Alijah Poindexter 00:05
Welcome to the Buzz, a Bank Automation News podcast. I’m Associate Editor Alijah Poindexter. Recently I spoke with Jo Jagadish, head of corporate product services and Innovation at TD Bank. Miss Jagadish and I spoke about payment workflow automation for commercial customers at TD, along with some best practices for smaller banks looking to embark on an automation journey for their customers.

00:26
So, you know, payments, automation has been a topic that we’ve been talking about for several years now. And, you know, pre pandemic put in place solutions to help our commercial clients automate the back office processing around payments, which, you know, is time consuming manual in nature, it’s a lot of paper pushing. And it’s not as digital as, as you would think, especially for companies that still find it hard to invest in automation. And so as a bank, you know, we put in place, even pre pandemic, some of these products that enabled clients to really lean in into the digitization of that back end processing. I think what was helpful though, was the pandemic really helped accelerate the ante implementation of many of those conversations that were still on the cusp. So companies recognize that having a manual, you know, whether it’s taking the invoice and you know, getting the invoice approved, you know, making sure that the appropriate payment files are sent to the bank, the workflow around that which was largely manual, and, you know, done over email or via paper, a lot of those processes weren’t sustainable when everyone was working from home. And so a lot of the discussions that we were having with commercial clients that were probably in early stage got dramatically accelerated, because they knew that TD provided a pretty robust solution around managing the the backend operations of those payments. And so, you know, we’ve had significant success in our, you know, accounts payable automation, we have an integrated payable solution that we launched pre pandemic that seen great adoption. And we’re just looking over the next few months to enhance that capability to provide end to end Accounts Payable automation, both for what I call the upper end of our community bank segments. So this is traditionally kind of lower end of middle market. And so we’ve taken sort of the processes that we had in place and identified with how do you simplify that, to, you know, client that’s probably a little less sophisticated, but also accommodating for what that capability would look like for larger middle market customers. So we really looked at the client base and tried to adopt the pricing, the packaging the solution, for the lower end of the spectrum, while also solving for our middle market, customer base. So our integrated payables product, which was in partnership with p modex. It maximizes sort of that, you know, AP solution for clients, providing returns for customers in the forms of rebates, you know, based on the payments that they’re processing with TD and so that’s been a significant, I’d say success for us in the in the payments, automation journey.

Alijah Poindexter 03:30
So far into businesses within TDs, sort of commercial bank portfolio, what types of pain points, maybe you can go a little bit deeper into sort of the pain points or the headwinds of the difficulties they were encountering, you know, to, you know, one and a half to two years ago, when, you know, the automation journey sort of really went into full gear for a lot of them. And of course, many of them probably were not, you know, super prepared for that. So, you know, what types of pain points were they encountering that, you know, TD was able to fix when it comes to automating their payments, both business, the business business, you know, obviously payroll and accounts payable.

04:00
Yeah, I think a large pain point that existed, pre pandemic and still in large part exists today is you still need to hire people who will be processing those payments in your accounts, payables department, a, I think finding, at least in this market, finding the right talent, and you know, retaining talent is continue to be incredibly difficult. But even besides that, you know, the payment lifecycle from a b2b perspective is still pretty manual and paper based. So, you know, people are still printing and mailing invoices or receiving those invoices in the mail. Then applying those invoices, right, to the appropriate kind of payments. You know, the workflow process that I just mentioned, around getting those payments approved, was also fairly manual. And so you were looking at either taking those invoices and you know, getting them approved by the head of the AP department or the CFO treasurer. In some cases, in smaller companies, that’s all the same person, right. So you don’t have sufficient resources to manage sort of that paper approval, and then, you know, documenting filing those invoices, creating an audit trail, a lot of that end to end kind of processing was still done manually through paper. And so a big opportunity for us has been to lift that paper based process into a more electronic workflow, where it moves from invoice acceptance, to, you know, payment initiation, approval, delivery, reconciliation, that entire lifecycle is much more automated through a workflow tool. And that’s been, I think, the largest lift that we’ve been able to, that we’re focusing on enabling for commercial clients.

Alijah Poindexter 06:00
So obviously, we were talking about contactless payments, you know, again, growing again, in both the consumer and the commercial sector. So my question was, of course, you know, what are the biggest opportunities there, and then obviously, what gets you excited from the product side when it comes to payment innovation there.

06:16
So there’s a lot happening in the payment space, I think the most exciting component of this is how payment innovation allows our clients to deliver an exceptional experience with their customers that’s at the end of the day, what we care about is making sure that we’re building products that enable our clients to have a deep relationship and grow their business with their customers. And so along the in the commercial space, I’d say we’re doing a couple of things around payment innovation that I’m excited about. So one is in a small business space, we’re looking at electronic disbursements through Zell and this has been, you know, a pain point for small business and even kind of, I’d say the the lower middle market space, which is the ability to send out payments, just you know, via a directory, versus having to store payment information and account information for customers and make sure that then all of the appropriate data security and compliance practices are adhere to, you know, develop payments for business customers, both on the small business as well as the commercial side. So think of it as you know, reimbursements refunds, you know, nuisance payments, sometimes small dollar value payments, that businesses just need to get out to consumers, a lot of that can be done a lot more seamlessly through the cell rails. The other kind of capability This allows to solve for is payment acceptance. So you know, if you’re a, you know, you’re a small landscaping company, and you just need to accept payments, you know, electronically from your customers, you can do that via Zell a lot more seamlessly settles into your bank account, within minutes. And so that experience is becoming a lot more common in table stakes. The second thing that we’re also heavily focused on is just around making payments, part of the account experience that you have with the bank, we don’t think that, you know, companies should or, you know, should be thinking about, you know, payments, any differently than, you know, as they think about, you know, creating their bank account and looking at services that they can, you know, set up while they’re setting up their business. And so one of the really interesting things we did last year at TD is integrate capabilities, like invoicing and payment acceptance as a standard feature of our checking account product. And so our simple business checking account that we offer, you know, comes with free invoicing capabilities, and allows small business customers to accept payments, you know, pretty much as soon as they open their account, and so kind of, you know, making payments, just a big part of your experience with the bank versus, you know, having to take that third fourth step, to figure out how you’re going to invoice customers. And you know, how you’re going to manage cash flow, we want this to be as seamless as possible. And so we’re taking steps around, you know, around bundling our capabilities to deliver end to end solutions, I’d say, for businesses, depending on the life stage that they’re at, and that’s been a big focus, and something that we’re continuously investing in over the next couple of years as well.

