Payable Strategies for the Long Tail Suppliers — Stage 3: Addressing Operational Challenges Early

In this Spend Matters PRO series, you have been tasked with a mandate from your CFO to find a way to offer early pay finance to ALL suppliers and create a “win/win” with your supply base. The previous two parts of the series looked at how to assess your current situation, the spend funnel and introduced several techniques.

In the third part of our series, we will look at some of the key operations issues that impact early pay finance offerings.

Today, many large businesses may be running several early pay finance techniques targeted at different supplier segments. Each of these techniques comes complete with their own set of technology and operational components, and can include virtual cards, marketplace auctions, third-party payable finance and dynamic discounting. Companies may be looking to expand programs regionally, or simplify their current offering, or have a mandate from the CFO to find a way to offer early pay finance to ALL suppliers.

For this series, here are the five stages for tackling your payables strategy:

• Stage 1 — Assessing Your Current Situation
• Stage 2 — Understanding Addressable Spend & Early Pay Options
• Stage 3 — Addressing Operational Challenges Early
• Stage 4 — Selection Process and Key Issues to Address
• Stage 5 — Getting to a Decision

Let’s jump into the details for Stage 3.

In the course of our discussions with treasurers, we found six operational areas that challenge the rollout of any type of early pay program.