04 Jun The market guide of B2B Payments, Supply chain finance and E-invoicing industry
There has never been a better time to clearly define, analyse and set the path for the future B2B payments, supply chain finance & e-invoicing industry as today.
The business-to-business payments, supply chain finance & e-invoicing industries have extraordinary potential. Even if most of the corporate spend is fairly covered with corporate cards, and billions of paper-based payment processes have been replaced with electronic payments processes, there is a tremendous opportunity for additional growth.
In 2015, accounts payable will likely be largely automated, and within companies traditionally different departments will come together to form a strong partnership for a common goal – optimising the working capital and other changes will be made to make payment friction a thing of the past. Moreover, some of these challenges will be addressed by increasing transparency for financiers, straight through processing for the whole chain and enabling more financing options for the SME.
This report is providing via the B2B Payments, Supply Chain Finance & E-invoicing Market Guide 2015 unlimited access to the most comprehensive overview of the global industry of e-finance. This edition encompasses the B2B payments, e-invoicing, supply chain finance and alternative finance industry, by combining insight from key stakeholders and top level industry thought leaders with an overview of market players. Industry voices from all areas of the online finance space – technology companies, e-invoicing service providers, industry associations and experts – shared their experiences in dedicated solutions implementation and vision on the main trends and developments.
The common view on all industry levels is that payment friction locks value in the supply chain, therefore benefits have to be acknowledged by all supply chain partners. For suppliers, often the benefits are not as visible for them as they are for the buyer side. How to create a win-win situation and how to expand the business in an international context?
One answer might be developing business networks which allow simplifying and streamlining trade and financial processes with a result of more efficient procurement, accounts payable and accounts receivable functions and also improved working capital.
Furthermore, when putting trade in an international context, new challenges and opportunities arise. Due to the increasing need to connect trade finance and SCF to existing practices and disciplines around trade facilitation, several initiatives have started to emerge. To give you an example, The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) has launched an initiative to help reinforce the high-value opportunity in integrating financing into disciplines related to trade facilitation practices.
Still, what if big implementation schemes are not feasible for smaller businesses? Finally, SMEs can explore a number of financing options, either supported by governmental initiatives such as the SupplierPay initiative in the US and Europe-focused initiatives meant to introduce supply chain finance to SMEs or explore the increasingly widespread alternative finance options brought to the market by innovators.
Focusing on the one solution that for years seemed to prove its point time and again, e-invoicing service providers (along with regulators) stepped up their game and now explore value added services as a means to proactively monitor and resolve errors without involving clients (thus, relieving clients from additional stress and reducing time span until resolution and huge amounts of costs). However, mass adoption of e-invoicing is in many instances only possible with government implication. Two good examples are Europe and Latin America. In Europe, the European Commission developed a directive to mandate the use of e-invoicing by government starting with 2018. Many countries including Spain, Austria and Italy are currently transposing this directive in national laws.
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