Alijah Poindexter 09:33
This is a bit of a tough question, but I certainly think it’s a valuable one. And it’s that, you know, for TD internally, maybe you can walk me through some of the challenges and this can go back as far as it needs to be when it came to getting TD ready to provide for its commercial customers, these sort of payment innovations. Is there anything you could speak to in terms of any hurdles that you guys had to overcome maybe a success story?

09:53
I’d say, you know, in the early days of the pandemic, so we there was obviously a lot of focus on On pivoting to supporting businesses through the paycheck Protection Program, and making sure that that process was as successful as possible. And I think TD did a great job in implementing the PPP program. It is frankly all hands on deck, which is, I’m sure the case for many other organizations as well. You know, I think what we felt really well prepared for is some of the solutions that I just mentioned around payment acceptance, right, providing invoicing capabilities in digital first fashion, providing, you know, integrated payable solutions to clients in managing that end to end processing. Those solutions were up and ready. Meaning we kind of you know, we had them in the market, we were talking to clients about it, in some cases, we actually had the solution. And we didn’t put any initially kind of marketing resources, because we just, you know, we’re so focused on on PPP, what was really nice to see is that clients, you know, organically found us or found these solutions online, which just help reiterate the fact that companies are looking for options to continue to streamline those payments and having those capabilities up and running. And live to us was a great validation point, even though we weren’t putting a lot of marketing effort around it just yet, because we were so focused on on PPP, it was a great validation of the fact that you know, our investments in payment, acceptance, payment disbursement technologies, is really another kind of key aspect of making businesses a lot better in terms of running their day to day operations. And so that was a real, real interesting use case that we saw just in the very, very early weeks of the pandemic.

Alijah Poindexter 11:53
A final question here for you is, you know, what advice or best practices or practices do you have for another bank looking to embark on an automation journey for their payments, and not specifically just, you know, moving their processes to a core, but maybe sort of a deeper look into what they can do to better prepare for their automation journey?

12:11
A couple of things, I think one is, it’s sort of easier said than done. But always, I think, really understanding what your client’s needs are and how they operate on a day to day basis, not just how they operate with the bank. I think the best way to build solutions for customers, and especially as you think about what that automation journey looks like, is to just walk in your clients shoes for 24 hours or 48 hours, and really get a deep sense of appreciation of what the customer does on a day in and day out basis. And, you know, that sometimes provides the best insight into building solutions that help automate that journey, because there may be touch points that, you know, have nothing to do with the bank. But yet, you know, as you think about services and solutions, you can actually optimize those in and kind of deliver more end to end solutions. So I think that’s on, on the second thing, I think is really important. There’s a lot of smaller businesses in the country tend to find, you know, when you have owner operators, you know, five to 10 people, companies, or even I’d say, you know, even a few 100 people, a person company, finding technology resources, and tech talent, focused on payments, automation doesn’t always bubble up to be the first priority for these businesses. And so the easier that we can make it for these clients to download, get up and running, right, download our services through the cloud, be up and running, you know, turning things on versus going through deep, long implementations tends to be a lot more easier for the end customer. So so to me, I think, again, just the easier and the more seamless that we as service providers can make it for our customers to launch and implement these practices, I think is always helpful. And then the third thing is, you know, understanding who your customer is even within your client organization. So how do you enable, you know, the head of the AP department or the treasurer to share the ROI of investing in these automation capabilities within their organizations? Sometimes you you know, assume that, you know, they are, you know, prioritizing, you know, the the implementation of these capabilities, but empowering your customer, right? Who is the user of these solutions? By the right ROI, and tools and calculators I think goes a long way in ensuring sort of a successful implementation, empowering Write the people that you’re having the conversation with in the client location because you’re not always talking to the same people but empowering them to with the right tools and assets to tell the story internally to make this a priority has always been, in my mind, a great way for banks to start to think about the automation journey. And then of course, it is, you know, picking the right technology provider, whether it’s building it in house or working with a vendor or a FinTech in this space. I think that goes a long way in making sure that the solution that is being provided not only is effective, but is in line with the the thematic that the bank is trying to accomplish. I think those are just some of the things that I would provide as an advice or best practices where we’ve seen some success.

Alijah Poindexter 15:52
You’ve been listening to the bus, a bank automation news podcast. Thank you for your time and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com For more automation news, you can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Please don’t hesitate to rate this podcast on your podcast platform of choice