"Who Moved My Cheese?!"

If your financial institution is looking to take its credit card portfolio income to another level, then you have to provide easy, intuitive card program management tools for smb + middle market program administrators--a rich rewards program is NOT ENOUGH to drive meaningful behavior change.

Why?

For years, I helped the exact businesses your bank or credit union wants to attract, transform their AP departments to drive efficiency, accountability, & profitability with a commercial card program for the largest mega issuers in the country. At the center of every finance department is AP & typically a staff that is very resistant to any sorts of change. Their jobs are mired in rote tasks, repetition, & typically lower-than-average income.

The proverbial buck stops with them & unless you get them on board with understanding how your tools will HELP them, they will sabotage the success of your program--consciously or subconsciously.

?Let's get into the psychology of why...

Accounting + Accounts Payable specifically is more often than not a thankless job. Leadership designates you as a cost center, constantly looking for cost-cutting measures, sales hates you because they never submit their receipts + expenses on-time so you have to ride them, and in most organizations, every other department either forgets you exist, or avoids you at all costs.

Despite this, this staff tends to be your most tenured & loyal. For this reason, it's very difficult to backfill these sorts of positions & when leaders find a good AP person, the smart ones keep them.

How might you ask?

Paying more? No .... More flexible work hours? No ... Investing in technology to make their jobs easier? No

?The answer: Influence & power of their domain beyond what their title would typically dictate.

I've reflected a lot about this dynamic over my career having worked with literally hundreds--if not thousands--of AP people, & I've realized it boils down to the fact that most business leaders--especially entrepreneurs-- don't actually fully grasp all AP does & since they typically have drastically different personality profiles, don't care to really dig in to find out.

As a result, John or Betty have worked in the AP department for years, never seeking a promotion because they do not want the limelight (most tend to be very introverted) & they really enjoy the patterns and patterns they've woven in their roles.

?All they ask is to be left alone. DON'T MOVE MY CHEESE!

Now imagine one of your business bankers on your team is trying to get a business member/customer to apply for your credit card to earn rewards & benefits for ownership that Betty or John WILL NEVER SEE.

90%+ of the reason a business doesn't choose to change or begin using a credit card program is because of John & Betty & AP. They fear & resent the change so they throw up flimsy, false logic objections to their leadership as to why the change will be bad.

It will be bad for their version of what they want their job to be. Very few AP staff members get or care to get the bigger picture of a credit card program helping an organization's cash flow management, DPO, & profitability.

I share all this to say that NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOUR REWARDS PROGRAM, if you can't convince AP it will make their job better/easier--it will go nowhere. Very, very few leadership I've ever met have dictated a change in payment process to an AP staff member. They typically get excited about the benefits, only for their eyes to glaze over as the AP person tries to shoot holes in the opportunity by obfuscating & raises concerns about accounting integrity in order to scare the decision maker into sticking with the 'same way we've always done it."

In all my years selling commercial card for B2B + T&E spend, I wish I'd had an easy, intuitive, insight-rich commercial card program management tool to offer Betty or John to quickly show them how I'm going to make their life easier .

No more manual .xls spreadsheet expense reports. Want to be able to route through an approval workflow so sales management's thumbs are on the table? SpendTrack can do that! The sort of robust controls, decision + workflows, as well as drill down capabilities within SpendTrack are LEAPS & BOUNDS beyond what is available in the marketplace by the mega issuers.

But you don't have to take my word for it... Check it out here --> https://fiserv.highspot.com/items/60ae484aa4dfa016390ca773?lfrm=shp.0

If you're interested in learning more about how SpendTrack from Fiserv can help you build your business card portfolio, you can reach me below:

-Meaghan Wood

Senior Payments Technology Consultant

Fiserv, Inc. - Card Services Group

[email protected]

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