4 Ways to Improve Accounts Payable Adaptability and Prepare for Unpredictability

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As a result of ongoing inflation, economic disruption, and the lowest growth project from The International Monetary Fund (IMF)1 since 1990, many Accounts Payable (AP) departments are being tasked with driving cost reductions and improving operational efficiency to increase company profitability and workforce productivity.  

In this whitepaper, we discuss 4 ways that your accounts payable team can future proof your business and become more adaptable and proactive in the face of change. Get the preview of the first 2 ways below and download the full paper to learn the other 2 ways and more details.   

1. Mitigate the risk of non-compliant spend. 

40% of AP departments experienced multiple cases of attempted or actual payment fraud in 20222. To ensure spend compliance, one of many approaches is to leverage intelligent technology and automation. Make sure your AP team can see and manage all of your company’s invoices and spend in one place and have the system automatically flag any duplicate invoices or unsolicited invoices from unapproved vendors.  

2. Transform AP into a profit center 

AP departments that lack automation and consistent processes spend 4x as much ($6.30 per invoice) to process an invoice as departments with end-to-end automation and consistent processes ($1.45 per invoice). To optimise your company’s payable programme and turn AP into a profit center, one approach is to streamline and reduce invoice processing time so AP can ensure payments are made quickly and accurately. Eliminating manual data entry is another way to consider and make sure your AP system can automatically extract and capture data from invoices.  

No one knows what the future will bring, which is why 71% of CFOs and finance leaders are investing in cutting-edge technologies such as automation, AI, and machine learning to enhance their ability to respond to changing circumstances.3 

Download the full paper, Making Accounts Payable Ready for Anything, to learn more about the details on 4 ways to improve accounts payable adaptability and prepare for unpredictability.  

 
 
Source 1: International Monetary Fund, Near-Term Resilience, Persistent Challenges, 2023. 
Source 2: How Automation Reduces the Cost of Invoice Processing and Disbursements, a commissioned study conducted by the Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM) on behalf of SAP Concur, 2023. 
Source 3: SAP Concur CFO Pulse Survey, 2023