Think of your smartphone today; perhaps we all take it for granted but just 15 years ago, the phone was just that- a phone. There were some emailing abilities and a few other bells and whistles, but if you wanted to use a navigation system, listen to music or watch videos, do a video conference or sign on to a corporate system you needed different devices. The genius of Apple and others was to combine so many products into one device, making logically connected workloads all possible in one place. One product equals Interoperable apps on one device.
In the quest to operate better, organizations have identified Spend and Payments Management as an opportunity area, one that is universally reviled in its current form. The problems exist largely because of siloed processes and disparate apps. No interoperability.
In the current system, the spending employee is either given a corporate card or is asked to use a personal card; both of these options create problems as disconnected systems create inaccuracies and delays, and the “tacit approval” to spend drives over-spending, non-compliance, and can even lead to fraud. The notion of siloed expense reporting, travel booking, fleet management and subscription payments, and even bill pay appears antiquated. Still, 99% of organizations use these outdated systems.
Something has to change.
The key here is the notion of a Payment Management platform with a suite of interoperable spend management apps designed to help the entire organization spend while simultaneously natively complying with set guidelines and guardrails and reconciling with accounting systems. Expense reports and the associated payments are not atomic and disconnected in time and space; instead they are part of one holistic model connected at one end to the payment rails and at the other to the accounting systems. This drives alignment between the spending employee and Finance and Accounting, while minimizing delays, out of policy spend, error, and even fraud.
Such is the beauty of interoperable apps. Zact’s payment platform synthesizes spend across Travel, Fleet, Subscriptions, T&E and Bill Pay while reconciling and complying with Accounting Systems and policies on the fly.
