All-in-one payment solutions can revolutionize A/P and A/R departments. But many of your peers are still wary of these time-saving solutions, especially smaller B2B firms you may work with on a regular basis.
The benefits outweigh the drawbacks in many ways, as recent research shows. Over 70% of executives say that their small and mid-sized business customers would benefit from an all-in-one payment solution that allows them to both send and receive payments, according to an analysis from PYMNTS and Plastiq.
Businesses themselves may not agree. Nearly 60% of small and mid-sized business owners weren’t interested in investing in an integrated e-payment platform because they believed it would make their A/P and A/R processes too complicated.
They’re also concerned with the costs of implementing a new payment solution. In fact, 55% of B2B firms that didn’t want to use an all-in-one payment platform said that it cost too much, with nearly 27% citing this as the top reason why they wouldn’t be moving forward with an all-in-one payment solution.
This resistance can make it tough for you to collect balances from these customers or make payments to vendors.
Highlight benefits of all-in-one-payment solutions
But these smaller businesses also want many of the features that all-in-one payment solutions can offer them, including convenience, better visibility into cash flow and more data on A/P and A/R.
Plus, many of them believe that, once they get past the initial transition period, an all-in-one payment solution can help save time (58.7%), manage their cash flow more easily (52.1%) and simplify receivables tracking (41.3%), among several other benefits.
Focusing on those aspects of an all-in-one solution may help in your conversations with smaller customers and vendors that are wary of making the switch. It could be especially beneficial to highlight how these solutions can help with some common pain points these businesses experience, such as:
- Manual invoice review and processing. When processing and sending invoices, manual data entry is one of the top causes of errors that can be expensive and time-consuming to fix.
- High costs of payment and credit. All-in-one payment solutions allow smaller businesses to send and receive payments in a variety of formats – not just through paper checks or bank transfers. And that can keep them from resorting to other costly credit options.
- Lack of integration with other systems. With an all-in-one payment solution, businesses can get a better view of their cash flow and improve forecasting because payment data automatically flows into their accounting software or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This further reduces the chance of error created by manual data entry.
- Lack of payment choice for buyers and suppliers. The more choices smaller businesses offer you for sending and receiving payments, the easier it is for everyone to get paid. That positively impacts these businesses’ bottom line – and it’s a significant reason for them to use all-in-one payment solutions.