Higher expectations. Increased competition. More layers of technology.

These are just a few of the pressures that digital businesses have to manage in order to be successful. And that's just to keep the status quo.

To grow sales, many work with channel partners, a potentially highly successful strategy, but one that comes with its own set of challenges. Partners not only grow your sales ecosystem, they also add a layer of complexity with can put pressure on already tight resources.

Partners want to be valued, not treated as "one of many." They want to be rewarded for their efforts on your behalf, which means they want to be paid accurately and on time. And as your channel partners grow and scale, that can become difficult to manage.

It's estimated that at least 10% of all B2B payments to channel partners are late which is compounded by the fact that a significant number of B2B companies have still not moved towards digitization or automation. In fact, the use of paper checks actually increased between 2013 and 2016.

The Traditional B2B Payment Model

Many companies are still using manual processes to handle their B2B payments and B2B2C payments, whether to partners, vendors or suppliers.

5 Weaknesses of Manual Payments

1. Higher Risk of a Missed or Late Payment

Being paid on time is highly valued by B2B businesses with 35% saying they would pay a fee or extend a discount to get paid faster. Late payments can cause cash flow issues for your partners and can cause long-term damage to your relationship with them.

2. Security Lapses

Forty-five percent of B2B businesses either had serious hacking attempts made against them or suffered a loss on due to fraud within the last year. The more people involved in a payment, the greater the risk that procedures will not be followed correctly, exposing your business to a greater risk.

3. Ill-Equipped for International Payments

B2B companies operate in every part of the world in different currencies, languages and payment methods. If you're only able to accept payments or pay out in a couple, you're limiting who you can work with and markets you can access. Twenty-four percent of B2B companies operate in each of the major world areas.

4. Cumbersome and Error-Prone

Manually processing payments takes time, is tedious for staff and increases the chances of errors. Accordingly, 52% of B2B businesses see the automation of the accounts payable process for efficiency and productivity as a top driver while 61% indicate that invoice delivery/capture was the most important component.

5. Proactive Businesses Are Already Benefiting From Epayments

The more that other businesses, including competitors, realize the benefits of an automated partner payment process, the more that businesses with staff stuck doing manual processes get left behind. More than 55% of companies report that they make more than half of their B2B payments electronically.

A Different Model: An Automated Omnichannel Payment Environment

In an increasingly competitive and complex market, many companies are opting to partner with networks of authorized resellers or sales agents to boost revenue. But to truly reap the benefits of these networks, you need a payments solution that can process the original customer payments, automatically calculate the amount owed to each party of the transaction and then reliably pay out based on that formula on time.

This includes having all the right payment methods available for customers, secure payment processing, tax remittance, fraud analysis, customer billing support and rebilling options readily available. Together, these can provide predictable and transparent revenue, save staff time and reduce payment risks.

With automated B2B payments, the process is streamlined:

There’s more to B2B Payments than just the payment processing and partner management. You need a payments platform that integrates seamlessly with your overall technology infrastructure including your CRM, accounting software and other key applications.

Origins Ecommerce’s flexible API ensures technology will not be a blocker to business continuity.

Keeping Your Revenue Stack Up-To-Date

Businesses need to be agile to stay competitive. A vital component of this is ensuring a growing number or increasingly complex payments don't derail your efforts. An automated, omnichannel payment solution reduces risk, frees up staff time, ensures good relationships with customers and partners, and allows you to more easily pivot should your business strategy need to change.