Accounts Payable – The Present & Future of Automation
As the country begins the slow process of reopening offices, schools, and public venues, it’s a good time to reflect on the lessons learned over the past few months.
Introduction
As the country begins the slow process of reopening offices, schools, and public venues, it’s a good time to reflect on the lessons learned over the past few months. The pandemic deeply affected businesses and identified significant operational gaps that made employees scramble to complete day-to-day responsibilities, especially in a remote environment.
Finance departments, specifically Accounts Payable, struggled with checks going to empty offices, payments being delayed or not paid, and risked damaging long-standing vendor relationships. In addition, the same manual, costly, and time-consuming processes that existed pre-pandemic continue to be on-going pain points for AP personnel.
Overview
As the country begins the process of reopening offices, it’s a good time to reflect on the lessons learned over the past few months. Finance departments uncovered gaps in Accounts Payable (AP) processes that stemmed from staff working remotely. This led many businesses to reprioritize the need for AP automation.
This paper discusses what’s happening in the B2B payments market and shines a light on the pain points AP departments struggled with during the pandemic. It offers insight into payments automation, evaluating requirements, and tips for selecting the best partner. Lastly, it shares the next steps in payments automation, utilizing robotic process automation, and straight-through processing.
