EXECUTIVE INSIGHT
Effective supplier management is seeing the B2B payment ecosystems transformed, with companies using innovative AI-powered solutions to mitigate payment risks, streamline supplier interactions and drive significantly higher digital payment adoption rates.
Speaking to Procurement Magazine, Ernest Rolfson, CEO & Founder of Finexio, explains how its multichannel, data-driven approach to supplier communication, combined with predictive analytics, is helping businesses reduce operational risks while strengthening supplier relationships across various industries.
Q. WHY IS SUPPLIER MANAGEMENT ESSENTIAL TO OPTIMISING B2B PAYMENTS, AND HOW DOES FINEXIO’ S AP PAYMENTS AS A SERVICE MODEL SOLVE THE KEY CHALLENGES?
» With supplier management, if you’ re not leveraging a software-as-a-service solution, it’ s going to be manual. We’ ve introduced something that replaces slow, resource-heavy payments processes with an AI-powered, automated and self-service process, backed by expert support for the most complex and large supplier relationships.
As you’ re working with suppliers over the course of the year, having flexible, secure payment options that can adapt to suppliers’ evolving needs is critical. It can’ t be all or nothing. When suppliers need to make a change, there must be some validation and review
– maybe there’ s an upsell, maybe there’ s a downsell – but introducing payments software-as-a-service, which we call AP Payments as a Service, not only provides that enhancement, but also reduces risk by continuously validating supplier data and monitoring any changes for fraud.
The additional benefit is that you’ re improving your cash flow. Your costs are going to be less, there’ s less hiring you will have to do if you’ re expanding, and while you are reducing your costs you are generating cashback from the payment methods as well. Active supplier management, at least by our standards, will make those improvements for you. The bulk of what we’ re observing across many large sectors in the United States is that supplier management and enablement is still done by email and by phone for every vendor. The smaller suppliers don’ t get sufficient or any attention because that approach simply doesn’ t scale. That lack of scalability is exactly what we’ re solving – giving businesses the ability to engage and optimise supplier payments at scale.
Q. HOW ARE YOU HELPING TO STREAMLINE SUPPLIER BASES TO IMPROVE PAYMENT EFFICIENCY AND REDUCE OPERATIONAL RISKS?
» Streamlining the supplier base is something that we enable because we can help clients with our software and our very dynamic portals. We provide real-time insights and datasets that easily identify redundant and inactive suppliers, which reduces complexity and administrative burden.
84 April 2025