We covered a lot of ground on Payables Place in the past two weeks; from travel and expense management goals, through the CFO’s viewpoint on the travel and expense market, along with a new eProcurement toolkit, and into some fancy new payments automation software from two major players in the business network space. In case you missed it, here’s what the Payables Place team wrote about:
The Significance of Complex Spend Management
Chris Dwyer, our resident expert on complex spend, detailed the significance of complex spend management to the modern organization. Chris’s piece outlined the reasons why the “hottest” complex spend categories, historically linked to indirect spend management, are critical focus areas for every financial professional. Suffice to say that budgets are continuing to rise in areas like business travel, contingent labor, and marketing, so it’s in the financial executive’s own best interest to take a more strategic role in managing enterprise spend on the indirect side of the fence without ignoring direct spend. Read the complete article at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/09/significance-complex-spend-management/.
Three Goals Every Travel & Expense Management Program Must Achieve
The world of business travel is evolving rapidly, not just in a technology sense, but also as more enterprises enjoy higher travel budgets and processes in the expense management framework grow in complexity. Myriad booking options for business travelers make it business-critical that travel and expense management programs are managed effectively and for the greatest good of the organization. Because of this, Chris Dwyer enumerates three key goals that every program has to achieve. Read more at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/three-goals-every-travel-and-expense-management-program-must-achieve/.
AribaPay Looks to Simplify, Improve B2B ePayments
Andrew Bartolini and I spoke with Drew Hofler, Ariba’s director of solutions marketing for network and financial products, about the company’s new offering to extend the capabilities of the Ariba Commerce Network. AribaPay is a payments solution that makes use of the Ariba network’s plethora of supplier information to counteract the rich remittance information barrier to ePayments adoption. Ariba works with Discover Financial Services for the processing part of the equation, using tokenization to hide sensitive bank account information behind a unique Ariba Merchant ID number that—if stolen—is basically useless. Read the entire article at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/aribapay-looks-simplify-improve-b2b-epayments/.
Esker Wants to Take Over the Procure-to-Pay World
Andrew and I also chatted with Esker, the Lyon, France-based company known for its document process automation services, about their new on-demand ePurchasing solution. The new tool shines best in situations where an enterprise has an ERP program but hasn’t yet implemented an ERP-based eProcurement system or a larger standalone tool. Catherine Dupuy-Holdich, Esker’s senior product manager, told us that the goal for the eProcurement tool is to bridge the gap between procurement and accounts payable. You can read the complete write-up at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/esker-wants-take-procure-pay-world/.
Basware Pay Offers New Method to Counteract Late Payments
Flying solo this time, Andrew spoke with Esa Tihilä, the CEO of Basware, about the Finnish company’s new payments solution. Basware Pay is part of the new Basware Financing Services product line, and is a partnership with MasterCard. Once a buyer approves an invoice, payment is made through a Virtual Account Number and sent through the MasterCard payments network. This is the first step in the Basware Financing Services portfolio, with dynamic discounting and factoring functionality to launch by the end of 2014. Read the complete write-up at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/basware-pay-offers-new-method-counteract-late-payments/.
The CFO’s View of Travel and Expense Management
In the second installment of his regular CFO’s View feature, Chris Dwyer outlines the actions top finance executives must take in relation to travel and expense management programs. CFOs are critical, Chris argues, because travel and expense encompasses anywhere between 12% and 15% of the overall enterprise budget. Because of this large percentage, it’s critical for finance executives to manage costs and capture all relevant spend for forecasting, planning, and budgeting. Read the rest of the article at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/cfos-view-travel-expense-management/.
Is the Flex Economy for Real?
The world of work is changing. More so than any other era in recent history, the enterprise finds itself relying on temporary and contingent workers to achieve critical corporate objectives. So it’s good news then that Chris Dwyer examines the flex economy and its truths in this October 13 article. Keep in mind, Chris says, there are two sides to this flex economy uprising—the enterprise and the freelance worker. Each has benefitted from the other, which allows for both an increase in the usage of freelance/non-traditional talent as well as a recognition of how best to source and manage these workers. Read more at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/flex-economy-real/.
The Compliance Management Checklist, Part I
Compliance is a critical part of any business operation. It’s also a concept that haunts nearly every professional across the enterprise. This October 15 article details the first three entries on the Compliance Management checklist that, Chris Dwyer explains, should be part of every enterprise’s compliance management strategy. Read the complete article at https://payablesplace.ardentpartners.com/2014/10/compliance-management-checklist-part/.
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