A conversation with Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at TreviPay, and Inez Berkhof-Hollander, VP of EMEA at TreviPay, about why B2B commerce is reaching an inflection point and how pay-by-invoice is becoming a catalyst for order-to-cash automation.
“Pay by invoice is the starting point, but it’s not the ending point.” If B2B payments are becoming increasingly embedded, what actually creates competitive advantage?
In our latest podcast, Allen Bonde and Inez Berkhof-Hollander explain why the future of B2B commerce depends on connecting payments, invoicing, credit, compliance, and data into a more seamless buyer-supplier experience.
Do not hesitate to reach out to Rom Mascetti, Rom@flagshipap.com, or Charlotte Al Usta, Charlotte@flagshipap.com, with any comments or questions.
Listen to the latest episode on the following platforms:
Transcript
Rom Mascetti:
Hello everyone and welcome. I am Rom Mascetti, a Principal at Flagship Advisory Partners based in our U.S. office in the Washington, D.C. area. I am joined today by my colleague and counterpart, Charlotte Al Usta, also a Principal at Flagship based in our Amsterdam office. We are very pleased to be joined by two leaders from TreviPay: Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer, and Inez Berkhof-Hollander, Vice President of EMEA. Together with their incredible teams at TreviPay, they bring deep expertise at the intersection of B2B payments, marketing, and digital transformation across the U.S. and Europe. Thank you both, and Charlotte, for being here today.
Allen Bonde:
Great to be here.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
Thank you.
Charlotte Al Usta:
Yes, looking forward to the discussion with Allen and Inez.
Rom Mascetti:
Today is going to be a very B2B-heavy conversation. We will cover several topics, including why B2B commerce is hitting an inflection point in the U.S. and Europe, but from two slightly different angles; why B2B pay-by-invoice is becoming a key enabler of broader order-to-cash automation; and our collective views on what best-in-class B2B commerce could look like over the next couple of years, particularly in a world driven by AI, automation, agentic commerce, and new payment rails. You will also hear us mention a few themes from our recent white paper that we co-authored, titled Opportunities to Digitize B2B Commerce with Pay-by-Invoice and the Automation Flywheel, which is available for download on TreviPay's website. To set the stage, Charlotte and I will go back and forth asking questions of Allen and Inez. To kick things off, let's start with a question for you, Allen. TreviPay sits at the center of the U.S. B2B commerce modernization effort, currently helping enterprise sellers digitize invoicing, net terms, and order-to-cash workflows. From your perspective, why is the U.S. market finally reaching an inflection point now after years of slow digitization?
Allen Bonde:
This is like a little history lesson, right? This is not a new journey, but you could say that the pace has increased. I think this is the root of what is driving this behavior now, and it is a mix of macro things and, I guess, selfish things for brands. I would boil it down to two forces. One is that we are always driving for more efficiency and the benefits of automation. A lot of this is coming to the fore in the current economic environment. When there is economic stress, people look for more efficiency and for opportunities to automate different parts of the order-to-cash process that they just have not had the urgency to do. I would actually put AI in this bucket, by the way, because AI is a form of automation in a lot of cases. I also think there is a shift, or an increasing shift, toward more direct-to-consumer-style models in manufacturing. You and I both know that marketplaces have been in the background of a lot of this, and that is moving to the foreground. So I think that is one force. The other one is growth: how can we create more growth opportunities broadly, whether you are a manufacturer, travel company, or retailer, and how can you gain more share of wallet from customers that are already engaging with you? Look at retail. In the study that we did with you, we focused specifically on retail, and there is a shocking number of retailers that are in denial that they have corporate buyers. Often, we challenge them to look for those corporate buyers within the checkout data, and it turns out that they have them, whether they are treating them separately or not. As retailers, especially, and others focus on capturing more corporate spend, and as they do the things they have not necessarily done to optimize their digital channels, pay-by-invoice fits into the discussion. It is ultimately about doing things more efficiently, capturing more spend, and creating loyalty. We think there are a lot of opportunities at that intersection. I think it is happening now because macro trends are forcing people to act, and micro trends are reminding people that they could do a better job helping their customers buy more stuff.
