Can B2B Payments Take On Omnichannel?

Omnichannel marketing strategy in B2C e-commerce has paced up the marketing opportunities for buyers and suppliers. By extending the relationship with their potential buyers, retailers have understood the needs of the customers and managed to boost their sales by offering new products, discounts, and coupons in the store and in apps.

If not, major retailers have proven the effectiveness of omnichannel strategies in today’s digital era.

But in the B2B business model, the complexity of the relationship between the buyers and suppliers calls for not so impulse buying. Though every connection between the two- from placing contracts to making payments to extending credit solutions is overly driven, it creates opportunities for disjointed and frictional experiences on both sides.

According to an article by CMSWire, Omnichannel is not a buzzword in the B2B payments space because of the indistinctive goals of both parties involved in B2B. Nonetheless, omnichannel had the potential to change the scenario a few years down the line. How? Let’s learn.

Transformations In The B2B Payments Space

Dean Leavitt, CEO of the B2B, electronic payments provider Boost Payment Solutions stated that the world of B2B payments, has witnessed a surge in the application of data from both the ends of suppliers and buyers. As the interactions on both sides have grown more sophisticated, for smaller retailers- the dependency on data is becoming more useful than ever.

And that’s where Boost’s intercept or product comes into play. It is a cloud-based electronic payment platform that changes supplier-initiated virtual card payments into a buyer-initiated payment experience for suppliers,” says the Boost Payment Solutions website.

The importance of Boost Intercept

Using Boost Intercept, suppliers can actually get remittance data in a couple of seconds. The mode works to process manually processed virtual card payments into automated straight-through processing, which can be easily imported into auto portable formats. Thus, no need for hefty-cost labor involved in the processing of the remittance data and easy reconciliation process.

With this, the retailers can actually manage their business in a sheer way.

According to Boost Payment Solutions, the need for Boost Intercept arose in response to the dying need of suppliers – they were open to taking cards, but the need to support multiple virtual card platforms was a thing of frustration for them. The Boost Intercept helped the suppliers untangle their problem in peculiar ways, such as

• Uplifting the need to be equipped with multiple virtual card platforms
• Extracting remittance data without the need to login to multiple portals and automate payment processing
• No need to store or process data at any point in the interaction.
• Eliminating manual reconciliation thus saving costs on labor
• Improving business efficiencies by converting lengthy reconciliations into an easy one
• Reducing PCI DSS compliance scope and cost related to BPP
• Streamlining reconciliation and providing customized data in auto-portable formats

The application of Boost in different industries

The Boost Intercept solution alleviates the “pain points’ while significantly extemporizing operational efficiencies. The benefits have been undeniable to a wide spectrum of sectors ranging from education, manufacturing, healthcare, to name a few, where Boost equips commercial card payment among municipalities, institutions, payers, and suppliers.

Yet another industry or sector that has instilled in the application of Boost Interception is the transportation industry, where the payments are mostly expensive, inefficient, and delayed and pose a security threat from exposed banking information. Using Boost Interception has lifted that security risk on such payment processing systems.

Payments that are done manually are actually much more complicated to meet accounting requirements. By transiting to virtual commercial card payments, Boost Intercept reduces accounts payable and accounts receivables cost, lets you drive cash management by expanding Days Payable Outstanding, and shrinking Days Sales Receivable.

Plus, there is no set-up process for Boost’s platform. It seeks no implementation costs and needs no change to the banking or procurement process.

Advancing Omnichannel to B2B Payments

According to Boost Payment Solutions, an omnichannel payment solution is one of the innovative payment solutions for B2B business models. It is likely to help shape the B2B payment system in the future with its innovative and supportive benefits.

The two principles in omnichannel that can be extending to the B2B model include

1. The tendency to centrally manage payment and transactions across all channels consistently.
2. The intent is to measure and consolidate the data across all channels to learn which channels and combinations add maximum to the company’s bottom line.

To bring maximum efficiency, a B2B organization needs to eliminate prodigals from its processes and integrate its systems, thereby enhancing customers’ buying experience.

In Boost Intercept, all the virtual cards are processed using one single automated platform, and detailed remittance data can be easily and effectively integrated with existing ERPs. The business model no longer needs to maintain logging onto different portals and worry about PCI compliance.