Looking for Silver Linings from 2021

There are good years, and there are bad years and there are years like 2021.

We can all agree the ongoing changes brought about by the COVID pandemic have created an economic environment that is anything but ‘business as usual.’ These semi-recent circumstances have certainly helped to further the ongoing evolution of the office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), from ‘custodian of the corporate budget’ to a more strategically-minded leading force carving an organization’s path to success through critical decision-making.

The Evolving CFO and CIO Roles

As an early 2021 Deloitte survey of financial leaders inhabiting this role noted, and we highlighted, a growing number of CFOs took on broader functional responsibilities since the onset of the pandemic, with data analytics, forecasting and a more strategic mindset rising to the forefront.

Among these evolving efforts to better steer the modern organization, CFOs are not alone. Today’s digital transformation demands a strong, collaborative finance-IT relationship, meaning the roles of Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) are just as influential - and fluid.

As we noted some months back, those CFOs worth their salt that spent the better part of the past year plus scrutinizing all aspects of company spend to ensure long-term survival, relied on access to the right data to make this happen. A true partnership with the CIO has never been more important - or necessary - than right now.

And, that data itself? Well, it’s having quite a minute at the moment.

It’s Not the Size of the Data, But What’s Inside

More companies have recognized the true value of big data as a key technology driving ongoing digital transformation efforts across all industries worldwide. Wielded properly, according to Forbes which we noted earlier this year, analysis from the big data trend can help inform and improve:

• Customer acquisition and retention
• Focused and targeted campaigns
• Identification of potential risks
• Product innovation
• Complex supplier network

Speaking of that supplier network….

Do you recall earlier this year when we brought some light to a COVID-infused edition of McKinsey & Company’s annual report on global payments, which included these gems:

“The current global context removes many of the long-standing impediments to embracing transformation,” and “The COVID-19 crisis is having a significant and widespread effect on global payments across sectors,” oh, and, “The most striking and potentially lasting impact is an accelerating pace of change in the industry.”

It Pays to Automate

As that report, and many leaders since that time have stated, the imperative to accelerate transformations to a digital-first and more agile organization has never been greater on a global scale.

The organizations choosing to embrace automation in partner payments amid a changing B2B partner landscape are being rewarded with faster cycle times, better visibility into partner effectiveness, less expensive transactions and improved fraud prevention efforts.

And, as the level of expectation among end users rises so too has the sophistication in the internal business tools expected to calculate, report, track and maintain a company’s most valuable resources, be those tangible assets or usable products or services.

Asset Rich

When we asked the question some months back if you were asset right or, better yet, how did you know, we weren’t just idly inquiring.

More companies are pinning livelihoods on the performance of sizable, pricey and often remote assets throughout a variety of industries, which is why RecVue crafted asset billing and payments capabilities with great thought as an essential piece of our powerful billing engine. An organization must be able to maximize the value of these invested resources in order to better inform decision-making for future growth. It's the reason this functionality has been infused with the following features and more:

• Ability to bill at equipment serial number level of detail
• Visibility into future billing schedules out a month, quarter or beyond
• Integration of asset data details with any ERP and ability to import orders via API from any outside system
• Incorporate calculations and adjustment schedules for activities with a billing impact, including repair, cancellation, termination and loss

Usage Wisely

Of course, as we noted earlier this year, given the continued rise of the cloud and software as a service (SaaS) solutions, ongoing technological advances and a growing interest by market segments including data storage and streaming services, the usage billing model continues to grow in popularity.

How popular? Our earlier item highlighted a survey from earlier this year by the venture firm OpenView Partners in which the number of responding companies that charged based on usage doubled over the previous five years.

There’s a reason RecVue imbued our usage billing functionality with the following features for this increasingly influential billing model:

• Ability to handle usage collection and billing at different frequencies
• Capability to collect usage data against individual contract lines
• Ability to price usage according to customer needs
• Flexibility to automate adjustments
• High degree of visibility and access for ease of tracking of what often can be thousands of customer actions daily

So, yep, there’s all that…2021 wasn’t all bad.

Contact us today to learn how the purpose-built design of RecVue’s unified billing, revenue and partner compensation platform can help accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.