Rom Mascetti:
I completely agree. It is funny you mentioned the study that we had done because it was amazing to see how many of the top retailers, particularly in the NRF Top 50, do not have a broader buyer portal for business clients to shop through and create that new experience. It was eye-opening. It was not something I expected going in, but it was certainly interesting to find out. Allen, you mentioned a lot of different pockets within different industries and different parts of the order-to-cash flow. Where do you see the largest opportunity to drive the next wave of automation and transformation? There are so many subsegments. For those that have a very industry-focused view or workflow-focused view, what are the biggest opportunities that you see in your role?
Allen Bonde:
Me or Inez?
Rom Mascetti:
This one would be for you, Allen, actually, but you could also kick us off.
Allen Bonde:
All right. I am going to bounce this over to Inez because I know that she has seen the diversity of the use cases, especially in the European market. There is a lot more variety, I would say, in Europe, and some of that is going to flow over to the U.S.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
I am glad you say that, Allen. Sometimes we are apparently a little bit ahead of the U.S. in some instances. The way I would see this, Rom, is that it is not that Europe has not thought about digitizing the order-to-cash process. I do believe that pieces of the order-to-cash process have been optimized over the past years, whether influenced or driven by regulations or not. Think about the whole e-invoicing equation, and I am sure we will speak about that more down the line. That is definitely a piece that must be digitalized and has been digitized over the past years already. But also the whole payments equation, instant payments and SEPA payments. I believe the whole payments equation in Europe is a little bit more advanced already than probably in the U.S. But I think the real transformation comes from stitching it all together. It is the overall end-to-end process. If you think about how European businesses manage the order-to-cash process today, there are still manual steps that move from one to another. Credit decisions, even if they may be taken in a digital fashion, are a separate instance. They are not part of an overall digitalized experience. Invoicing happens in a different system. Payments are something different. Reconciliation is another step, often another process or another piece of the puzzle. For me, it is really stitching the whole process together. That is the real next transformation, in my opinion.
Charlotte Al Usta:
Inez, I think you mentioned a good point. It is the question that everyone loves in the market: how is the opportunity similar to what we observe in the U.S., but at the same time, how is it different in Europe? I would love for you to describe the similarities of the opportunity between the two regions, but also the constraints that you see and how that opportunity is effectively different.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
I think Rom alluded to it already, Charlotte. Europe is very much regulatory-driven. The European Commission is coming up with directions that companies have to abide by, and that drives the whole digitalization. That is not a bad thing, in my opinion. It drives companies to think about how to do this in the most efficient way. Compliance really matters. Going a layer deeper, if you think about countries like Germany, they are culturally focused on first-time-right work and are very thorough in how they do things. Compliance really matters. If you put that in the light of the European Commission and the direction being given by the European Commission, you can see why countries such as Germany are heavily focused on compliance and use that as a lever, or as a trigger, to start and optimize the digitization of the order-to-cash process.
Charlotte Al Usta:
I fully agree. One of the key elements we see in Europe versus the U.S. is that Europe is such a fragmented market. You touched on that. You have different languages and different tax systems, so localization is a key point. E-invoicing regulation, as you mentioned, is really powering the advancement here, but there are also different rules on e-invoicing, reporting, and data. That makes everything more complex and also legally different. If you compare Europe to the U.S., where do you see the largest opportunities in Europe specifically today?
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
If you compare the U.S. and Europe for a minute, I think both regions are striving for the same thing. They are trying to solve the same problem: how to digitize B2B trade in a way that improves cash flow, reduces risk, and scales relationships. I believe the contrast is in what is driving that transformation. Europe rewards platforms that can absorb complexity and automate compliance, while making sure the local and cultural aspects are taken care of. I believe that is where most of the focus and the biggest opportunity lies. Again, coming back to my first point, it is about stitching that together with the overall order-to-cash experience and not making it a standalone thing, because then it is still not an optimal process. It is about making sure the compliance requirement is taken care of within the overall order-to-cash end-to-end process and making that a smoother experience.
