Report Shows State of Accounts Payable for CFOs and AP Professionals

Transcepta, a provider of intelligent e-procurement and accounts payable (AP) automation solutions, has partnered with Ardent Partners, a research and advisory firm focused on the supply management marketplace, to release a research report and webinar aimed at helping CFOs and accounts payable (AP) professionals better plan and prepare for their AP automation needs in 2021.

Transcepta’s Vice President of Corporate Strategy Shan Haq hosted a webinar, with Ardent Partners’ Vice President of Research Bob Cohen as a guest speaker, that broke down and discussed the significance of survey results in the recently released “Ardent Partners: AP Metrics That Matter 2021” report.

Ardent’s annual AP Metrics That Matter report is an e-book that offers an investigation into the current state of procure-to-pay (P2P) and ePayables, providing insights into technological advancements, success drivers, and significant challenges facing accounts payable teams. During the webinar, Cohen and Haq discussed the report, offering guidance to organizations of all sizes and across all industries about how to apply the metrics to evaluate and improve current AP processes, as well as think more strategically about the value that AP departments can provide to improve overall efficiency, scalability, business intelligence, and revenue.

Cohen stressed the importance of evaluating metrics that provide insight into current challenges and trends, as well as visions for the future, in order to understand the state of the profession and develop smarter, next generation systems. Of note, the report revealed that AP teams view eliminating invoice exceptions and manual processes as high priorities on their wish list.

“We look at metrics to understand how we’re doing and what’s possible,” said Cohen. “How do we really measure ourselves today and see what we’re doing, and also set goals for tomorrow? It was illuminating to see that AP is starting to view themselves as part of a larger ecosystem, with a willingness to think more strategically and an understanding that they can provide valuable information and insight across their organizations.”

Discussion topics focused on priorities indicated in the report, including:

The overall impact of COVID-19 on businesses and AP
How COVID-19 highlighted the urgency for AP leaders to automate
The traits of AP processes in best-in-class organizations
Top challenges and trends for AP in 2021
The importance of moving AP from a tactical to a strategic function
How AP will evolve over the next few years

In particular, the results showed not only a shift toward automation of the accounts payable process, but also that the shift is accelerating. According to Haq, that aligns with what he saw from businesses that approached Transcepta about adopting automation, with companies eager to move quickly in order to combat the challenges they are facing.

“In their gut, customers know that manual processes, paper-based processes, are not good for any of the stakeholders, and they want to move away from it,” said Haq. “The pandemic only accelerated the need to automate accounts payable.”

Both the webinar and the full Ardent Partners report available as an e-book can be accessed here.