Marketing

The Hidden Expenses of Analog Spend Management Processes

Posted by
John Thomas
-
November 2, 2021

The true cost of spend management is not always apparent. Any COO or CFO will tell you it’s both art and science and requires asking the right questions.

Take an ordinary check. Those of us who receive checks get to endure the cumbersome process of depositing or cashing them. Maybe we drive to the bank or snap photos and upload them into an app. Either way, it’s a process – not to mention lost checks, requesting replacements, or putting them in a drawer and forgetting about them. Delays and expensive processes are the order of the day.

The check issuer also endures a complex process of about 10 steps to release a check at a total cost ranging from $1 to $5 each, not to mention the burden of both mistakes and fraud. Surprisingly, North America alone still sees about $16 trillion of annual check issuance.

Enter digital payments and spend management: The right infrastructure can save businesses an enormous amount of time and money by replacing analog and physical processes with their digital equivalents. These players in the digital payments space must demonstrate value, trustworthiness, and security. Furthermore, the variety of inputs and outputs and complex array of business process in the payments space require a platform approach to digital payments and spend management infrastructure.

Replacing inefficient and error-prone processes is not always simple. On the one hand, there is the inertia of the status quo, while on the other, executives may feel that their systems are “good enough.”  Finally, there are a host of decision-makers that simply don’t know that alternatives exist.

The Fintech community needs to educate decision-makers to help them unlock savings, time, and value by adopting the right spend management platforms. This is Zact’s aspiration.