Allen Bonde:
One thing I might add, going back to the spirit of the question, is that there are different roads or ramps to this next wave of automation. To oversimplify, I think there is the process lane: seeing the world through processes that are disconnected and looking to link them together, sometimes informed by the regulatory environment. Then there is the data approach, which is: let's not think about the process yet, but let's look for the insights that can inform where to focus. What do our buyers need functionally to do their jobs, produce the widgets they are building, or keep the trucks on the road? What do they want in terms of experience? What creates loyalty? What are their expectations in terms of technology as a lever that they may even be struggling with themselves, such as how AI fits into this? We will talk about AI, I am sure, but ultimately I would recommend that it starts with looking at the data you have, the insights you have, the data you control, and the data you need. That unlocks the conversation. Putting on my old consultant's hat, follow the data, whether it is survey data, transactional data, subjective data, or verbatims. If you have a good handle on the data you have and need, then you have a foundation to talk about process and automation. Of course, if you are building AI models, they need data as well. I think people are missing the bigger discussion about the threats or opportunities from AI, and skipping over the part where they ask: do we have the right data? You are not going to get all the data you need from ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever, which is just a regurgitated version of other public data. The data you are sitting on as a retailer, manufacturer, or government has an awful lot of value, not only to inform decisions but also potentially to train AI models. There is an undercurrent here that data is the currency for a lot of this, but people have skipped that step when they talk about AI changing the world. If you have the data, it might. Who has that data, and can you trade that data for other data? I think there is a really interesting undercurrent informing this whole discussion.
Rom Mascetti:
It is funny you started to pick up on the data point because we talked about this in the white paper we published together. When you boil down what we see in our surveys with small and mid-market businesses in terms of the pain points or common friction points they see in the order-to-cash process, it is really four things, and you could argue they are all data-related. The first is manual data entry. The second is limited payment visibility. It is not necessarily about when the payment will hit my account or whether this is a cash-flow issue. It is about understanding where it sits in the process. Am I receiving this on a T+1, T+3, or T+7 basis? Transparency and data transmission are core to that. The third is dispute resolution delays. There is so much disputing that goes on between buyers and suppliers in a given year. That is very much a data-driven process. It has nothing to do with payments or financial services. It is about figuring out the right final invoice amount to be paid and how to transmit responses back and forth to get to an agreed outcome. The fourth is inflexible credit processes. At the end of the day, credit lines exist, but how do you exchange data to get set up on that credit product, whether that is trade credit or a card product? Those tend to be the four main areas, and all of that is data-driven. A lot of businesses sit on a lot of data. As we talk about differences, those are four things that I think are highly relevant across both the U.S. and Europe. The other thing I wanted to touch on, given that we are focused here on the O2C side, is the AP side of the equation. We have buyers and procurement offices that equally want to automate these processes and workflows, whether they are given the tools by the supplier or whether they have their own. MineralTree does an interesting state-of-the-market survey every year, and in its most recent AP survey, it still finds that only one in five businesses have fully automated their AP workflows. If we draw a tangent, that implies an 80% greenfield opportunity for automation within AP, similar to the AR side. That 80% of businesses are thinking about automation next, even if it is not the full end-to-end process, clearly points to a huge greenfield opportunity, at least within the U.S. Companies like TreviPay are well positioned to catch companies at the right time.
Allen Bonde:
The last point I will make on that, and it has come up in discussions we have had with advisers for the next Crossroads event, is to make sure you are mindful of the upstream and downstream impacts of the problem you are trying to solve. In simple terms, even if you are focusing on the AR side, the other side of that is AP. It cannot happen in a vacuum. I think it is really good advice, and I keep thinking about that metaphor: what you do impacts things upstream and downstream. What happens after the product ships and after the customer consumes it informs the next buying cycle. It is all connected. That is why it is about process, but also about the data behind the process. Even in the examples you gave, there are clues about where you should focus in the data points you mentioned. The gaps between the desire to automate and what is actually automated and ready to be automated should not be ignored. You cannot wishfully go into automation if all the endpoints are not ready to accept that automation.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
If I may chime in on that, Allen, I really like what you just said because optimization is quite often seen as a goal, which is fine to a certain extent. But to your point, it is also a means. If you do it well and it is good for the supplier and good for the buyer, that is where the magic happens. That is where loyalty comes from. That is really where we also see a lot of benefit in the optimization of order-to-cash: not just from a seller perspective, but also from the positive impact it should have on the buyer.
