As a product manager, I've spoken with countless Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) across the globe. What I've consistently heard, loud and clear, is a growing chorus of frustration. For many SMBs, Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR) are often viewed as necessary but burdensome administrative tasks, a drain on time that could be better spent finishing a project or finding the next one.
What makes matters worse is that these admin tasks are spread across multiple systems. SMBs are simply done with the juggling act. They're done with multiple logins, with painstakingly reconciling data across disparate platforms, and with managing relationships with half a dozen different vendors.
But it's more than just the sheer volume of tools. Many offerings on the market today promise to automate only pieces of the AP puzzle. For instance, they might offer reconciliation with the accounting platform but no OCR to easily ingest the invoice in the first place, or a payment execution without a vendor experience to track and manage the payment. While these point solutions offer a glimpse of efficiency, they leave critical gaps. They solve one problem only to create another, forcing businesses to bridge the remaining workflow with manual processes or worse still, find themselves constantly fielding reactive questions from clients and vendors.
The High Cost of Fragmentation
These fragmented and incomplete processes further drain SMBs' most valuable constraint: time. Imagine a business owner trying to get a holistic view of their cash flow when critical data resides in several different tools. It's a daily battle against:
Manual Reconciliation Nightmares: Teams spend hours trying to identify discrepancies and correct errors between systems that should be talking to each other automatically.
Operational Inefficiencies: Delays in invoice approval, missed early payment discounts, and even late payment penalties become common occurrences, eating into cash flow.
Lack of Holistic Visibility: Without a single source of truth, it's virtually impossible to gain accurate insights into cash flow.
SMBs are recognising that this piecemeal approach is no longer sustainable. They want to move beyond simply digitising individual steps; they want a truly integrated workflow.
The Vision: True End-to-End Bill Pay
What SMBs desire is an end-to-end solution for their bill pay needs. A single, unified environment where every step of the process is managed from beginning to end. One that covers:
Invoice Ingestion - ingest invoice from supplier via OCR, email or manual input
Bill approvals - bill is reviewed and approved
Bill payment - payment is scheduled and receipt created
Supplier tracking: Real-time payment tracking and confirmation
The future of running a business isn't just about completing these steps in a silo; it's about them flowing logically, one into the next, all within the very digital tool where the real work gets done. Imagine, for instance, a project management software where your team is tracking tasks and milestones, and right within that same system, you can easily handle your milestone payments to suppliers.
The Future is Embedded Billpay
The era of fragmented and incomplete bill pay solutions is steadily drawing to a close. The market is demanding, and the technology is delivering, comprehensive, integrated workflows that truly empower SMBs. The platforms that will redefine their industries are those that recognise this fundamental shift, providing holistic, in-context financial management that allow businesses to operate with unprecedented clarity and efficiency. The future of finance is here, and it's seamless, embedded, and poised to transform how SMBs manage their money.
