Category Archives: Supply Chain

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.

PayStream 2014 Recap

It’s been an impressive year at PayStream Advisors. Among our 2014 developments and achievements, we published 22 research reports—many of which explore new territory that includes Human Resource Management, VAT compliance in Latin America, Budgeting and Forecasting solutions, and more. We welcomed 125 business professionals to this year’s summit, INNOVATE 2014. We saw our Senior Analysts attend over 25 industry conferences from London to San Diego. We launched the exciting P2P Academy, which is now offered online via a self-study course.

In all, we’ve been working hard to broaden and enhance our educational offerings for our readers. The amazing AP, Procurement, and P2P automation trends that have been evident in businesses and industries throughout the world have inspired much of these improvements.

Among these trends, there has been a great increase in global eInvoicing and eProcurement initiatives. While Latin America has been the leader in national eInvoicing adoption for several years now, much of the rest of the world is starting to catch up in back-office automation. For example, Kenya adopted a national eProcurement system in an effort to bring the use of public money under greater transparency and accountability. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, among other Middle Eastern countries, are moving towards more uniform eInvoicing initiatives. The EU has been identifying issues with their current tax and trade systems, and is moving to make eInvoicing more appealing and accessible in order to correct these problems.

This past year has also seen more global movement to provide small to medium-sized enterprises with access to eInvoicing and working capital optimization programs. President Obama passed the second version of the Supplier Pay Initiative to promote expedited payments from large corporations to their smaller vendors. The UK launched several initiatives to spur small business growth, including revamped VAT tax returns and more releases of educational market material on small business financing. GT Nexus, IFC, and Levi Strauss & Co (LS&Co) have partnered to create a new supply chain finance program that provides financial incentives for garment suppliers in developing countries.

Other vendors have taken note of SME initiatives and the widening middle market—in response they have also been creating unique financing programs and solutions. To complement SupplierPay, Taulia Inc. launched the Early Payment Quick Start Initiative, a program that encourages and simplifies early payment financing. TradeShift has also taken a stand to help the small and big business connection with their expansive supplier onboarding techniques. PayPal’s new Working Capital will offer cash-advances for smaller companies who cannot as easily utilize bank loans and lending services.

There were many other instances when software providers, organizations, and governments took great steps towards better understanding automation possibilities this year, and towards making room for more widespread and optimized adoption (readers are encouraged to browse 2014 posts from our blog, PayStream Voices, for more). We are looking forward to 2015, and we are confident that it will bring us even greater and more inspirational P2P innovation.

PayStream Briefing: Tungsten Network’s Early Payment

A PayStream Partner, Tungsten Network, recently announced a very interesting new functionality with their invoice financing services—they have extended it to include Tungsten Early Payment. This feature offers control to suppliers that is both simple and innovative, enabling them to determine when they receive invoice payments.

Tungsten Early Payment pays suppliers for invoices when they need it most. With this solution, suppliers can select the invoice and payment date that suits their working capital needs, and Tungsten will pay the invoice amount, minus a discount charge. This is designed to be an alternative to traditional forms of bank finance, and its focus is on low costs and ease of use.

PayStream recognizes this solution as one more in a long string of dynamic offerings that have recently emerged on the financial automation market. These offerings share the same focus towards improving buyer and supplier control, prioritizing and optimizing approvals, and building the health of the supply chain.

Working capital optimization and Supply Chain Financing (SCF) have been especially important in our recent research. As we prepared for our 2014 Global eInvoicing report, we found that the development of SCF options is increasing around the world, and that the availability of these features in conjunction with eInvoicing networks is largely motivating global eInvoicing adoption. One particularly interesting initiative was seen from GT Nexus, IFC, and Levi Strauss & Co (LS&Co)—these companies have partnered to create a new supply chain finance program, the Global Trade Supplier Finance initiative. This program provides financial incentives for garment suppliers in developing countries, and ultimately works to upgrade environmental, health and safety, and labor standards.

Like GT Nexus, IFC, and LS&Co, Tungsten Network is also known for their focus on improving environmental conditions along with their financing options. This year, they were once again recognized for their operations’ environmental best practices with their eighth Green Apple Award. This is no surprise, as Tungsten reports they have to date saved more than 203 million sheets of paper, or 24,375 trees, as well as 5.8 million kilowatts of energy – enough to run the average home for 717 years.

Tungsten Early Payment is now live in the UK and US. We are excited to watch the success of their initiative, and to see how working capital enhancements continue to increase in the months and years to come. For more information on SCF and eInvoicing initiatives around the world, be sure to attend our free upcoming webinar on Global eInvoicing.

