B2B Pricing Power Changes When Software Can Prove Its Own ROI

In the B2B landscape, companies are now able to deliver quantifiable value to customers without necessarily making that value easily quantifiable for those customers. Various software solutions, such as payments, procurement, accounts receivable automation, treasury technology, and more, can enhance operational efficiency. However, customers often find it challenging to translate these operational improvements into tangible financial figures that their chief financial officers can comprehend during renewal periods.

This issue of value visibility has traditionally been addressed by B2B firms through effective selling, deeper enablement, and the creation of ROI studies, customer-success teams, benchmarks, and business cases.

With the advent of digitized B2B workflows, a new opportunity has emerged. These workflows generate a wealth of transaction data, as platforms increasingly become embedded within processes that generate financial outcomes. For instance, payments platforms monitor transaction costs and settlement times, procurement systems observe prices, terms, and supplier behavior, AR platforms analyze invoices, payment timing, and discounts, and treasury systems evaluate liquidity, balances, and cash movements.

The crucial question now is whether these platforms stop at operational analytics, such as invoices processed, transactions completed, and hours saved, or if they go further to translate these activities into concrete financial outcomes like working capital released, borrowing avoided, revenue acceleration, losses prevented, or margins preserved.

Court Toomey, senior vice president and head of Commercial Payments and Product at Priority Commerce, emphasizes that accounts payable (AP) traditionally holds the largest liability for most companies' cash balances but has never been regarded as a strategic lever. Instead, AP has followed a linear process of invoice, approval, payment, and reconciliation.

However, modern platforms should focus on analysis, decision-making, and optimization to maximize the value of every dollar that leaves the balance sheet. A PYMNTS Intelligence report from October indicates that 77.9% of CFOs consider improving the cash flow cycle as "very or extremely important" to their strategy in the coming year.

Real-time transaction data offers a forward-looking perspective, allowing platforms to provide a more proactive assessment of value. Instead of merely estimating the impact of automating receivables, platforms can now measure the changes in collection behavior post-deployment. Similarly, procurement or payments platforms can track the actual discounts captured, rather than estimating their value.

This shift presents a mathematical challenge for CFOs to analyze across their income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.

When considering a software renewal, a CFO's weakest argument may be that employees appreciate the platform. A stronger case can be made by demonstrating that the software processed 4 million transactions, processed $3 million in processing expense reductions, accelerated $40 million in cash collections by several days, and minimized uncertainty in cash forecasting, thereby reducing precautionary liquidity.

As software increasingly generates these final answers automatically, the line between ROI reporting and product development becomes increasingly blurred. The next generation of enterprise software may need to focus on more than just digitizing operations; it must also be capable of keeping accurate records of their financial impact.