The untapped potential of payments analytics in advancing payment policy strategies

Blog | May 20, 2024

5 minutes, 25 seconds
Enhance visibility and leverage actionable insights to more effectively manage business via next-generation payment analytics.
untapped potential of payments: man looking at laptop deep in thought

In today's macro-environment, businesses constantly seek to gain visibility into performance and ensure that they are appropriately advancing their strategic objectives, whether that be optimizing working capital, delighting their customers, managing costs, etc. Payment analytics isn't an alternative to managing your business, it's the key to unlocking visibility into actioning on its full potential. Your organization's payment data, when digested effectively via payment analytics, can serve as a powerful lens for understanding your payments policy and driving transformative changes for your business. It offers an understanding of payment behaviors, trends, adhere to policy and risks, enabling your business to make data-driven decisions that can advance your business objectives and mitigate operational challenges.

Billtrust Payment Analytics stands out by offering a quick glance of performance, identifying high level trends, and aggregating comparisons between different attributes. The module also offers highly customizable metrics and time intervals, giving you the flexibility to segment and group data by payment method, product, product interface, payment status, and more.

The benefits of integrating this module into your B2B operations are significant, from boosting cash flow management to mitigating payment risk and uncovering potential revenue leakages.

How does Billtrust Payment Analytics work?

The Payment Analytics dashboard within the Billtrust Analytics workspace provides both high-level summary metrics and detailed drill-down analysis. You can gain a deep understanding of payment volume and buyer behavior trends, and monitor payment activities spanning an 18-month horizon.

Interactive Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provide a comprehensive overview, enabling a detailed exploration of the underlying factors influencing these trends. This includes aspects like payment types, buyer behavior, and exceptions. By focusing on the Total Payment KPI, you can rearrange the data to identify buyer contributions to this metric. Delve further into individual buyer specifics or analyze prevalent payment methods and amounts in the Collections stage. Essentially, you can scrutinize the catalysts behind fluctuations in payment volumes, which may stem from factors like product sales, customer actions, or market dynamics.

With dynamic time series visualizations, by default presented in a graphical view, you can identify patterns, trends or anomalies over various time intervals.

dynamic time series visualizations bar charts

Experience greater flexibility with highly customizable metrics and time intervals. Metrics can be segmented by various factors like payment method, product, interface, and payment status. Customize your view one metric at a time or compare two metrics, enabling a comprehensive analysis of multiple data series. Switch between visualizations and data table views with aggregated data for export in formats like CSV and Excel.

highly customizable metrics and time intervals pie charts

Multi-series data representation gives you the capability to view and compare multiple data series simultaneously, enhancing comparative analysis.

You’ll also have options to view data as cumulative totals or segmented by selectable dimensions for a more granular understanding.

Here's why our new Payment Analytics module matters

In-depth buyer insights: Deeper understanding of buyer behavior, including timeliness, habits, changes, and preferences. Use payment data to segment customers more effectively, leading to improved outreach and strategies to move more buyers online.

Improving cash flow management: Analyze how trends of when and how customers are paying, are helping to identify areas of concern or opportunity in payment processes. This provides real-time visibility into your cash flow dynamics, enabling you to predict potential shortfalls, and manage working capital effectively. This empowers organizations to maximize their financial health and sustain their growth initiatives.

Reducing payment risks: Managing payment risks in B2B transactions requires a proactive, data-driven approach. Payment analytics enables businesses to assess customer creditworthiness, detect early signs of payment delinquency, and devise tailored risk mitigation strategies. By segmenting customers based on payment behavior and risk profiles, organizations can allocate resources efficiently, minimizing bad debt exposure and preserving profitability.

Optimizing pricing and terms: Effective pricing and payment terms are crucial for a company's profitability. Payment analytics provides actionable insights into customer payment preferences, timeliness and seasonal trends. With this intelligence, businesses can refine pricing models, tailor payment terms, and create incentive programs to encourage timely payments, enhancing profitability and strengthening customer relationships.

Sensitive customer payment data is safe with us

Recognizing the paramount importance of safeguarding sensitive customer payment information, we have implemented rigorous security protocols to fortify our platform's compliance with industry regulations and laws. Through the utilization of advanced encryption techniques, we ensure the protection of all payment data transmitted across our system. Our stringent data management policies restrict data access within the product solely to the respective supplier account while data is not shared between tenants.

By prioritizing the security of sensitive payment data, we aim to provide peace of mind for our customers and their customers while empowering them with valuable insights through our Payment Analytics module.

payments analytics man typing laptop keyboard

Ongoing analytics efforts

The Billtrust Payment Analytics module, the latest addition to the Billtrust Analytics workspace, will help you move finance forward. Anticipate a surge in analytics momentum in 2024 with upcoming features such as the advanced Cash App analytics module enabling detailed trend analysis at the account level. Additionally, keep an eye out for the new Invoicing Analytics dashboard scheduled for release in the second half of 2024. Furthermore, expect the ongoing enhancement of the Billtrust Finance Co-Pilot.

These tools are designed to extract comprehensive insights and metrics from the unified Billtrust platform. This integrated approach facilitates better collaboration, data sharing, and cross-functional insights, empowering organizations to streamline operations and drive holistic improvements across the entire order-to-cash process.

Harnessing the future of payment analytics for O2C success

As we look to the future, the convergence of advanced analytics technologies and innovative payment analytics solutions will play a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of B2B O2C strategies. By leveraging cutting-edge analytics solutions such as the Billtrust Payment Analytics module, businesses can stay ahead of the curve, drive continuous innovation, and position themselves for sustained success in a rapidly evolving marketplace.

Incorporating the Payment Analytics module into your B2B O2C strategies not only amplifies the transformative potential of payment analytics but also provides a competitive edge that is essential for long-term growth and prosperity. By embracing innovation and leveraging advanced analytics capabilities, organizations can unlock new opportunities, mitigate risks, and pave the way for a more efficient, resilient, and profitable O2C process.

Ready to transform your order to cash process? Learn how Billtrust’s accounts receivable automation software can optimize your O2C process.

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