2014 Supplier Network Management Report: PayStream Research Release

For effective trade, a company needs the right trading partners, and to optimize trade, a company needs healthy trading relationships. However, for growing companies, this can be a very difficult and strenuous task. In PayStream Advisors’ latest research release, the 2014 Supplier Network Management report, we give an insightful overview of a very valuable technology that simplifies, controls, and optimizes an unavoidable and often overwhelming business process.

Many companies have hundreds or even thousands of trading partners across their organization, leading to significant business risk and financial cost when supplier data is inaccurate or not maintained. In addition, these companies struggle with locating the best suppliers, keeping compliant and up-to-date supplier information, and negotiating the best agreements—all vital components of effectively managing business commerce.

The keys to successfully managing an extensive supplier base and the mountain of associated information lie in supplier management and supplier network management (SNM) solutions. This technology is designed to extract more value from inbound value chains and reduce the risks and total costs of procurement while increasing innovation. SNM solutions maximize the value of supplier relationships by ensuring quality throughout the supplier relationship lifecycle.

Our market analysis report targets organizations that are looking for a solution to seamlessly manage and maintain relationships with suppliers. Using data collected from surveys of hundreds of financial professionals, our research shows current trends in B2B supply chain technology, as well as supply chain and supplier network software usage.

This report explores the various functionalities of SNM solutions that bring visibility and control into the supplier management process, including vendor portals, interactive dashboards, dispute resolution, eInvoicing, contract and payment management, robust reporting and analytics, and more. It also provides guidelines for organizations moving toward selecting an SNM software provider, and several profiles of leading SNM technology developers.

This valuable release is ideal for any organization looking to improve their trading relationships, reduce costs, and gain greater business security. Download your free copy of the 2014 Supplier Network Management report today.

Automating P2P for SMEs Report: Leveling the Field for Business Process Automation

For years, small and medium-sized enterprises have felt excluded from business process publisherlogo.ncp automation because of technology-intensive setup requirements and high costs. While large corporations with bigger budgets have achieved the efficiency and productivity of financial software, the same benefits have been just out reach for their smaller competitors. However, the rise of cloud-based solutions and more flexible application design is leveling the playing field for P2P technology adoption.

With its strong focus on one of most important parts of the global business sphere, PayStream’s newest research report, Automating P2P for SMEs, is one of our most relevant and useful publications to date. Because we realize that the success of SMEs is interchangeable with the health of the worldwide economy, we have crafted this report to serve as high-level guide for SMEs looking to leveraging today’s affordable and versatile P2P solutions.

Survey results have revealed that many organizations hesitate to employ business process automation because of prevailing stigmas against its relevance for smaller companies—they have believed that the risks in time and expense of implementing these solutions are greater than the reward. However, PayStream has found this belief to be outdated and harmful for SMEs’ success, and that the pains that small business have dealt with for years can be eliminated quickly and at affordable costs. What’s more, current software has also been developed to be scalable, ensuring that the rapid growth SMEs often experience can be effectively managed and sustained.

Research in this report highlights major pain points for SME business processes, and details the many ways current technology providers have designed their offerings to solve these problems quickly and at a great value. In addition, this report reveals that SMEs are actually fundamentally and structural designed to easily adopt and implement P2P solutions, and that the barriers of costs and high-tech implementation are no longer factors in today’s market.

Because cost is especially important for organizations operating on the margin, this report also contains SME Best Practices to guide companies through choosing and implementing the solution with the least risk and the quickest ROI. In addition, the report includes profiles of leading solution providers who have designed their offerings to be scalable, customizable, and affordable—perfect for SMEs. PayStream encourages professionals in SME procure-to-pay to give their organizations a market-boost by downloading a free copy of the Automating P2P for SMEs Report today.

CloudTrade, Creativity, and an AP Transformation

PayStream Advisors recently learned of an interesting case study released by CloudTrade timthumb.php Network, an eInvoicing platform provider. The study focuses on their recent success in transforming the eInvoicing process of Alpscontrols.com, an online-only source of control products for HVAC, building automation, and lighting control. CloudTrade’s techniques were so efficient in automating the web-company’s procedure, the major backlog of invoices was eliminated only three weeks after implementation.