Allen Bonde:
It is a flywheel, right? It breeds additional interest and activity, which creates more automation, which creates more excitement, which creates more. Ultimately, we are tying automation to loyalty. That is the end game. Everybody wants share of wallet, but you also want loyal customers. If their interests are mutually aligned with yours when it comes to automation, bingo. For example, can I order through my Coupa and have a punchout to the merchant system? Then I am going to place most of my orders through that because procurement managers are going to insist on it. It creates these flywheels where it is not by accident that you consolidate your spend. You gain share of wallet because you meet both the needs and wants of procurement officers and everyone buying every day. It is like: I want this, but I need this. I cannot buy from you unless I get an invoice with all these fields and you push it directly into my accounting system. It is a non-starter if you cannot do that.
Charlotte Al Usta:
To follow up on that, there was an additional U.K. survey that estimated that, on average, one person spends about four hours per week just reconciling different invoices. When you think about that number, it is huge. The disruption opportunity is just at the beginning, and it is about time. I think AI powered by data is going to accelerate everything, and in Europe specifically, regulation will also accelerate it.
Allen Bonde:
One hundred percent.
Rom Mascetti:
We have covered most of our fintech buzzword bingo card up to this point. We have hit a lot of the big ones, but one that we have not hit yet, Allen, which I know sits near and dear to your heart, is pay-by-invoice. If I had bet that 20 minutes into the podcast we would not have said pay-by-invoice once, I would have bet wrong.
Allen Bonde:
We could just say it several times right now.
Rom Mascetti:
There we go. Now I am going to get it in. Joking aside, that was a big part of our white paper as well. Let's double-click there for a second. Why should pay-by-invoice be viewed less as a payment method, as we would typically think about it, and more as an automation enabler? Maybe expand a bit more on the flywheel effect we were just hinting at.
Allen Bonde:
I think we just hinted at it. At the simplest end of the spectrum, it is a payment option, and buyers are asking for it by name, or asking for net terms or synonyms. That is essential. You saw this in your research: there is a strong correlation between a purposeful focus on business buyers, business programs, and business portals, and pay-by-invoice being a necessary ingredient. But not every merchant has those business programs. The light bulb has to go on: we do want to grow our corporate business, and those buyers need certain services. It starts with viewing it as a payment option. Speaking of surveys, in surveys we have done, 80% of corporate buyers view the ability to pay with their preferred method as a reason to choose a supplier. If you do not allow people to buy the way they want or need to buy, they cannot do business with you. So it starts there, but then it is about all the back-office connectivity. It goes back to upstream and downstream. Custom invoicing, e-invoicing, purchase controls, and integration back to upstream and downstream systems all come up in surveys we have seen, especially the need to integrate and make it part of your process. The other thing that is interesting is that this depends on the size of the purchasing organization, because the complexity comes from the biggest buyers. We tend to focus on global sellers with big global buyers. If you go downstream, some of those requirements become less intense. The more that corporate buyers feel like prosumers or consumers, the more they put spend on cards, and integration and choice of payments become more relaxed. But if you are dealing with big corporate buyers, especially across different regions, I do not think you can do business without a lot of this. Then it becomes the automation play. It becomes: let's look at the order-to-cash cycle and help you, as a seller, do some of the things that are on your buyer's wish list. It takes a village to do this. Pay-by-invoice is the starting point, but it is not the ending point, and the value accrues up and down the value chain. Retailers are an interesting group. If I divide the world into two types of companies tackling this, there are traditional B2B players such as manufacturers or distributors who have always done this. They would say, wait a minute, pay-by-invoice? Everybody needs to be paying on invoice, on account, or on terms. The challenge for them is how to do that more smartly, automate, apply AI, and look at their data. It is a transformation challenge. If you flip over to retail, where adoption is still mixed, it is a growth and expansion opportunity. It is hard to say, we want to help you do your AR better, if they have not done AR this way. That is how we view the world. For retailers, this is almost all upside and mostly a growth opportunity. For manufacturers, it is about efficiency, automation, and doing things they have always done, just better. It is helpful to think of the world that way, even if it is somewhat binary. Retailers are starting from a different place than most of the manufacturers we work with.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
