beyond the basic automatio logo n of invoices and payments there is a necessity for a more specific technology that aids in streamlining the order-to-cash process. Originally, associated technologies usually served a supplemental purpose next to larger eInvoice and ePayment applications, but now, their importance is growing to a point of mainstream use. Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) solutions are one of technologies that are coming to the foreground in relevance and necessity due to the ways they maximize the use eInvoicing and ePayments to streamline the company’s workflow and the way they offer tremendous potential for users to better manage their financial supply chain and cash flow.

In PayStream Advisor’s most recent report, “Supplier-Initiated EIPP: Impacting the Entire Invoicing and Payment Lifecycle”, research has revealed that software developers have adopted a much broader perspective that encompasses the entire billing and payment continuum, increasing the importance of an integrated EIPP solution. By providing an in-depth overview of market trends and movements, this report identifies appropriate EIPP strategies and solutions that incorporate a holistic approach to supplier initiated invoicing and payments automaton—and it shows what they do to benefit those processes.

The report features results a from a collection of surveys focused on AP and AR automation, revealing trends and barriers in eInvoicing, ePayments, and EIPP solutions. Among the results, from price differences to common AP and AR goals, it is clear that many frequent processing issues could be aided by an effective EIPP solution. However, buyer adoption is a critical factor to the success of an EIPP Initiative, and marketplace acceptance is deterred by a lack of understanding and skepticism regarding its benefits.

The report shows th Fg1_ The BPA Galexy at the benefits of technologies that bridge process gaps are especially beneficial for suppliers. These suppliers are best served by solutions that support all types of invoice delivery and remittance capture, not just EIPP. EIPP solutions are needed to provide automated remittance processing capabilities that address all sources of remittance advice, and in order to leverage captured transaction intelligence, suppliers need EIPP solutions that contain embedded workflows for dunning, dispute resolution, and other tasks. Suppliers also need a variety of distribution channels for invoice delivery.

There are multiple billing and payment channels for today’s B2B transactions, and EIPP solutions serve as an effective way to provide easy access to these channels and streamline their use. While most organizations send invoices in emails, this method does not address the reciprocal payment from the customer associated with the invoice, causing organizations to miss an opportunity to leverage greater process efficiency. EIPP solutions fix this problem, helping to coordinate and incorporate the entire lifecycle of the invoice.

The market for supplier initiated and holistic EIPP is growing and will continue to gain momentum due to the demands of AP organizations and the need for greater AR efficiency and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) reduction. In effect, today’s providers often offer more than just a solitary EIPP solution, and as a result, there has been growth in the market for both EIPP and related billing and payment functionality. The report maps out the key features that providers often offer as part of their products and services.

In all, this report shows that EIPP solutions are not only vital for creating integrated processes, but integrated departments as well. While AP can transform itself into a profit center by expanding the credit card payments that generate rebates, AR can also reduce costs with the use of EIPP through increased productivity. More AP departments have launched supplier facing invoice portals than AR organizations have instituted EIPP solutions, but a synchronized implementation effort would have lasting effects on AP and AR interaction. Supplier initiated EIPP is one of the most proactive steps towards that connectivity, and PayStream Advisors believe this report is a vital tool for AR and AP professionals alike. Download a free copy here.

ADP’s Mission to Improve P2P

PayStream Advisors has been paying a lot of attention to the ways in which solutions work to streamline the P2P process, especially as we’ve researched for our recent Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) report and our upcoming eProcurement report. It is clear that the effectiveness of these solutions depend in large part on how well the eInvoicing part of the process is integrated with supplier payments. Only then can the process truly begin to move from being stagnate and error-prone to becoming productive and value-creating.

As a research and consulting firm, PayStream is constantly searching for financial automation ADP providers that meet our expectations of quality and innovation. ADP, a global provider of human capital management solutions, recently announced new enhancements to their Procure-to-Pay Solutions® platform that seem to meet the requirements of a truly adept and integrated P2P solution. These enhancements will bring users increased customization and improved control of their electronic invoicing and payments processes, as well as give buyers and supplier the opportunity to work more collaboratively by offering immediate access to critical data. Ultimately, this platform will feature all the vital parts of a P2P solution that bring better payment process efficiency.