For Alpscontrols.com, CloudTrade’s software worked so well due to its unique set-up and capabilities. A traditional e-invoicing solution wasn’t the best choice for the web-company, as many of their suppliers sent only PDF invoices; they wanted to avoid extracting the data from these PDFs and re-typing the information into their finance system. They chose to use CloudTrade’s service because it allows suppliers to email PDF invoices, mapping the invoice data carried to an eInvoice structure with no OCR and with complete data accuracy. The implementation was very successful: 90% of Alpscontrols.com’s suppliers now work with the new system for XML or PDF invoicing automation, and the transition was virtually painless due to the software’s ease of use.

A relatively young company, CloudTrade’s business emphasis is very modern: they are largely focused on removing barriers between suppliers and buyers. This attitude reflects the same growing global movement towards improving supplier-buyer connectivity that PayStream has recently seen throughout industry and government policies and in software development. CloudTrade creates their software with the goal of moving the maximum number of trading partners onto electronic document delivery in the shortest possible time frame, all without disrupting the supply chain. Their service removes technical, processing, and commercial barriers that can come with more traditional systems, and their eInvoicing network was built with features that encourage suppliers to move away from paper: it is free for suppliers, easy-to-use, and non-disruptive.

These techniques worked wonders for Alpscontrols.com, for which the smooth changeover and the minor impact on suppliers had great effects. This story of CloudTrade’s streamlining an otherwise lengthy and complicated process sets their network apart in quality, and marks them as a good example of a P2P innovator. PayStream believes that this company is one to watch in the coming years. Their diverse offerings may be just what the industry needs to help transform the supply-chain.

For more stories of P2P Innovators like CloudTrade and of AP process transformations like this one, register for this year’s PayStream Summit conference in San Antonio, Texas. Held on the city’s beautiful and famous Riverwalk, Innovate 2014 will feature two days of insightful and educational sessions with key business leaders who have been pioneers in the field of AP and P2P Innovation.

Global Support Spreads for SMEs

In the past week, PayPal has announced the launch of a new lending service for small and medium-sized businesses in the UK. This initiative, scheduled to start rolling in August, follows a similar program begun and successfully run in North America last September. PayPal’s Working Capital will offer cash-advances for smaller companies who cannot as easily utilize bank loans and lending services.

This alternative financing option cuts through several hoops for which SMEs often don’t have the paypal time or money by replacing credit checks with existing sales histories, requiring only one fixed fee, and allowing a flexible and easy repayment program. PayPal has shown great interest in small businesses in that past—they’ve launched several education campaigns to help SMEs grow online. According to the Managing Director of PayPal UK, Cameron McLean, programs like Working Capital are essential because “small businesses are the lifeblood of the British economy.”

The attitude that SMEs are important in every economy is one that PayStream Advisors’ research has recently seen resonate throughout global markets, industries, and governments. In the world-wide economic difficulties over the last several years, SMEs have arguably suffered the most of the business sphere. Now, corporate and government leaders around the globe are taking initiatives to restore the vitality of this essential part of the financial eco-system.

obama Much of the action to help SMEs has revolved around making the purchase-to-payment process easier and faster. In North America, President Obama’s recent SupplierPay initiative has created partnerships between the federal government and several larger corporations to promote expedited payments to their smaller vendors, allowing those small companies to free up more working capital to grow their business and hire more workers. The UK has also launched several initiatives to spur small business growth over the past two years, including revamped VAT tax returns and more releases of educational market material on small business financing, such as the newly published Euro Banking Association (EBA) guide to the European supply chain finance market.

In response to government steps taken towards a more balanced trade market, solution providers have also enhanced their offerings with SME’s in mind. To complement SupplierPay, Taulia Inc. launched the Early Payment Quick Start Initiative, a program that encourages and simplifies early payment financing. TradeShift has also taken a stand to help the small and big business connection, both literally with their expansive supplier onboarding techniques, and vocally. In a recent interview on the business news show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Tradeshift CEO, Christian Lanng discussed the importance of eliminating frequent late payments between big buyers and little suppliers to help the supply-chain and the economy as a whole.

PayStream’s research has found this increased focus on supply-chain financing in several more software companies, and from several more important global voices. We believe this focus on supply-chain financing is not simply a trend, but one that will increase as the rest of the world realizes the importance of maintaining a healthy SME eco-system. For more insight into the SME world and how solutions are working to create healthy performance in that world, look out for PayStream’s upcoming research report on automating payables for SMEs this Q4.