From a European perspective, I believe pay-by-invoice is even more the norm in Europe. We do not use credit cards for B2B payments, except probably in the travel industry. In that regard, B2B pay-by-invoice should not be viewed as a payment method because it does not sit at the end of the transaction. It is not just a checkout option. It fundamentally shapes everything that happens before and after the invoice is issued. It is truly an automation layer across the entire order-to-cash workflow. That is how it is viewed in Europe. I fully agree with you, Allen, that in retail it is viewed differently, and the opportunity is probably more growth-oriented because retail is not very familiar with offering net terms or pay-by-invoice. The manufacturing world probably is, but you would be surprised. I was at an event last week in Germany with purely manufacturers, and the level of risk aversion is where those companies struggle. They cannot grow as fast as they want because they are risk-averse. I will give a concrete example. It takes them five to seven days to onboard a customer. I understand that because if you are risk-averse, you want to check and triple-check the company you do business with and how much credit line you are willing to provide. But that is five to seven days of lost business or lost opportunity. I found that fascinating. Another person said they had just put an e-commerce channel live and were excited about it, but they did not know how to add new customers because those were unknown buyers and they did not know how to do underwriting. So the very start of the process immediately becomes a question of how to offer pay-by-invoice. Many manufacturing companies still do not know how to do that, especially in a digital world. Coming back to regulation, pay-by-invoice is also connected to e-invoicing regulation. It is not just issuing an invoice. It needs to be a compliant invoice. That is my view from a European perspective on pay-by-invoice and why it matters so much.
Rom Mascetti:
Maybe one thing to add toward the end of Allen's response and what Inez was saying. Charlotte and I spend a lot of our time thinking about B2B payments in what has traditionally been the C2B commerce world. What I find interesting is that with all our time working with PSPs, merchant acquirers, and card enablers, they have historically thought of B2B as a box of verticals and considered them in a homogeneous way, rather than thinking about B2B as its own distinct strategy. As we think about those enabling broader payment acceptance, bucketing B2B into this cohort has in many ways let retail, and what they would think of as C2B payment acceptance use cases like traditional retail, restaurants, and hospitality, allow the needs of B2B buyers to go to the wayside. What we are starting to experience more in our work is that it is the time to shine for TreviPay and other B2B payment enablers, because you have been solving these problems and are finally being recognized by retailers and other non-traditional B2B verticals. In the broader payment acceptance world, C2B enablers are also recognizing that they need to provide better service to B2B buyers and form partnerships with B2B fintechs that are already solving these problems. It is a really interesting intersection where those that have spent their time solving consumer payment needs are finally transitioning into this B2B focus.
Allen Bonde:
This is the point: there is an awful lot of B2B that is not cardable, like 90-plus percent of it. Whether you are a bank or a card network, there is a lot of momentum to crack that code and make that 90-plus percent still be in the flow, even if it is not going to be put on a card. I am glad you brought this up. Increasingly, it is not one versus the other. We know this from the travel space, where there is a lot of spend on virtual cards and a hunger for other alternatives. Whether you view pay-by-invoice as just a payment method or a full end-to-end automation opportunity, it kind of does not matter as long as you recognize that there is volume not going on cards and demand from both buyers and sellers for other types of programs. Those programs allow people to buy the way they need to buy and create downstream benefits, such as variability in custom data fields and integration into payment systems. However you start, it winds up being an end-to-end transformation. But it is really hard to sell an end-to-end transformation. You have to solve specific problems first, and that gives you the right to work on adjacent problems. So I do not mind if people think of pay-by-invoice as a payment method, because that gets them into the discussion of all the other things they can do to give corporate buyers a better experience. And when you make it easier, they buy more.
