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Card Companies Reach Out with Small Business Credit Card Benefits and Promotion Programs
With the credit crisis bearing down on the profit margins of small business owners, card issuers are also becoming concerned about theirs. The Discover(R) Small Business Watch(SM) dropped for the second straight month as news of a congressional rescue plan failed to comfort the nation's 22 million small business owners. The index slipped 3.2 points in to 71.4, the lowest confidence rating since the Watch was established in August 2006.
According to Ryan Scully; director of Discover's business credit card: "Faced with a barrage of bad news about financial markets and the economy, small business owners continue to tell us that there is no end in sight to this economic crisis. For the first time, we saw more than 60 percent rate the economy as poor. Most of their plans to invest in their businesses have been on hold for some time."
Small business owners continue to believe their issues are not being addressed in the presidential election. Only 19 percent think that this election season has created a forum for them to heard by the candidates.
As it has throughout this election year, the economy remains the biggest issue for small business owners. In all, 47 percent cited the economy as their No. 1 election concern, down slightly from 52 percent in September. The issue of government ethics and corruption rose to 15 percent in October, up from 9 percent in September; followed by national security at 11 percent; the war in Iraq at 10 percent; healthcare at 6 percent; and immigration at 3 percent.
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American Express OPEN launched the OPENForum Economy section, a new platform for small business owners to connect virtually to discuss the current state of the economy and how it affects their businesses. The Economy section is a component of the newly refreshed OPENForum.com, an education and networking resource designed to provide small business owners with practical, actionable information from business experts, celebrity business owners and best-in-class bloggers and news outlets.
The Economy section of OPEN Forum features blog and news commentary, expert tips and advice for surviving the downturn, personal experiences from business owners across the country about how they are managing in times of the downturn and polls about what the state of the economy means for small business. To view the Economy section, go to blogs.openforum.com/category/economy/.
Also part of OPEN Forum's enhanced content, OPEN has unveiled new video segments from "Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind," an interview series featuring roundtable discussions with celebrity business owners in key vertical industries. Video segments from the culinary industry featuring celebrity restaurant owner Tom Colicchio and celebrity chef Sara Moulton as they discuss business issues such as personal branding, business expansion and leveraging new technology are now available on the site. Clips from the roundtable discussion can be viewed at http://www.openforum.com/food.
The enhanced OPEN Forum site also announces exclusive original content from noted small business bloggers. In addition to enhanced blog coverage, OPEN Forum will continue to feature a mix of information developed by OPEN, including videos and information from its educational platform and interactive commentary from business owners.
Also featured on OPEN Forum is mainstream media coverage from best-in class small business news providers such as CNNMoney.com, Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, Inc, iVillage, Slate and WIRED.
In addition, OPEN Forum was recently recognized by The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) with a Gold MIXX Award for excellence in Brand Awareness and Positioning. The MIXX Awards honor interactive advertising campaigns and recognize excellence in both creativity and effectiveness.
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In response to the growing trend of businesses seeking to streamline expense management systems, Visa Inc. announced the introduction of Visa Accounts Payable (AP) Automation, a new service designed to help large and mid-sized businesses reduce costs associated with expense management, purchasing and accounts payable processes.
Visa AP Automation is an enhancement to Visa's portfolio of commercial payment products and services. The integration capabilities are enabled by Visa Data Integration Services, a suite of new commercial payment tools and applications that includes connectivity, file mapping, data enrichment and transformation solutions that can help businesses and banks eliminate time-consuming data integration implementations. Specifically, this service provides solutions that are designed accelerate time-to-market for new products and services while decreasing internal resource requirements.
Electronic purchasing card transactions can be more efficient because they require less time and fewer resources than traditional invoice processing and reconciliation. According to the recent Visa AP Automation white paperē, companies can achieve significant cost saving by automating the accounts payable function. Specifically, research by Aberdeen estimates that fully automated companies can save $10.87 per payment - approximately $1.1 million in savings for businesses processing 100,000 B2B payments per year. Visa purchasing card programs also provide detailed invoice reconciliation reports to help match invoices to payments more easily, helping companies save both time and money.
As a central component of these new solutions, Visa AP Automation integrates directly with enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and company expense management technologies to automatically convert existing paper based invoices and payments to more efficient electronic transactions. To help enable seamless access to Visa Purchasing card services, Visa has established alliances with global ERP provider Lawson and data integration solutions leader Hubspan. Using Lawson and Hubspan technologies, companies can more efficiently generate accounts payable files that integrate with Visa's AP Automation solution.
By integrating purchasing cards with accounts payable transactions, Visa can dynamically adjust payment parameters to provide flexible authorization and payment terms, match approved invoices and help reduce the risk of unauthorized card usage. Data integration can also provide better visibility into company expenses and greater control over outgoing payments. Because suppliers charge a Visa account, businesses can make consolidated payments after receiving a statement from their financial institution, thus providing more flexibility in the timing of payments and managing cash flow.
The Visa AP Automation service requires minimal effort for company accounts payable professionals to use. Companies simply provide their approved supplier accounts payable files and Visa AP Automation turns payments to accepting suppliers into electronic transactions through a Visa Purchasing card account. Once the data is converted to a consistent electronic format, the service enables streamlined processing of approved supplier accounts payable files, matching purchasing card payment parameters with invoices, sending remittances to suppliers, and providing detailed payment data reports for account reconciliation.
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Apply for a business credit card, a gas card or an airline miles or other travel credit card.
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