A Financial Services Leader Learns How Best to Compete in a Key B2B Payments Vertical

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A Financial Services Leader Learns How Best to Compete in a Key B2B Payments Vertical

CASE STUDY

A FINANCIAL SERVICES LEADER LEARNS HOW BEST TO COMPETE IN A KEY B2B PAYMENTS VERTICAL WWW.FULD.COM

Changing Landscape for Electronic Payments Case Overview

With the rise of electronic payment options, a leading global financial services company wanted to understand how its solutions stacked up against competitors and to look closely at that competition in one of the most lucrative B2B payments markets, healthcare. Working with Fuld + Company, the company attained fine-grained understanding of rival solutions and of the healthcare sector from both the vendor and customer points of view. Most importantly, they discovered advantages that they could exploit and gaps that they needed to fill, better positioning them to compete in this rapidly evolving environment.

Our Client,

A Leading FS Firm

Competitor B

Competitor A

Competitor D

Competitor C ?

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The use of paper checks continues to decline in both consumer and B2B settings, driven by a wide array of electronic payment options that are faster, cheaper, and more efficient. In the B2B arena, the shift from paper to electronic represents a potential market of trillions of dollars in payments. With such a massive market opportunity, the B2B space is crowded with many competing solutions, including sophisticated supply chain finance programs, automated clearing houses (ACHs), open and closed-loop electronic funds transfer (EFT) networks, and a variety of commercial card solutions such as purchasing cards, single-use virtual cards, vendor ghost cards, and buyer-initiated payments.

Checking Out Key Business Challenges



A Two-Pronged Approach Key Business Challenges

While these tools are not completely interchangeable, customers must weigh the relative advantages of each payment vehicle for the different types of B2B spend they manage. To help them make these choices, providers of these products must be extremely adept at explaining the pros and cons of both their own solutions and those of rivals. The market is made more complex by the differing needs of specific industry verticals, some of which have enormous market potential and are thus worth understanding in great detail. The hospital and healthcare industry is one such hotly contested vertical that our client needed to understand more clearly. The client engaged Fuld to help on both important fronts of this attack:

1) address the need to fully understand competitor solutions and how they stack up against its own

2) delve into the specific needs and characteristics of the healthcare market, both from the buyer and key supplier perspectives.


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Understanding Vendors, Customers, and Payment Types

The Fuld Approach

Fuld conducted in-depth interviews with a wide range of industry participants, with heavy emphasis on direct competitors and key buying organizations. By looking at

the vertical from both angles—vendor and customer—we learned not only the specifics of how competitors position their product features and benefits but also the reality of how customers view and assess them all versus available solutions. In particular, we delved into the economics of various transaction types (costs, revenue-share opportunities), the systems integration requirements, and the openness of key suppliers to accepting each form of payment.



Opening New Lines of Attack Key Business Impact

In the end, the Fuld team presented a realistic and enlightening picture of the healthcare payments vertical, demonstrating key advantages our client could seize upon and important gaps it would need to address, in some cases, or carefully navigate in others. By examining the industry from the outside in, we had imparted the client with a new vision for how best to attack and further penetrate the healthcare vertical. No longer reliant on selling just its own advantages, the firm is now able to make a compelling case for when and why its solutions are better than competitor solutions as well as how they best suit the needs of buyers and their supplier networks.



Strong Medicine The Fuld Review

Given the high stakes in the healthcare vertical, the client was keen to stay closely involved throughout the project, seeking clarification and confirmation of all findings. Although the information we uncovered was sometimes discomfiting, as it revealed a number of the client’s vulnerabilities, the process of challenging and testing the research proved extremely valuable to the final outcome. The client’s resistance to accepting unpleasant messages from the marketplace was completely overcome when our final presentation laid out a clear and convincing case explaining what needed to be done to maximize the opportunity in this lucrative market segment. Doubters among the consumers of competitive intelligence research are not uncommon, but the key to overcoming their skepticism lies in having solid, corroborated research results, cohesive analysis that stands up to questions, and the industry expertise to place it all in the proper context.



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About Fuld + Company

WHO WE ARE

Since 1979 Fuld + Company have pioneered competitive intelligence, and today we work with leading companies worldwide to deliver the competitive and market insights they need to make better business decisions. We don’t rest on our history and past successes. This means working hard to deliver uncompromising analysis that generates sound advice and earns us enduring partnerships with our clients.

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A Financial Services Leader Learns How Best to Compete in a Key B2B Payments Vertical

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