A practice management solution evaluates embedded finance

Situation

A software company provided a comprehensive suite of back-end practice management solutions to medical practices. The company historically partnered with a payment processor through a referral model to support POS terminals, web-based payments and other payments processing needs. This arrangement resulted in the company only earning revenues on a portion of the total payments volume processed by their clients. The management team recognized an opportunity to integrate payments within their software solution and was seeking to become a Payment Facilitator. Glenbrook was asked to identify and evaluate the options for embedding omnichannel payments and to provide a recommendation for the optimal solution.

Approach

We conducted a five workstream effort over six months to support the management team’s preparation for this transition. Key questions included:

How should the organization allocate key payments tasks between itself and payment providers?
What services and economic improvements can it generate for its customers as a PayFac?
What level of revenue generation can be expected in relation to the risk it is willing to bear and the investments it is willing to make?
Which providers in the market are suitable partners?
What is the most effective go to market strategy? Which customers should be targeted initially and in later stages?
What additional infrastructure must be built or sourced in order to operate as a PayFac – development effort, operational staffing, policies and procedures, etc.?
How can Glenbrook assist and accelerate the implementation process?
How much time and investment will be required to begin generating revenue?

Impact

Among other things, we found that the company should be able to generate significantly more value from the processing of payments. We identified a set of potential partners, and acknowledged the impact on net revenue, OpEx, and CapEx across each partner choice. We suggested a phased go-to-market approach, identifying priority customers for new payments processing services.