This Week in B2B: Back-Office Tech Becomes Innovation Fast Lane

The B2B sector’s markets move slowly compared to consumer trends, yet when change comes, it tends to reshape the foundations of how companies buy, sell and compete.

This week, the converging signals of digital acceleration across payments and finance operations became nearly impossible to ignore. From back-office software for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to treasury strategies for multinational corporations, to boardroom conversations on whether to lean into or hold back on artificial intelligence, innovation across B2B is no longer confined to incremental efficiencies. It is reframing markets.

What ties these developments together is not just technology but the primacy of data and its quality, accessibility and interpretability.

In payments, treasury and operational decision-making, the debate is no longer about whether systems can automate routine tasks. It’s becoming centered around who can use reliable, high-fidelity data to seize competitive advantage in markets where invoices, supply chains and liquidity flows are becoming indistinguishable from strategy itself.

Read also: Firms Turn Data Quality, Procurement Visibility Into Cyber Advantages

Many of these dynamics are playing out first in the SMB segment.

For decades, SMBs have operated on a patchwork of accounting software, payroll tools and ad hoc spreadsheets. The resulting friction has long been tolerated as the cost of doing business. But in 2025, that calculus is shifting.

Optimism among SMBs has ticked upward in 2025 despite persistent labor challenges, driven in part by new access to sophisticated financial infrastructure once reserved for large enterprises. Partnerships like those between Paychex and BILL, announced Wednesday (Sept. 10), or Amazon Business Prime and CrowdStrike, also announced Wednesday, demonstrate how technology providers are packaging payments, cybersecurity and workflow automation into turnkey solutions for small firms.

The shift matters because SMBs account for 90% of firms and more than half of employment. What works at scale in the fragmented SMB market may be likely to shape expectations in mid-market and enterprise contexts within a few years.

If the SMB story is one of building data foundations, the enterprise treasury story is about rethinking global capital flows. For much of modern corporate history, the treasury office was a backroom function. It managed liquidity, executed foreign exchange hedges, and made sure cash moved where it needed to go. Important, yes, but hardly glamorous. In 2025, that characterization feels outdated.

Forces ranging from cyber risk to payments monetization are transforming treasury into a strategic hub, giving chief financial officers and their teams unprecedented influence over the broader direction of enterprise finance.

Cross-border expansion adds another layer of urgency. The time to cash benchmark is especially acute for businesses selling internationally, where settlement cycles can extend by weeks and errors multiply across currencies and jurisdictions. Treasury’s role in navigating these complexities is no longer just about hedging FX exposure; it is about orchestrating an end-to-end cash conversion process that minimizes leakage.

Here again, adjacencies matter. Treasury teams that integrate trade finance, supply chain visibility and embedded payments into a single strategy are better positioned to unlock working capital. Conversely, firms that silo these functions risk bottlenecks that leave growth opportunities stranded.

Data quality is the hinge. Fragmented enterprise resource planning (ERP) data, delayed reporting from subsidiaries, and inconsistent banking integrations are not just nuisances; they are vulnerabilities.

Wendy Tapia, head of product, receivables at FIS, told PYMNTS Wednesday that many CFOs are “stuck in heavily manual processes,” still reliant on outdated accounts receivable processes that elongate settlement cycles. The persistence of payment errors exacerbates the issue, creating unnecessary friction that directly hinders expansion.

See also: Why CFO Now Stands for ‘Chief Forecasting Officer’

Many B2B leaders are asking if they should double down on AI now or wait for the technology and the regulatory environment to mature.

Startups like Motion, which announced Monday (Sept. 8) that it raised $60 million for AI agents tailored to SMBs, are emblematic of a wave of automation designed to compress cash cycles, reduce errors and augment human decision-making. However, the hype around speed may obscure trust.

What is emerging is a spectrum of strategies, including pilots in contained use cases, investments in data hygiene, and partnerships with FinTechs or software-as-a-service providers that can insulate firms from the heaviest compliance risks.

Taken together, these shifts are positioned to give CFOs a new mandate. They must:

• Shorten cash conversion cycles as time to cash becomes a competitive benchmark.
• Eliminate payment errors that not only frustrate customers but also stifle growth.
• Build cybersecurity into procurement and treasury processes as a first-order priority.
• Monetize payments through adjacencies and partnerships, reframing treasury as a profit center.
• Deploy AI responsibly, prioritizing transparency alongside speed.

Interested in learning more? Register for the PYMNTS 2025 B2B event, B2B.AI: The Architecture of Intelligent Money Movement, taking place Oct. 6-31.

For all PYMNTS B2B coverage, subscribe to the daily B2B Newsletter.

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