Over the years, accounts payable has been seen as nothing more than a back-office operation with little value-add to the organization. This has made it incredibly difficult for AP leaders to drive improvements in both their teams processes and automation efforts. The thought has always been why put money in a department that “makes no money,” right? Well you are wrong!

According to the most recent State of ePayables market research, more than half of organizations now perceive the AP function as either “very valuable” or “exceptionally valuable” to the organizations operations. For those of us that have worked in this field for quite some time, you are likely thinking to yourself “duh, it’s about time,” and I get it. However, just because our teams are being viewed as more valuable now, we still have a lot of work to do.

Let’s start with data – accounts payable has always had data that is critical to business strategy and decisions. However, based on our manual processes, this data is not always easy to access. We need to focus on providing data that is user-friendly, accurate, and available with a couple clicks of a button. How? Automation and KPI’s. Check back soon as I will be posting on the importance of both!