Among ADP’s improvement, there is the enhanced supplier dashboard and analytics, which will help suppliers access relevant information and monitor trends and will bring greater visibility into approved and unapproved invoices, purchase orders, and disputes so suppliers can see critical data and take action. There will also be increased control and flexibility of invoice approvals, and customizable invoice coding display to make it easier for clients to configure coding fields and other data elements so that only the desired fields are visible to users. Multiple payment accounts functionality will allow clients to make payments to suppliers from more than one account, choose their preferred payment method, and better handle payment exceptions.

In the recent 2014 EIPP report, our research found that multiple payment options not only make the process easier for the supplier and buyer, but also encourage better supplier participation and communication, ultimately building stronger supplier and buyer relationships. In our upcoming 2014 eProcurement report, we also found that the improvement of one aspect of the process, like visibility into POs and active expenditure, can have rippling effects throughout the rest of the procure-to-pay life-cycle, and improve a company’s productivity in the future. ADP’s enhancements are all in areas of the P2P process that can majorly increase the efficiency of other areas—to focus on improving these parts of their solution is a best practice in the arena of solution design.

ADP plans to release several other enhancements to their P2P solution in the coming months. Their goal as they design their products is to create evolving integration capabilities and deliver comprehensive functionality. This is exactly what PayStream looks for when searching the market for the best products—the recognition of coordination as a fundamental aspect in financial solutions, and the ability to create that attribute within the provider’s own designs.

For more insight into the vital aspects that go into a truly comprehensive P2P solution, download your copy of the 2014 EIPP report today, and look out for the upcoming eProcurement report later this month.

Chrome River Begins Innovative Partnerships

PayStream Advisors partner, Chrome River, chrom has made two exciting partnerships over the last month, both with companies that will help broaden the solution provider’s global capabilities. Chrome River specializes in reporting and invoice management services, creating solutions that benefit the complete AP process automation and cost control. Their solutions uniquely combine the latest available internet technologies with the work of industry-leading implementation and support experts. With these new partnerships, they will be able to utilize their own progressive strategies with Western Union Business Solutions’ payment functions and Grasp Technologies’ business travel solutions.

In their partnership with Western Union Business Solutions, Chrome River will integrate their online expense reporting and invoice management with cross-border payment processing in order to provide customers with cost and operational efficiencies. This collaboration will bring Chrome River a secure, integrated payment processing solution to send and receive international payments and manage foreign currency exchange. In turn, Western Union Business Solutions customers will now have access to an easy-to-use, SaaS-based expense reporting and invoice processing solution that can accommodate complex functionalities and integration with ERP and financial systems.

“We are proud to be part of an ecosystem with Western Union Business Solutions that is focused on providing seamless solutions to our enterprise customers,” said Alan Rich, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chrome River. According to Mr. Rich, this partnership is in line with the company’s strategy to make travel easier and more efficient for their customers.

This strategy is one step closer to success after Chrome River’s most recent partnership with Grasp Technologies, a leading provider of travel data acquisition and analytics solutions. The companies’ collaboration will provide enriched booked and expense data for their customers, allowing for greater visibility and control across electronic travel management. Chrome River’s total picture of travel spend with Grasp’s powerful data-enrichment will give organizations a comprehensive view of employee travel activity and compliance, as well as the ability to discover opportunities for process improvement and cost savings.

From an independent perspective, this combination will be very effective for the travel industry. Carol Ann Salcito, the president of the travel consulting company, Management Alternatives, is especially optimistic. “Organizations struggle to get a comprehensive 360-degree view of all travel, whether it’s booked through their corporate systems or booked separately by travelers,” she stated. “This partnership between Chrome River and Grasp bridges that gap, and will in turn provide organizations with a solution to this long-standing problem.”

PayStream Advisors believes Chrome River is making smart business decisions in choosing partnerships from which they can continue to grow. We see this building-block strategy taking them very far in the travel automation industry—and beyond.

A Big Question: Is AP Pushing the Dirty Work Onto AR?

