Banks Serving Businesses: Building Relationships Through Corporate Payables Offerings
Report Summary
Banks Serving Businesses: Building Relationships Through Corporate Payables Offerings
Banks will find value in going beyond the treasury function to serve corporate clients in areas such as payables and disbursements.
Boston, September 29, 2011 – A new report from Aite Group identifies opportunities for banks and technology vendors to enhance their relationships with clients via corporate payables offerings. The report is based on a June through September 2011 Aite Group survey of 20 senior bank payables and disbursements product managers globally.
Treasury staffs at companies worldwide are becoming more involved with key corporate functions—especially financial ones, such as procurement, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. Banks, in turn, recognize this higher-level treasury focus and want to support it. It is time for banks to go beyond treasury to expand their business and relationships by providing products and services that add value to the payment-processing function of their clients. While 35% of surveyed banks told Aite Group that such products are “extremely important” today, 60% see these offerings as being “extremely important” in two years’ time.
“Companies, banks, and technology vendors are on the same page when it comes to accounts payable processing; all three want to introduce automated solutions to lower costs, reduce errors, and speed processing time,” says Nancy Atkinson, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of this report. “By offering payables-processing offerings, banks will develop stronger relationships, retain more business, and lessen the importance of pricing as a factor in a company’s choice of bank. Vendors can assist banks by providing educational tools that help internal bank employees and external clients with their daily jobs.”
The report references the following payables and disbursement processing vendors: ACI Worldwide, Actimize, Ariba, Axway, Bottomline Technologies, Dovetail, Elan, Expertis, First Data, FIS, Fiserv/CheckFree, Fundtech, GXS, IBM/Sterling Commerce, Oracle, Orbian, Polaris, SAP, SunGard, Syncada, and TSYS.
This 23-page Impact Note contains 14 figures and two tables. Clients of Aite Group's Wholesale Banking service can download the report.