Payments Automation ‘Here to Stay’ as Critical Part of Corporate Belt-Tightening

Even when the economy ultimately improves, the corporate belt-tightening trend looks set to stick around.

This is as cost-savings and waste reduction really never go out of style.

“Companies are running as lean as possible — and that’s something we’re seeing, increasingly, in our customer base,” Steve Lindeman, chief customer officer at Billtrust, told PYMNTS in a recent interview.

While the renewed urgency to justify every dime spent and to see a prompt return on investment with that spending has its roots in the pandemic, Lindeman noted there was still a scramble to backfill for resources as many workers could no longer come into the office to work.

“This has not backed off,” he said, “and having a solution and a model that … allows them to pick up as much of the heavy [operational] lifting is key.”

Complexity in the Mix

And against the backdrop of macro uncertainty, companies can find some control over and visibility into cash flow as they automate payments. Complexity reigns, especially in business-to-business (B2B) payments, where receiving payments from one customer may have hundreds of individual transactions tied to one account.

Using traditional back-end workflows and processes, said Lindeman, becomes onerous:

“If your job is to split all that out, it takes time, people and resources,” he said, adding that whenever humans are involved with such intensive efforts, the company must carry the additional costs (in time and money).

But with automation, those components, data and, critically, payments can be “flowed in … and you’ll never have to ‘touch’ it manually.”

Order-to-cash solutions, he said, can help firms understand where they are exposed to various risks and uncertainties and address those pain points. Those tech-enabled solutions also can give executives insight into industry-wide best practices and benchmarks as invoicing and payments and a granular view of business division and subdivision activities are tied together.

“They want to be able to implement those best practices, as opposed to just switching to a solution but doing things the same old way,” Lindeman said. “And your operations can take advantage of the cash being in the right spot.

“It’s becoming ever-more important to get money into your account and access to it because you need that capital to operate your business,” he told PYMNTS.

Looking ahead, the double whammy of COVID and inflation will do much to spur companies to automate their everyday activities. The “holdouts” that were previously resistant to technological change are likely to reexamine that reluctance in a challenging economic environment, said Lindeman, adding Billtrust follows up after six months to make sure a customer is getting the ROI that was originally discussed.

The shift toward automation is pronounced in smokestack verticals such as transportation, heavy equipment and medical industries. The pivot is also significant among midmarket firms that have yet to have the critical mass to have in-house tools and IT departments to handle complex payment flows.

“These firms want to have one vendor that can be held accountable to the whole process — and to make sure that it all works,” Lindeman said.