As fintech, SaaS, and B2B platforms scale, a key product challenge is how to add new functionality that makes your platform stickier and provides your business with more opportunities for upsell and customer acquisition.
Aside from what you build in-house, the standard approach is to discuss internally what you need, assign resources and expectations, and then go out to the market and speak to a third party for a particular functionality or project.
But actually, for a number of reasons, it may be a better approach to talk to third parties early – even as you are still defining the scope of the project. In this post we are going to look at why this is important in the scoping phase, and help you think out of the box and to get a wider view of how you can leverage embedded finance for maximum advantage.
Solutions are more powerful than products, products are more powerful than features
Let’s take a look at an example. Say you assign a project to look at an accounts payable product, with the idea of enabling SME customers to collect, review, and approve invoices via API.
You look at what kinds of resources you need, how it fits in with and complements your existing product roadmap, what kinds of upsell opportunities you may have for your SME clients, and so on. You then have a specific focus in mind when you look at potential embedded finance partners.
But once you start your discussions, you may find that there are not only unforeseen questions, but also complementary products you can add for a fraction of extra resources, which can deliver multiples of value on your original plan. For example, if you want to provide an accounts payable product, it would be extremely convenient for your customers if you could add an invoicing product to go with it. And if you were to offer customers an invoicing product, it would make sense to enable invoices to be paid with an integrated payments solution, also.
Bundling these products into an integrated solution has several obvious benefits:
- It increases retention, since your customers have less need to shop around.
- It increases upsell opportunities, since your existing customers can add new products.
- It attracts new customers, since the new functionality makes your platform more compelling.
And beyond these obvious benefits are a number of less obvious ones, which can unlock more value for your platform:
- You can provide forecasting decisions thanks to better data.
- You can lower the cost of doing business even as you increase your functionality, since you are investing in multiple solutions.
- With the right partner you are not only buying for today, but also for new embedded products you can add in the future.
In fact, carefully partnering with the right embedded finance provider can take you a step closer to becoming a full operating system for your SME customers.
You can go bigger than you think, earlier than you realize, without draining resources
The time to think of adding incremental value to your platform through buying or building individual embedded finance products is over. In fact, you may be positively surprised at the potential to add multiples of value for your SME customers with end-to-end solutions or product suites, rather than only individual products.
However, it is also important to note that embedded finance is at an inflection point. B2B platforms no longer need to invest large amounts of resources into building financial automations. The winners of tomorrow are already embedding financial automations today, and the pace of innovation is set to accelerate.
With a partner such as Monite, you can focus on building what makes you best in class, while our embedded automations can help you become all in one. With the right partner you can build a combination of deep and wide super app functionality that can enable you to leapfrog competitors, faster and with far fewer resources than you may imagine.
