57% of Companies Are Interested in Using Emerging Treasury Management Technologies

Businesses are developing a growing appetite for seamless, digital-first banking solutions that can better streamline their B2B processes.

For example, 57% of companies are interested in how they could use emerging technologies to enhance their treasury management, as reported in the “Next-Gen Commercial Banking Tracker,” a PYMNTS and FISPAN collaboration.

Get the report: Next-Gen Commercial Banking Tracker

In addition, companies are increasingly frustrated with time-consuming manual payment methods as more consumers and business partners move online, putting accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) processes at a severe competitive disadvantage.

PYMNTS research found that chief financial officers (CFOs) said their main reason for digitizing AP and AR processes is to benefit their customers and vendors. Similarly, CFOs are enhancing their B2B processes to improve their customers’ overall lifetime value or loyalty.

Helping Firms Innovate Their B2B Operations

As they are facing significant challenges when integrating these tools, businesses are looking for banking partners that can help them innovate their B2B operations to match both their own and their customers’ expanding digital preferences.

A lack of bank connectivity is one of the main factors that could hamper companies’ ability to craft the innovative B2B or treasury management processes. Solving this issue represents a key opportunity for financial institutions (FIs) seeking to capture companies’ loyalty.

FISPAN Co-Founder and CEO Clayton Weir told PYMNTS that while 2020 forced many FIs to adjust to a changing market, FIs are now actually enacting informed plans to improve existing processes.

Read more: 2021 Was the Year of Renaissance

Rising Demand for Digital Solutions

As FIs look to augment their products and services to meet changing corporate payments needs, they will likely find application programming interfaces (APIs) to be an essential technology.

Banks have become increasingly enamored with APIs to connect to third-party platforms and improve operational efficiencies. This includes being able to connect to customers’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems more seamlessly, allowing them to enable swifter and more streamlined payments experiences for their corporate clients.

Because companies that are used to conducting their AP and AR processes through manual channels may find it difficult to make the transition to digital B2B payments, banks that move quickly to reduce these frustrations can boost their business clients’ loyalty. This is where APIs can offer a critical solution, as they allow corporate FIs to provide a seamless bridge between their own platforms and the business software on which companies rely.

The rising demand for cutting-edge digital solutions is making the corporate banking playing field more competitive than ever. FIs must examine their current B2B banking solutions with a critical eye. APIs could be their best strategy for platform innovation to capture companies’ loyalty.