The Supply-Chain Gets a Boost with Obama’s SupplierPay Initiative

This past Friday, the White House launched a new initiative to promote growth in the supply-chain, especially for small companies. As part of his Year of Action, President Obama announced the obamasmallbusiness3 creation of SupplierPay, a new partnership with the private sector that will strengthen communication between large companies and their smaller suppliers. SupplierPay is a renewal and counterpart of the Federal Government’s QuickPay Initiative and it will involve commitment from larger corporations to expedite their payments to smaller vendors, allowing those companies to free up more working capital to grow their business and hire more workers.

So far, 26 major U.S. and multinational companies have committed to the initiative and agreed to sign the SupplierPay pledge, including Coca-Cola, IBM, and Apple. The pledge ultimately requires that the companies pay their contractors within 15 days of a completed sale or service, and it also requires the companies to follow certain guidelines that work towards closing the marketplace gap in small business lending. These include sharing best practices in order to encourage wider support, and implementing solutions that fully consider smaller suppliers’ needs and potential benefits. In addition to paying early, these corporations are committing to utilizing financial solutions that enable small suppliers to access working capital at a lower cost.

In response to SupplierPay, Taulia Inc., a PayStream partner and market leader in supplier financing solutions, has launched the Early Payment Quick Start Initiative. The company praised the Obama Administration for addressing this critical small-business sector problem, and created Quick Start to support the new program.

“So many American small businesses are closing their doors simply because of poor cash flow,” said Bertram Meyer, Taulia CEO. “Since 2008, small businesses have faced an increasingly difficult borrowing environment when they could have received early payments on their approved invoices at much more favorable rates. We applaud the White House SupplierPay initiative, which is addressing this vital issue that is affecting American businesses.”

Several of the companies that have signed the SupplierPay pledge have already chosen Taulia as their early payment provider. For those companies and for new customers, Quick Start will guarantee a successful early payment financing program up and running within 100 days, assurance that 100% of invoices will be offered for early payment, and full supplier eligibility for early payments, regardless of size, spend, or credit worthiness. Taulia has already provided small suppliers with over $75 billion in early payment financing in collaboration with large corporations, and Quick Start will be sure to grow and streamline that success.

With the SupplierPay Initiative, the White House reveals a full awareness of the value of suppler-buyer collaboration and unity. “For the larger companies, joining SupplierPay demonstrates a recognition that a healthy supply chain is good for business,” the White House said in a statement. “For the small business suppliers, benefiting from SupplierPay means having more capital to invest in new opportunities, new equipment, and new hiring.”

PayStream is happy to see this teamwork between the Federal Government, today’s business leaders, and innovative solution providers. We hope that the result of these relationships will be beneficial for small businesses and the U.S. economy alike.

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.

Tradeshift on Lou Dobbs Tonight

PayStream Advisors was very excited to see Tradeshift CEO, Christian Lanng, on the business news show, Lou Dobbs Tonight. Lanng spoke with Dobbs about the Tradeshift platform and its ability to speed up payment processes between larger companies and their smaller supply chains. As a company, Tradeshift is trying to solve the problem of frequent late payments between these big buyers and little suppliers. According to Lanng, more than $16 Trillion globally is locked up in late payments from large companies with big, complicated processes. Small companies are not getting paid and because of this, they can’t hire the next employee, can’t get access to finance, and go bankrupt in the thousands, impacting economic growth.

How does Tradeshift specifically prevent late payments from strangling these small businesses? In the interview, Lanng explained how Tradeshift uses business transaction software to automate “the whole process between large businesses and small suppliers globally, making the actions of the supply chain much more efficient.” Their solutions give companies all the data they need to get access to better credit and finance, and to get paid faster.

Dobbs wondered whether the large buyers would be opposed to any of this automation, asking Lanng how much big companies relied on lag time. Lanng brought it back to the big picture, pointing out that though large companies used this method to conserve cash flow, it was ultimately more strategic to automate the processes. “You’re hurting your supply chain and your suppliers can’t grow. If they can’t grow, you don’t get cheaper products or cheaper prices.”

Dobbs also brought up Tradeshift’s movements over the past few years. From a “cold garage” in Denmark, Tradeshift has grown into a global company with over 200 employees in five countries. They set up most recently in Silicon Valley, and Lanng says that even though the Valley is the tech capital of the world and an extremely competitive environment, Tradeshift thrives and stays sharp off the competition. For them, staying sharp is important as they continue to grow in what they consider to be the last frontier of cloud-based business software: supply-chain processes.

PayStream feels this was a wonderful opportunity for Tradeshift, and we believe Christian Lanng did a great job in showing the company’s mission and drive. Check out the rest of their Lou Dobbs Tonight interview here.

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