Early payment discounting is one of the most popular trends in procure-to-pay. And the Dynamic Discounting and Supply Chain Financing module offered with our apexportal can help you experience the benefits. We automate every aspect of your early payment program – from initial design and marketing to backend reporting. You will be poised to improve both your profitability and your working capital simply by paying your suppliers early.

Early payment discounting is one of the most popular trends in procure-to-pay, and it’s easy to see why. With both LIBOR rates and money market yields near all-time lows, it simply isn’t profitable to hold cash for an extended period. Instead, many companies are using their cash to offer accelerated supplier payments in return for a discount on the amount owed. The financial benefit of early payment discounting can be significant. One example: You can produce a risk-free, annualized return of up to 37 percent by paying net 30 invoices 20 days early for a 2 percent discount. For even greater returns, many companies are making their discounting program “dynamic.” They pay willing suppliers based on a sliding scale at any time before an invoice is due, regardless of how early

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF DISCOUNTING OPPORTUNITIES

The challenge for any company adopting a discounting program is how to mine data to identify, capture and manage opportunities for optimal returns. That’s where apexportal shines.

With our powerful but easy-to-use apexportal Dynamic Discounting and Supply Chain Financing module, you can analyze discount opportunities, design effective early pay programs, decide how they will be funded, communicate offers, track outcomes and achieve best-in-class capture rates.

OPTIMAL BENEFITS

The apexportal Dynamic Discounting and Supply Chain Financing module is highly configurable, giving you lots of options. Design multiple types of discount programs and offer them to some or all of your suppliers. Fund your own early payments or use integrated financing options on demand. Use flexible administrative tools to go 100 percent touchless or design your own approval workflow. The choice is yours.

Flexible Discounting

• Buyer-Initiated. Offer sliding-scale early payment discounts based on fixed APRs or on LIBOR rates or hurdles set by your treasury department. Make discounts available to some or all suppliers, on some or all approved invoices.
• Supplier-Initiated. Set up online auction marketplaces where suppliers compete for your early payment funds. You can set thresholds for automatically approving offers, rejecting them or sending them for review.

Flexible Financing

• Add Your Bank. Integrate your bank into your discounting program and use third-party funding to make early payments to strategic suppliers. Your bank pays suppliers early. You pay the bank the full invoice amount on the original due date or later. It’s a way to hang onto your cash for longer, but still support supplier early payment needs.
• Use Our Pre-integrated Funder. For mid-tier and long-tail suppliers, use our fully integrated, 100 percent digital solution from The Interface Financial Group. Simply flip a switch or set a threshold to turn funding on or off.

Flexible Administration

• Intelligent Segmentation. Use our benchmark data and apexarchimedes™ cognitive technologies to analyze supplier characteristics and behaviors. Use the information to develop cash discount likelihood scores and build the most applicable offers.
• Multichannel Marketing. Once your program is established, drive adoption with good contact data and active marketing. Our integrated multichannel marketing solution leverages an extensive database of more than 32 million validated supplier contacts—backed by person-to-person outreach by our team.
• ERP Integration. When a discount is accepted or financing is used, communicate directly with your ERP platform to change payment terms or payees. No manual effort is required.
• Approvals. Use flexible business rules to configure the portal to be 100 percent touchless or to enable approval workflows that are routed to your team.