Welcome to another edition of the biweekly roundup of Payables Place articles, devised to recognize that not everyone will catch our news and thought pieces on the day it launches. Today is November 14, and it’s two weeks until Black Friday—November 28—which to some in the U.S. is the start of the Christmas season. Christmas Day is incidentally less than six weeks away, and Hanukkah is slightly more than a month away, so get that holiday shopping done!
Now onto the roundup of the last two weeks of articles! Enjoy the capsules below:
The Compliance Management Checklist, Part III: Contingent Workforce Compliance
On November 3, we continued Chris Dwyer’s compliance management checklist, offering the third article in a five-part series looking at how procurement, finance, and other professionals can build an enterprise-wide “compliance management” checklist that addresses multiple avenues. This third installment takes a look at contingent workforce management, which continues to grow in enterprise value. Read the full article at http://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/11/compliance-management-checklist-part-iii-contingent-workforce-compliance/.
3 Ways Suppliers Benefit from Virtual Payment Cards
Virtual payment cards provide significant benefits to buyers, such as reduced exception processing, but what about the supplier side of the equation? The good news is that virtual payment cards have similar benefits as other commercial cards, which should actually make it easy to convince your suppliers to accept them. I examine three such benefits in my November 5 article, which you can read at http://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/11/3-ways-suppliers-benefit-virtual-payment-cards/.
What’s the Best Way to Maximize Your Business Travel Budget?
In early October, Chris Dwyer spoke with MarketWatch Radio about how enterprises can maximize their business travel. His Friday, November 7 article focuses on the two things that enterprises have to do in order to make the most of their business travel budgets, which is estimated to tie up 10% to 15% of enterprise budgets. They key—Chris notes—is visibility into business travel spend. Read the full article at http://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/11/whats-best-way-maximize-business-travel-budget-part/ for more detail.
How Virtual Payment Cards Can Help Optimize Working Capital
Virtual payment cards do more than add security to commercial card payments; the technology also provides clear advantages to working capital management strategies. While ostensibly it looks like virtual cards shrink an organization’s days payable outstanding (DPO), virtual cards in reality provide float to the buyer and allow for accounts payable and treasury teams to stretch working capital. Read the full article at http://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/11/virtual-payment-cards-can-help-optimize-working-capital/.
A Lesson in Financial Risk from the Bank of England’s Payments Collapse
Nearly a month ago, on October 20, the Bank of England’s Real-Time Gross Settlement system was taken down for 10 hours while central banker technicians worked to fix an error propagated by a chance in the underlying database of bank names. The 10-hour shutdown of the interbank payments system brought a portion of the United Kingdom’s payments infrastructure to a screeching halt, and in doing so offers a lesson about being prepared for anything. Read the full article at http://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/11/lesson-financial-risk-bank-englands-payments-collapse/.
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