Editor’s Note: Ardent Partners is excited to announce the launch of its 2015 “State of ePayables” market research survey, available here. All participants of this landmark research survey will receive a complimentary copy of the resulting research report in late May. (While the survey is comprehensive, participants can expect to spend only 15 minutes of their time answering the questions.)
In the age of big data, more and more enterprises collect information on all parts of their operations. This data collection has clear benefits—extensive measurement can generally result in higher performance—but only if the enterprise actually takes the time to analyze the data it gathers. Because of this, it is critical that organizations track performance across the board if they wish to improve results with any real level of certainty.
While more accounts payable (AP) departments are succeeding in their quest for relevance, value, and impact, performance measurement is one area that continues to present steep challenges for many AP teams. Across the key metrics captured in recent Ardent Partners ePayments research, up to 21.4% of all AP departments lack the ability to track key performance indicators.
For an industry that has struggled for years to gain executive awareness, engagement, and investment, this comes as no surprise. However, the fact that up to 18.6% of all AP departments have chosen not to measure and thus, not understand how they are performing in key areas is both surprising and unfortunate.
In recent years, many AP groups have taken positive strides forward; many have even gained significant momentum. But, this metrics or knowledge gap indicates that the transformation driven by many AP, P2P, and finance professionals as it relates to invoice processing may not be nearly as broad-based as once thought. These gaps are caused by, among other things, a failure borne of limited systems and poor processes, but above all else, it is a failure of leadership that allows a situation like this.
Attempting to improve operations without understanding the current state baseline (caused by an inability to capture key operational and performance metrics) is like starting a trip to an unknown destination when you are already lost—if you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there. Enterprise functions must be smarter than that, which means AP teams wishing to prove their importance must begin some sort of tracking as soon as they can.
Tracking metrics in some capacity, even by hand, will allow AP teams to make an argument for deeper investment in the function. Any data, no matter how it is gathered, can be worthwhile in striving for organizational change. Should the AP team wish for greater investment in the function, it must gather and present the data that shows the enterprise the function needs more attention. Only by gathering the necessary data, in any way possible, can this happen.
Check out these related articles for more:
The Value of Better, “Deeper” Remittance Information in ePayments
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