For businesses, cash is king. But a new threat, that of operational uncertainty and back-office opacity, is prowling around the kingdom’s perimeter.
“Small businesses, fundamentally, just want control of their business,” Eliot Buchanan, president of Priority Tech Ventures, told PYMNTS. “Having control over your business is key to survival, and that control is often undermined when you lack visibility into your cash flow.”
Whether it’s forecasting, managing expenses or invoicing, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often struggle with the processes that larger corporations have optimized.
This leads to a situation where many SMBs operate without a clear picture of their current financial health. They may not know how much cash they have on hand, or they may have little foresight about when they could run out of money. This lack of clarity creates significant operational risks, particularly when paired with the common issue of delayed payments from clients.
“Business owners often get paid late or last,” Buchanan explained, underscoring a challenge that further disrupts cash flow predictability.
Still, the situation is far from hopeless. Buchanan stressed that integrated payment and banking systems, which are often underused, provide solutions that can help businesses streamline their operations, improve cash flow visibility and scale more efficiently.
Traditional methods of cash management often involve fragmented systems, where financial data exists across multiple platforms. This fragmentation can lead to inaccuracies, delays and inefficiencies — problems that an integrated system can resolve by centralizing all financial transactions into one place.
“With traditional systems, you’re always a step behind,” Buchanan said, noting that SMBs on average only have about 30 days’ worth of cash on hand. In such a scenario, a delay could prove fatal for a business.
Integrated systems, by contrast, offer the kind of visibility that allows business owners to get ahead of potential problems and optimize their cash flow in real time. This helps position integrated systems as a game-changer for SMBs looking to build resilience and gain control over their financial operations.
Buchanan emphasized the ability of integrated systems to streamline financial data and provide real-time visibility.
“Integrated systems consolidate transactions into a single unified view,” he said. This unified view offers business owners a more accurate and up-to-date understanding of their financial situation, allowing them to make proactive decisions rather than reactively scrambling to address cash flow issues.
“These systems don’t just show you what’s happening today — they help you understand the trends that are going to affect your business tomorrow,” Buchanan added.
By offering SMBs a better understanding of seasonal fluctuations and customer payment trends, integrated platforms help business owners make more informed decisions about how to manage their working capital.
Many SMBs, while experts in their specific industries, lack the financial tools and insights necessary to predict cash flow accurately. With the help of integrated banking platforms, they can gain access to predictive analytics that help forecast incoming and outgoing payments, giving them more control over their financial future.
Despite the clear benefits, many SMBs still hesitate to adopt integrated payment systems, often due to perceived complexity or cost. Buchanan acknowledged that these concerns are valid but said the right solutions are designed to be simple, user-friendly and scalable to the size and needs of an SMB.
“The best systems aren’t necessarily the ones that scale up — they scale down,” he said. This means providing SMBs with tailored solutions that are easy to implement and understand, rather than overwhelming them with enterprise-level software designed for much larger companies.
Digital financial literacy is another barrier, as many SMBs lack the expertise to fully leverage these tools. To overcome this, Buchanan advocates for a focus on simplicity and transparency, both in terms of system design and pricing.
“SMBs want control, and part of that control is understanding exactly what a system does and how much it’s going to cost,” he said.
When it comes to the role of education, real-time payments are another area where Buchanan believes SMBs could be better targeted, noting that SMBs may not understand the benefits of real-time payments because they are often explained in terms of technical jargon rather than practical impact.
“It’s about immediacy,” Buchanan said. “Real-time payments mean you can get paid faster — on Wednesday instead of Friday — which could be the difference between making payroll and taking out a line of credit.”
The key is to frame real-time payments not as a shiny new technology but as a practical solution to immediate business challenges, like reducing the lag between invoicing and payment receipt.
Looking ahead, Buchanan sees artificial intelligence (AI) as a key innovation that could further help SMBs optimize their operations. While AI is often presented as another shiny buzzword, Buchanan believes that its real value lies in automating tasks that distract business owners from running their business. Customer service, sales and outbound marketing are prime examples of areas where AI could reduce costs and improve efficiency.
“Time is the biggest currency an SMB has,” Buchanan said, adding that AI can free up time for business owners by handling tasks that require less precision but are still essential to daily operations.
“The right systems don’t just solve today’s problems — they help businesses prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities,” he added.
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