Charlotte Al Usta:
To wrap up, if we look ahead three to five years, what does best-in-class B2B commerce really look like between buyers and suppliers? Inez, I would hand it off to you for the first response.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
Looking ahead three to five years, I believe best-in-class B2B commerce will probably feel effortless, if that makes sense. It is something that happens in the background but is not really visible or noticeable. It also becomes radically more predictable for suppliers, supported by AI, but also driven by humans. It is AI and data helping AI become more effective and more efficient, but humans are still there to maintain the relationships we all need in B2B trade. I believe buyers will transact on trusted and pre-approved terms that adapt automatically to their behavior. Suppliers will have real-time visibility into risk, cash flow, and exposure without real manual intervention. I believe a lot will happen in three to five years, both in digitalization and in how people become more effective and efficient. Ultimately, agentic commerce will automate routine decisions, and humans can stay firmly in the loop, setting strategy, handling exceptions, and managing the commercial relationships that matter most. The winners probably will not be the most automated companies. They will be the ones that combine automation with human judgment and use technology to scale trust, not replace it. That would be my two cents.
Charlotte Al Usta:
I fully agree. You already touched on agentic commerce, which is a word highly associated with B2B commerce. Allen, for you, what does best-in-class effectively look like, and what is your perspective around stablecoins and agentic commerce in that specific context?
Allen Bonde:
I love Inez's point of 'radically more predictable.' I think this is what a lot of merchants and buyers are looking for: more predictability. You look at the macro environment, and tariffs are set today, disappear tomorrow, and then come back. There is a lot of uncertainty. This notion of radically more predictable is a pretty nice vision, and it builds on trust. There are good articles now being written about whether you lose that trust element when you take on more AI, and certainly, if you do not do it properly, you will. On stablecoins, I think that is coming quickly. We have not seen that demand within our network over the last couple of years, but we are now seeing it in certain sectors and are working on a solution right now. That will be part of the portfolio, so watch that space. I have been a late adopter of all things crypto, but I can see that stablecoin feels like the right mix of the Wild West and the backing of a bank or something like that. It feels like the right type of solution, and the time for that is here. Second, I am going to take a contrarian view against agentic. I think there is going to be more backlash against everything agentic. This is as an old AI person who was doing this before people were talking about it the way they are now. There was a hype cycle back then too. AI is not new. How people apply it, and the compute and the data, are new. The future is going to be a balance where people apply AI and agentic capabilities in certain parts of the process and certain parts of how they interact. Especially in high-touch businesses, and what traditional B2B businesses are not high-touch and built on trust? Trust starts with talking to your favorite rep or favorite support person. If you think you are going to automate that out of the equation, that is a mistake. But giving people tools that allow them to have a more fulfilling and complete conversation with their seller counterpart is smart. We have to make sure we have that balance, and we cannot lose track of that even as we look for more places to apply AI. If you start with trust, start with the relationship, and balance experience with automation, there are many wonderful ways you can apply AI. But if you try to use AI to cut people out of the equation, I think that is a mistake.
