We talk a lot about Business and Financial Process Optimization at PayStream. To quote Austin Powers, “It’s our bag.” But these two terms are fuzzy and often used in the industry without really drilling down into what exactly they do and/or mean.

I personally believe the novelty and uniqueness of our approach lies in the methods and goals we advocate for. Specifically, we underscore the Payment Tsar and the Payment Quotient as the primary goals of process optimization, as they provide strategic visibility, risk mitigation, and encourage entire culture shifts towards financial automation and efficiency.

A Payment Tsar/Tsarina is unique as he or she holds a C-Level position and is personally in charge of maintaining strategic visibility over the entirety of the financial supply and payment chain. This individual, properly endowed with effective tools and authority, is capable of informing his or her entire company on strategic process efficiency initiatives, up to and including major automation solution implementation.

At the same time, when we encourage clients to advocate for the Tsar or Tsarina, we talk about the Payment Quotient, an extensive best-practice rubric tool that guides their initial decision making process and naturally leads to the sort of corporate practices that establish a Payment Tsar. The Payment Quotient demands high-level analysis of all the various vendor/supplier/customer/expense/spend channels, segmenting them to achieve maximum visibility into the financial process.

For example, in the world of Credit and Collections, the some questions that Payment Quotient analysis would ask are,

• How many payment channels are there?
• How many customer segments are there by payment channel?
• How much does it cost for one or another customer to pay by a particular channel?

So the Payment Quotient is a tool that highlights the need for a dedicated C-Level employee that constantly collects and analyzes these types of questions. At the same time, the Payment Quotient, or a modified version unique to the enterprise, is exactly the collection and analysis that leads to strategic visibility.

The question must be asked then, which comes first? The answer is whichever will get both the Tsar/Tsarina and the strategic visibility the fastest. If Management is on board to bring on a Tsarina because it’s aware that only such a position is capable of establishing true strategic financial visibility, then she will proceed the analysis. If Management doesn’t see the benefit of her position until it’s proven that without her the company will lack strategic vision, then Payment Quotient analysis needs to happen first.

The second is obviously the more difficult scenario - The solution, we’ve found, is for a team-player with the vision to become the Payment Tsar to formulate a cross-functional team that promises to bring together the data necessary to make Payment Quotient analysis.

These sorts of best-practice financial management positions and decisions are only now becoming possible due to the extraordinary analytic power of next-generation financial automation solutions. Putting all the pieces into play is challenging, especially when Management lacks cohesive strategic vision. The first question that you need to ask is, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

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