This Guest Post is from Will Donovan of Paystream Advisors of USA
I spent a little while today discussing web-based auto-enrollment payments in the credit and collections industry, as well as what we call the “Payment Tsar” and the “Payment Quotient.” While I was doing so, it occured to me the extent to which electronic financial tools for the individual consumer are changing the nature of expectations and deliverables in corporate financial process optimization.
For example, EIPP has been around, but hasn’t entirely taken off. The technology has obvious advantages, but even major players like Ariba and OB10 don’t exactly have the market penetration that would reflect the service they offer.
But what I’ve noticed is that as customer banking tools are becomming more sophisticated, the expectations for what is possible in the corporate world are driving the discussion in a new and exciting way.
For example, it was the innovators who drove the EIPP technology into the forefront, because they saw the savings and process advantages. However, as more and more people saw they could achieve an enormous amount of visibility into their own finances with on-line banking and auto-bill-pay, now C-Level types are scratching their heads wondering why they can’t get the same Spend Analysis across their entire company.
This issue of innovation-drive is really a key when it comes to solutions available for corporate financial automation. The market, by and large, has not yet demanded the sort of solutions that “put it all together” until fairly recently, which is why Manoj continues to be an EIPP Evangelizer and not yet an EIPP I-Told-You-So-er.
At the same time, I don’t think that day is too far off now. With the acquisitions of Xign and Harbor, and as well the startling growth of OB10, Transcepta and Ariba, it is clear that many in the industry are beginning to believe EIPP and other next-generation tools are the next big step in business process improvement. It is quite possible we’re seeing a serious movement of next-generation automation technologies migrating from “early adopter” status to wide-spread implementation.