Rom Mascetti:
Maybe I could add one more point before we wrap up. I think our view on AI and B2B agentic commerce is probably similar to what you both just described. It is less about purely replacing humans and more about accelerating workflows. We think of agentic AI as improving the buyer-supplier experience, but there is also a lot that happens in the background with these tools that creates upside and excitement, not just for corporates implementing the solutions, but also for those providing them. Think about instant credit decisioning. How can an agent help at least start pulling information together? Maybe it is not making the decision, because that gets into a murky gray area when making final credit decisions, but it can pull the information together faster. How can disputes be classified in a more streamlined manner? That goes back to the pain points we discussed earlier and hear all the time in survey work. How can you have more predictive and high-accuracy cash application processes, with an AI agent or bot in the background starting to lay out the logic? There are a lot of good applications for these tools. But at the end of the day, the human element cannot be replaced. Whether it is the actual buyer-supplier experience, there needs to be a human in the middle, because B2B is so relationship-driven. Also, particularly on the procurement side, a human wants to have that final decision. Fully turning that over to a bot, somebody else, or an algorithm does not have a long-term sticking point in my view. The last thing I will mention is that we are talking a lot about automation and the end of the road, with fully autonomous workflows and streamlined processes. But one point we make in the white paper, and one that has received positive reactions, is that this automation journey does not take place overnight. Some companies may have zero automation in place. We are not saying that tomorrow, to be an effective back office, you need the entire order-to-cash process streamlined and everyone cut out of the workflow. That is not realistic. At the end of the white paper, we talk about a maturity model where companies get off paper and ad hoc processes. Maybe they start with embedded pay-by-invoice as their first product, or some e-invoicing automation solution, particularly if they are in Europe and regulation demands it. There are many places where automation can start with the products we have discussed here. It is important for corporates to understand that many companies are solving for this automation journey, and wherever you are in the process, there are quick wins you can put in place to make life much easier.
Inez Berkhof-Hollander:
I would add one more thing. It is critical to assess your core capabilities in this regard because it rapidly becomes a 'sky's the limit' conversation, but resources are limited. It is important to understand what your core capabilities are, where you can achieve quick wins yourself, and where you potentially need a partner or are better off leveraging third parties to help you across the process. It can be a mix and match.
Allen Bonde:
My last point is that transformation takes time. Whether it is digital transformation or, going back 25 years, dot-com transformation, it takes time. I love maturity models because they are a wayfinding device, and they also show there is a next step no matter where you are in that maturity framework. You can solve a lot of problems even while working toward a bigger transformation goal. The pragmatic approach is to talk to your customers, look at the data, and see what bottlenecks are creating friction. However you solve them, at least start talking about them. Some will be process issues, some will be data issues, and some will be agentic issues, even while you look toward a mid-horizon transformation. You cannot just say, we are going to transform the whole thing. It is impossible to do that all at once. But you can solve a lot of little problems along the way. Having worn a consultant's hat, I think that is how you get to the next stage: show that you can progress from one maturity level to the next. Do not just try to jump to the end. There is a lot of urgency to do AI, and I think that is the wrong approach. The right question is: what problem are you trying to solve? To Inez's point, what capabilities do you have to actually solve that problem with people, technology, or a mix of both? I encourage everyone who is interested to look at the maturity model because there is both guidance and comfort in it. One, it is not too late. Two, you do not have to be best-in-class. You just have to be a little bit better than your competitor.
Charlotte Al Usta:
Just to react to what you said, Allen, I think you also increasingly have a very good set of case studies in the market. Oftentimes, looking at what others are doing across other regions helps reinforce the opportunity. We have many buzzwords in the market, such as stablecoins and AI, but looking at what those things effectively result in, in something relatively concrete, also helps the market disruption. That is the disruption we are seeing accelerate across both geographies, so it is really exciting.
Allen Bonde:
It is an interesting time to be in this business, no doubt.
Rom Mascetti:
I think that is a perfect spot for us to wrap up. This has been a fantastic conversation, and we have covered a lot of ground. If listeners take anything away, it is that B2B commerce is clearly entering a new era where payments, credit, invoicing, and workflows are converging into a seamless, automated infrastructure between buyers and suppliers, at least if companies are implementing these capabilities and moving into the later stages of the maturity curve we discussed. If anyone wants to continue the conversation in person, TreviPay has an upcoming Crossroads Conference, which is a great opportunity to hear directly from industry leaders, connect with peers, and dig deeper into where B2B payments and commerce are headed next. Flagship will be at the event, sharing more from the research we discussed here, as well as insights from our website on B2B commerce, payables, receivables, and related topics. With that, Allen and Inez, thank you both again for joining us. Charlotte, thanks as always for tag-teaming this conversation with me. To everyone listening, we will see you next time.
Charlotte Al Usta:
Thank you, Inez and Allen, for joining us today.
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