I grew up in South Africa where I studied engineering at college. This was around the same time when the Internet was being launched and increasing in popularity. Being in the right place at the right time, I was intimately involved in the founding of Internet Solutions, which was the first commercial Internet Service Provider in South Africa. Capitalizing on the development of the Web and the first browsers, I focused on the development and hosting of corporate WWW sites thathen rapidly expanded to include managing firewalls, mail servers and other Internet infrastructure for companies without the skillset to manage this behind their firewalls. I was able to see firsthand how the Internet was changing the way B2C and B2B business was done.
Following, I joined a startup procurement marketplace company, Quadrem, designed to facilitate the buying and selling of goods in the mining industry. After 10 years, I made the decision to move to the US where the company’s headquarters was located and continued working with Ariba, who acquired Quadrem in 2011, and then SAP, who acquired Ariba in 2013.
Throughout my entire career, I have always been in smaller companies where I felt I could personally be more impactful. One challenge I came to learn working with smaller companies is that they do not always have access to the resources they need to be able to grow. This led me to my next opportunity with TreviPay. Starting in 2014 as Chief Operating Officer, I was responsible for the general operations of the business including financial controls, accounting, FP&A, technology, and engineering. The role still enabled me to be very impactful within a standalone business unit, but I was able to expand my experience by also working under the umbrella of a much larger company.
After many years of growth and building a world-class leadership team, I am now the CEO of TreviPay leading our latest journey in B2B commerce and embedded payments solutions.
TreviPay brings the ease of B2C transactions to B2B companies. The company started in the 1980s as fuel card solution for truckers, operating under the name Multi Service Technology Solutions, Inc. (“MSTS”). At its inception, it was created to create a better way for truck drivers to pay for fuel than carrying cash. With vehicles moving around the country making multiple fuel stops across a distributed network of fuel vendors, the fuel card was developed to establish a seamless B2B purchasing experience. This was quickly found to be applicable to other verticals/industries looking to solve similar payment challenges in complex B2B supply chains.
TreviPay helps solve this complexity by extending credit on behalf of its clients and providing invoicing with net terms at checkout, so that B2B businesses can protect their working capital to fuel growth. With more than four decades of experience building networks, TreviPay has become the preferred B2B payment method of corporate buyers and sellers globally, processing USD 6 billion in transaction volume across 32 countries in 19 currencies.
From a supplier’s perspective, order-to-cash is the most important business process, as being paid on time can be a big challenge for B2B companies. However, there is a misconception that if a supplier isn’t paid on time, there is an issue with the payment itself. Instead, B2B companies must look earlier in the business process when the interaction with the buyer began, and an invoice is being created.
For example, if an invoice is incorrect (which could happen for many reasons, including inputting the wrong price, quantity, or item), the probability of getting paid on time decreases dramatically. As a payments company, TreviPay tackles this problem much further up in the value chain to ensure our clients’ payment happens on time.
While four to five years of digital transformation has been compressed into the last two years, most company resources and attention have been on improving the online customer buying journey for the B2C buyer. The payments industry is finally turning its attention to focus on how money flows in the B2B ecosystem, which means merchants are re-evaluating business models to determine how to best digitize processes for the business buyer. B2B buyers have a different set of expectations and involve more complex processes than B2C payments. For example, B2C payments tend to be performed by a single stakeholder (a consumer) using a single payment method (a credit card), but any given B2B transaction may involve multiple stakeholders (the purchaser, the budget owner, the procurement group and the A/P team) and numerous payment options (trade credit, purchasing cards and credit cards).
Another development has been our clients’ focus on days sales outstanding (DSO) as a metric for success. DSO, the average number of days it takes a company to receive payment for a sale, is much more in focus right now because of the rising rate environment. We’ve lived in a zero-rate society for so long that people weren’t focused on working capital at all. Today, with the rate environment continuing to rise, and likely remain high, working capital is more important than ever.
Gleaning insights from B2C customer interactions and preferences, B2B expectations and demand for seamless online experiences have also become critical. Today’s business buyers expect real-time underwriting and trade credit balance confirmation, as well as the option to check-out with trade credit right away, followed by an invoice.
From a B2C ecommerce perspective, consumers can easily choose to pay with a credit card, and it is our goal is to enable B2B buyers to pay with net terms in the same, simple way. However, eCommerce sites are not designed to produce an invoice so critical in the B2B ecosystem. TreviPay has built its capabilities to fill those gaps for invoice construction and delivery to serve B2B companies with the experience they require.
B2B merchants face immense competition to win increasingly digital buyers, amplifying the need to offer payment solutions that will drive revenue and support customer loyalty. For business sellers, providing trade credit (or Business BNPL) is a good way to increase sales and loyalty, as it enables your B2B buyers to better manage their cash flow with more flexible payment options. It’s so important that research TreviPay conducted found 82% of respondents would pick one vendor over others if they could choose from invoicing with 30-, 60- or 90-day terms.
It is important to note that some companies define and deploy BNPL solutions differently, and not all are equal. For example, BNPL for B2C is payment for goods or services typically broken up into four payments. Some Business BNPL offerings are similar to the B2C payment frequency, however, some provide options to spread payments out even longer. Other companies view Business BNPL to be a new name for what suppliers have long been offering their buyers through trade accounts/trade credit.
The future of B2B payments is an easier pathway for all suppliers to have access to platforms and capabilities that allow them to expand the types/locations of the customers they want to serve. The key will be to recognize that companies do not have to solve all these problems themselves.
There tends to be an inherent desire to own an entire customer ecosystem or platform, but this is less likely to be successful for B2B transactions given their complexity and cross-border nuances. Merchants must put their business buyers’ needs at the center and understand who they can collaborate with to solve the problem together. Partnering with a purpose-built B2B invoicing and payments provider will likely be the fastest way to plug-and-play an easy experience for corporate customers.
The business book which most changed the way I think about companies is The Discipline of Market Leaders, which outlines tactics for any business striving to achieve market dominance.
I also love listening to podcasts for news and trends. One of my favorites is After Hours which is a topic du jour, covered by a selection of business leaders and academics. Recent great episodes were focused on the future of Twitter and the Great Resignation.
Brandon Spear leads TreviPay with expertise in managing large, diverse, global teams. His strength is discerning and focusing on the most important challenges facing an organization at a particular point in time and unifying all stakeholders behind accomplishing a set of specific goals. Brandon has a unique ability to connect across all levels of an organization, motivate staff with diverse skill sets, while ensuring a common alignment and results.
TreviPay is the global B2B payments and invoicing network built to optimize trade between buyers and sellers. With more than four decades of experience building networks, TreviPay is the preferred B2B payment method of corporate buyers and sellers globally, processing USD 6 billion in transaction volume across 32 countries, 19 currencies and 90,000 active buyers.
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