Last week, PayStream Advisors hosted a special webinar that explored the not-so-pleasant effects of AP automation by asking this question: is AP pushing the dirty work onto AR? Along with Henry Billtrust’s SVP of marketing, Mitch Rose, Henry Ijams led attendees through some of the top industry challenges and process bottlenecks, showing how an efficient accounts payable department can sometimes cause inefficiency in the accounts receivable department.

Henry and Mitch explained the ‘dirty work’ in a nutshell: by automating their process, AP is throwing more work at AR, creating significant inefficiencies in the AR process. With their changes towards electronic processing, AP departments are requiring their counterpart to also change, and when AR fails do so at the same rate, trouble begins. As they embrace more technology, AP departments are requesting more ways to receive bills, asking for more bills to be sent directly to AP systems, making payments through multiple channels, and sending “de-coupled” (naked) payments. For AR departments that are not up to date with the various automation solutions, these desires from AP are impacting efficiency, costs, payment times, and ultimately, AR performance.

From an AP perspective, automation is not a passing trend—it is the future of business processing. AP wants straight-through processing and they don’t want to deal with paper any longer—whether in the invoicing or the payment process. Check use for business payments is falling across the globe, and the use of electronic payments is increasing due to its benefits of savings, improved cash forecasting, and fraud control. One of the most popular methods of ePayment is electronic funds transfer (EFT). This method saves money and time, but it has challenges, especially for AR. Buyers have to maintain supplier bank details on their vender master records and suppliers find reconciliation difficult due to remittance information being sent separately from the payment. The processing of these de-coupled payments can be expensive for AR—the average processing cost is $9.79.

PayStream’s research shows that AP automation is growing in adoption by companies of all sizes. The inevitability of the situation is something that many AR managers must simply accept. However, bill management is the 2nd largest controllable expense of AR departments, and this trend towards AP automation might actually be the chance for AR managers to lower their operating expenses. If AR can grab this opportunity and adopt electronic processing themselves, the result will be greater savings and a greater ability to satisfy the AP needs of their customers.

How can AR departments do this? It is important for AR to understand a few things, starting with their customer’s expectations—all sized companies want efficiency and they want an easy way to do business with their suppliers. To meet these expectations, AR can provide their customers with choices, including different options for payment. By offering their customers many choices, they can take an active role in driving electronic billing.

To offer these choices, it is imperative that AR integrates with AP systems. There are many solutions that enable this integration, and providers are building these solutions with greater consideration of AR needs than ever before. There are common features that solutions offer, such as the use of easy and accessible collaborative portals that require varying factors of data and navigation. Automation solutions can also create cash application efficiency by accepting de-coupled payments.

Billtrust is one company that integrates AR with AP by building a relationship between the supplier and buyer on the AP System. Through their platform, invoice data is sent to Billtrust and then distributed to the appropriate system, sending alerts from AP directly to the supplier. Billtrust provides a range of paper and electronic invoice presentment channels and they are able to integrate into leading AP systems such as Ariba, OB10, Avid Xchange. They have best-in-breed integrated presentment and payment portals and they support linkage with Open Scan to support Cash Application across payment methods. Using a solution provider like Billtrust is a huge, proactive way that AR departments can take charge of the changes in business processing—instead of being stuck in a ‘dirty’ and complicated situation.

Ultimately, technology saves money and creates accuracy. Despite the difficulties that can come with it for AR departments, automated processing is here to stay. However, instead of looking at the negative effects this disconnect between AP and AR can cause, AR can take this chance to move towards change. The dirty work shows up when AP throws more work at AR, but instead of seeing resulting inefficiencies, AR departments can use this mess as the inspiration to create significant change and efficiency in the AR process.

About Henry Ijams:
Mr. Ijams’ 28 years of experience focuses on trends and technologies in financial operations automation including strategies regarding the automation and benchmarking of Purchasing and Payables processes. Through PayStream Advisors, Mr. Ijams consults with domestic and international organizations that want to take advantage of leading practices and automation solutions.

