Building a Stronger Manufacturing Platform With Embedded Payments

Read time: 3 minutes 

For manufacturers, a payment rarely stands on its own.

It sits at the end of a much longer operational chain: an order is entered, inventory is allocated, materials move, production happens, goods ship, an invoice is generated, and eventually payment needs to be collected and reconciled.

Manufacturing software platforms already sit at the center of much of that activity. The opportunity with embedded payments is to bring another critical part of the customer workflow into the same experience.

For ISVs serving manufacturers, that makes payments more than an additional feature. Done well, embedded payments can make the platform more useful to customers, create a more connected experience, and give the software provider a greater role in the workflows that drive its customers’ businesses.

Manufacturing workflows don’t end at the invoice

Manufacturing software is built around interconnected processes.

Sales orders affect inventory. Inventory availability influences production planning. Production and fulfillment lead to shipment. Shipment triggers invoicing. And ultimately, incoming payment has to be associated with the right customer, invoice, and business record.

That interconnectedness is why payments shouldn’t be treated as an isolated transaction at the edge of the platform.

Manufacturing systems commonly connect workflows across orders, inventory, production, dispatch, invoicing, and finance. Industry software providers themselves increasingly describe these processes in terms such as quote-to-cash, order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, production planning and inventory management.

When payment happens through a disconnected experience, customers may be forced to move outside the system they use to run the rest of the business.

For the software platform, that’s a missed opportunity to make the product more complete.

Embedded payments should fit the way manufacturers already work

Embedding payments isn’t simply about placing a payment button inside an application.

The more important question is whether payments fit naturally into the workflows the platform already supports.

A manufacturing customer may need to accept ACH or commercial card payments against an invoice, manage payment terms across business customers, identify incoming payments, and reconcile those payments back to the appropriate records.

The exact requirements vary by manufacturer and software platform. But the principle is consistent: the payments experience should adapt to the business workflow rather than forcing the business workflow to adapt to payments.

That’s particularly important in B2B environments, where the transaction is often only one step in a larger financial and operational process.

A stronger payments experience can make the platform stronger

For manufacturing ISVs, the strategic opportunity isn’t simply to help customers accept another form of payment.

It’s to ask what role payments should play in the broader platform strategy.

There are several ways to think about that value.

A more connected customer experience. When payments live closer to invoicing and the other workflows customers already manage in the platform, users have fewer reasons to move between disconnected systems.

Greater product value. Extending the workflow through payment can make the platform more central to how customers run their businesses.

New revenue opportunities. Payment activity already taking place across the customer base may create an additional opportunity for platform monetization.

More differentiation. For software providers competing in specialized manufacturing markets, an embedded payments strategy designed around real manufacturing workflows can become part of the product experience rather than a generic add-on.

That changes the strategic question from “Should we add payments?” to “How can payments make our platform more valuable?”

Integration is only the beginning

The technical integration matters, but getting payments live isn’t the same thing as building a successful payments program.

Software platforms also need to think about how customers discover the capability, how they activate it, how it fits into existing workflows and what will drive adoption over time.

That makes the right payments relationship important beyond APIs and processing.

An embedded payments partner should understand the B2B environment the ISV serves, help the platform determine how much of the payments experience it wants to own, and support the program as it moves from integration to activation, adoption and growth.

Build payments around the platform you’re already building

Manufacturing ISVs don’t need to become payments companies to make payments a more valuable part of their product.

They need a strategy that recognizes the complexity of the manufacturing environment and connects payments to the workflows their customers already rely on.

When that happens, payments become more than the last step in a transaction. They become another way for the platform to create value for customers—and participate more deeply in the business activity it already supports.

 Want to explore what that could look like for your platform? Read our Embedded Payments That Strengthen Your Platform guide for a deeper look at ownership models, adoption, platform growth and what to evaluate in an embedded payments partner.

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