Tag Archives: DDM

PayStream’s Newest Report: AP & 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 PayShttps://paystreamadvisors.com/paystream-voices/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/PPIgraph.pngtream’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.

Taulia Partners with Top Image Solutions

In a recent meeting between Paystream Advisors and Taulia, we asked the solutions provider iftaulia_logo they could give us one thing that best expressed the company’s goals. They gave us two: Scale and Success. Why? Because Taulia believes the words are codependent: they will only be a successful company if they can gain scale and onboard the vast majority of suppliers.

TiS_logoJudging by their latest activity in the financial solutions market, they are taking great measures to reach that vast majority. A recent partnership with Top Image Systems, an ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and BPM (Business Process Management) solution and MIP (Mobile Imaging Platform) provider, has widened Taulia’s supplier base substantially. The terms of the partnership have both companies reselling each other’s financial process solutions worldwide to their respective installed bases, as well as to new customers.

Taulia’s software solutions are very focused on B2B collaboration, and their platforms contain many unique features to make this connection seamless and comfortable. Their Enhanced Discounting solution, which allows organizations to more efficiently capture early payment discounts, only pushes the company further toward their goal of unifying the supplier and buyer. Their solutions’ features are not the only evidence of their commitment to this unification- their own website is full of material showing the value they place in creating platforms accessible to buyers and inviting to suppliers, from their insightful blog to their unique and impressive web videos. Such a customer-driven business focus will only be beneficial with TIS’ management solutions.

It is no wonder that Taulia and TIS already have a big joint customer, Europe’s largest international bottler. Because of the partnership, this new customer will be able to combine the use of TIS’ eFLOW® Invoice for SAP while also integrating Taulia’s financial solutions for working capital solutions in its financial supply chain. Paystream Advisors is confident that only great things will come out of this venture.

Capturing Early Payment Discounts

Early-payment discounts – the old math-class calculation of “if Company A buys $100 of merchandise from Company B on terms of 2/10, net 30, what will Company A pay for the merchandise if it pays one week after purchase?” – seemed destined for the history books. The “Company As” of the world simply couldn’t process their invoices by hand fast enough to beat that “all-or-nothing” 10- day deadline. And the “Company Bs” of the world stopped offering them because customers were taking discounts to which they weren’t entitled.

Harnessing the efficiencies of eInvoicing, Dynamic Discount Management (DDM), and the use of a sliding scale to optimize cash management has brought new life into a once dilapidated practice. In our annual eInvoicing Management Surveys, PayStream has seen an increasing amount of AP professionals report that they are capturing 100 percent of offered discounts in our annual eInvoicing Management Surveys. Even more are capturing some discounts and nearly all are moving DDM to the top of their priorities for 2014.  This growth can be attributed to innovations in AP software designed to capture these discounts and its growing adoption.

PayStream Advisors is currently finalizing sponsorship for the 2014 report titled “AP & Working Capital: Early Discount Payment Opportunities.” The report will benchmark the leading solution providers in the DDM realm and will provide AP Managers, CFOs, and other decision-makers with a valuable guide to the tools they need to increase revenues from discounts.