Attributes of a High-Performance Supplier Payments Solution

Businesses are demanding more from finance professionals.

Businesses expect CFOs, treasurers, and AP leaders to help guide the business through these tough times.

It’s no surprise that finance professionals are looking to automation for help.

 

Automating and optimizing processes such as invoice processing and supplier payments can provide the smart insights, efficiencies, and financial controls that a business needs in times like these.

But those benefits will remain out of reach to finance professionals who choose the wrong solution or choose not to optimize what they currently have in place.

 

What to look for in a supplier payment solution

To ensure that the supplier payments solution you choose will help your department achieve optimum results, here are four attributes of a high-performance supplier payment solution:

1. Maximum card rebates.

Card rebates are a game-changer for AP. They can offset an AP department’s overhead and return money to the business. However, the half-hearted approach that most banks and electronic payment solutions providers use to drive card participation produces mediocre results. And your AP staff has better things to do than call and e-mail suppliers about receiving card payments.

High-performance supplier payment solutions ensure you don’t leave money on the table. These solutions use proprietary technology and best practices to uncover opportunities to convert suppliers to cards. Payments are dynamically routed and optimized for optimum card participation. The technology also makes it easy for suppliers to receive card payments. It meets suppliers where they are. Suppliers are no longer burdened with new forms to sign or processes to implement.

Additionally, these solutions continuously look for opportunities to increase card participation. This is how high-performance supplier payment solutions achieve card participation rates of 60 percent, translating into rebate revenues several times higher than legacy card programs.

2. Supplier friendly.

Strong supplier relationships are vital to the growth of a business. Yet many electronic payment solutions providers can make things hard on your suppliers. Suppliers may have to fill out a lot of paperwork to receive card payments, even if they already accept them. They may have to change their internal processes. Suppliers may not get paid on time. They may not get all the remittance details they need to post your payments to their accounts receivable system.

High-performance supplier payment solutions are supplier-friendly. The technology can automatically determine each supplier’s payment terms and preferred payment method. Suppliers don’t have to fill out paperwork, take time out of their busy days to speak with someone on the phone, or change their existing processes to receive card payments. In fact, there is less chance that a supplier’s payment will be wrong.

3. Streamlined processes.

Every AP professional knows paying suppliers with a paper check is a headache. What’s not as obvious is how cumbersome and unnecessarily complex it can be to pay suppliers with some electronic payment solutions. Many of these systems require you to manually track payment preferences and due dates. Some require you to log into multiple portals to make different types of payments. Others require you to generate and send remittance advice letters manually. Yet others force you to pull together reports for each payment type for reconciliation.

High-performance supplier payment solutions digitize and simplify the process of paying suppliers. The technology can deploy fast without disrupting your existing systems or processes. Robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning (ML) ensure suppliers are paid on time and accurately. A single platform manages all payments. Suppliers automatically receive rich remittance details generated and transmitted to them automatically. And transactions are automatically reconciled in real-time.

4. No hidden costs.

Escaping the high costs of paper checks is one of the most compelling benefits of paying suppliers electronically. But many electronic payment solutions come with out-of-pocket expenses of their own – often buried in the fine print.

High-performance supplier payment solutions don’t require AP departments to pay any operating or capital expenses or install software. This is made possible by the industry-leading card participation and rebates that high-performance supplier payment solutions achieve.

Each of these attributes is compelling.

Together, they generate high performance in accounts payable.

 

What are the benefits of paying suppliers electronically?

Paying suppliers electronically can empower an AP department to improve effectiveness, generate new profits from supplier payments, and increase payment security. However, AP departments cannot achieve optimum results from electronic payments without a high-performance supplier payment solution.

By choosing a solution that maximizes card rebates, is supplier-friendly, streamlines processes, and doesn’t include hidden costs, AP departments will be on their way to becoming fully powered.

 

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Edenred Pay, an Edenred Company, is the global leader in invoice-to-pay automation. Our integrated platform connects businesses with suppliers, ERPs, banks, FinTechs, and payment rails to automate, optimize, and monetize the entire B2B payments lifecycle – from invoice receipt through payment reconciliation. Edenred Pay’s efficient, integrated solutions create a frictionless process and help deliver value to the enterprise by enhancing visibility and monetizing AP.

Visit www.edenredpay.com or contact us to learn more.