Regions Bank Debuts Embedded ERP Finance Tool

Regions Bank has debuted a tool designed to help treasury management clients better manage cash flow.

Regions Embedded ERP Finance, announced Thursday (Feb. 13), lets clients connect financial data to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, allowing them to optimize liquidity, reduce risks and more clearly anticipate business needs.

“Currently, business clients manually enter or upload financial data from their Regions accounts into their own ERP systems that they use to manage money, track sales, oversee inventory, manage customer relationships and more,” the bank said in a news release. “Now, with Regions Embedded ERP Finance, clients can immediately access and review financial accounts and data in real-time within their own ERP platforms. This means no manual uploading and, as a result, quicker access to solid business-management data.”

With more accurate, real-time information, companies improve cash flow, determine appropriate amounts of liquidity and produce data-driven forecasts for future financial management, the release added.

“Technology continues to enhance the speed at which businesses operate, and this is another way Regions’ solutions can help companies spend less time on day-to-day financial tasks and more time focused on growing their business,” said Bryan Ford, head of Regions Treasury Management. “Our Treasury Management division has experienced record growth, and we believe that’s the result of a positive client experience and consistent innovation.”

The launch comes as manual processes continue to produce headaches for businesses, as recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found.

For example, many small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) continue to rely on paper checks for B2B transactions, leading to slow and unpredictable cash flow. More than 75% of SMBs are still manually tracking down invoices, making collection calls or dealing with disputes through email, lagging their competitors that have embraced digital automation and invoice financing tools.

“The old adage, ‘The check is in the mail,’ is still very much applicable,” Murray Sharp, senior vice president of commercial B2B at Nuvei, told PYMNTS earlier this month, spotlighting how integrating automation with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can help SMBs gain the financial agility they need to remain competitive.

“B2B payments are really a series of interactions,” Sharp added. “A supplier extends credit, receives an order, sends an invoice, deals with potential disputes, processes payments and reconciles transactions across multiple platforms.”

Without integrated, automated solutions, businesses can find themselves struggling with inefficiencies that make cash flow uncertainty even murkier.