Analyst Steve Murphy, the Director of the Commercial and Enterprise Payments advisory service at Mercator Advisory Group, pulls out five key takeaways from his recently published b2b document titled – Procure-to-Pay Convergence: Market Review and Vendor Comparison.
1) Vendors with procure-to-pay functionality should consider the customer experience (e.g., single access to all services)
2) Invoice discounting has become ubiquitous – dynamic discounting very soon will be as well
3) Alternative financing capabilities are in demand, especially approved payables (reverse factoring) and receivables financing tools
4) Financial Institutions should improve their awareness of the space and consider partnerships – especially e-procurement where the use of virtual cards is a strong fit
5) Industrial companies should review their cash cycle processes and determine the best approach to digitize, end to end systems are now available