FTNI Blog

What Charles Darwin had to say about the evolution of species applies to business enterprises as well: adaptability is key to survival.

Consider accounts receivable (A/R) operations. The proliferation of check payments during the 20^th Century led many businesses down the path of automation, in the form of lockboxes (managed in house or outsourced), which helped to reduce costs by compressing collection cycles and eliminating labor-intensive processing steps. By the turn of the 21^st Century, however, the proliferation of new payment methods and channels (ACH, cards, online and mobile), created a new, more complex environment, as companies, acceding to customer demands for more payment options, were forced to implement disparate systems for accepting and processing receivables. What has emerged are corporate A/R operations bogged down by costly, error-prone manual processes spread across numerous legacy systems.

Let’s face it, the traditional processes surrounding the processing and management of business-to-business accounts receivable are slow, inefficient and expensive. But both times and technology are changing, giving businesses an opportunity to revamp their processes to be more effective and efficient than ever before.

With consumer reliance on mobile technology growing by the day, combined with increased mobile adoption by businesses, mobile is the next great wave of payment technology adoption for traditional business receivables. By 2016, business mobile usage is expected to be 13 times greater than it is today.