About Mitch Rose:
Mr. Rose is responsible for the branding, lead generation and product marketing activity at Billtrust. Through the course of Mitch’s professional career he has created breakthrough marketing campaigns, battled off major competitive threats, and led teams in the development of industry leading new products.

PayStream’s Newest Report: AP and Working Capital

PayStream Advisor’s most recent research release, the 2014 Accounts Payable (AP) and Working Capital Report, is one that shouldn’t be missed, especially by business professionals and executives. Why? This report explores the possibilities of something many companies feel they will never see—revenues from early payments. These revenues, gained from early payment discounts, are often unobtainable due to AP departments’ inability to process and approve invoices quickly. However, this report sets out to show that there are alternatives to missed discounts, and that utilizing the right accounts payable practices should be not only an AP, IT, and operations issue, but a strategic priority for treasurers and CFOs.

The report shows that Dynamic Discount Management (DDM) solutions allow annual returns as high as 36% on available cash. DDM gives buyers and suppliers the ability to propose changeable discounts terms through a sliding scale discount (SSD) that decreases the discount with time, creating incentives to pay quickly. While collaborative automation solutions play a large role in paying invoices early, the funds that enable a SSD come from the buyers’ working capital. The report shows many companies don’t feel that they have enough access to this capital, or that the risk involved is too high to be worth the discount, but increased interest from 3rd-party financers has made this a viable and low-risk option.

In the past, suppliers were often the only ones offering discounts, and due to the low response from buyers, these could be fruitless efforts. However, DDM solutions have the ability to pick buyers up off the side-lines of discount capture and turn them into proactive members in the P2P process, offering and setting discount terms themselves, and collaborating with their suppliers to the benefit of both parties. Current DDM adoption is climbing at a 63 percent annual growth rate among companies, and though there is fear of low supplier adoption to DDM solutions, supplier onboarding techniques like free self-service supplier portals are reducing this concern.

The report shows another barrier keeping companies from utilizing their Dynamic Discount capabilities is the doubt of high ROI. However, tools like electronic payments and PayStream’s Perfect Payment Index (PPI) enable buyers to take full advantage of early payments. Electronic payments speed up the process, reduce processing costs, and help prevent fraud. The PPI tool show companies how they can utilize DDM and electronic payments to make the perfect payment—one that is paid on time, uses the cheapest payment method, and achieves the highest possible discount.

PayStream’s 2014 Accounts Payable and Working Capital Report details how companies can utilize tools like the PPI to gain all the possibilities of discount capture. The report also analyzes current market trends and advancements being made in DDM solutions, and included in the report are several detailed profiles of the market’s leading providers of AP automation and DDM solutions. In order to learn how to use their working capital to produce revenues, growth, and success for their companies, PayStream Advisors strongly urges AP and business professionals of all levels to download their free copy of the AP & Working Capital Report today.

Business Process Outsourcing Leaders Join Forces

BancTec, a global leader in business process outsourcing has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by one of HandsOn³(“HandsOn”) affiliated funds, The Dataforce Group. HandsOn is a global buyout manager based in Santa Monica, CA; this is consistent with their strategy of acquiring leading global BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) companies and transforming them into platform-enabled service providers that leverage globally positioned resources. In their press release announcing this agreement, HandsOn partner Jim Reynolds said, “This acquisition allows us to leverage our expertise and accomplishments by combining the strengths of Dataforce Group with BancTec to address the needs of our valued customers within our expanded marketplace.”

Dataforce Group is also a global provider of BPO services to enterprise level clients in the telecommunication, healthcare, charity, government, and auto and health insurance industries. Key services currently offered by Dataforce include AR Management, Document Receivables Management, and Customer Interaction Management. When combined with the key services offered by BancTec such AP Automation, Payment Processing, and others it is clear that these organizations will compliment each other well. Together they stand to offer a global BPO solution unlike any other on the market. PayStream Advisors is very excited to see what this acquisition will mean for both BancTec, Dataforce Group, and the BPO market.

The key leadership and management teams of BancTec will remain in place and play a vital role in the growth of the newly merged organization. Depending on the agreement of terms, closing conditions, and approval of stockholders, the transition should be complete by the end of April.

Tweets