Best Practices

Building a business case for accounts payable (“AP”) automation is a critical part of transforming the invoice management process. Without a detailed business case that can convince stakeholders to invest in automating the AP function, the unit will remain beholden to time-intensive manual processes that drain enterprise resources. Understanding current AP performance is crucial to [...]

Accounts payable (“AP”) and treasury can and should be natural partners within the average enterprise. AP manages a significant source of cash outflows in the form of supplier payments, and treasury is tasked with managing the organization’s cash position and liquidity risk. On this point, the duties of treasury and AP neatly intersect, which makes [...]

Accounts payable (“AP”) in the modern age has the potential to become a hub of financial and operational intelligence for the greater enterprise, pushing this once back-office function into new strategic territory. Consider that every transaction that generates an invoice passes through the AP process at some point or other, as well as any supplier [...]

Business networks are web-based platforms that enable interconnected buyers and suppliers to trade, communicate, and collaborate with each other. As a result of this inherent nature, and the drive among enterprises to increase collaboration across the supply chain, business networks have grown in popularity over the past several years. Business networks also allow for process [...]

The economy is global. Raw materials mined overseas are shipped to factories thousands of miles away, and then the finished goods are sold around the world. It is this globalization—and the credit crunch many organizations feel—that drives renewed focus on working capital management. It is impossible to run a business without working capital, and as [...]

[Editor’s note: We will soon be taking down the “State of B2B Payments 2015” market report, so do not miss your opportunity to get our latest research on B2B payments. Get the report before it is too late!] Each year, Ardent Partners conducts a series of market research studies focused on the accounts payable (“AP”) [...]

The accounts payable (“AP”) team has, in recent years, taken on new importance to the enterprise as a source of financial and operational intelligence. The rich data that AP collects through the course of its normal activities can, when made available to other stakeholders, inform data-driven decision making in a variety of different cases, such [...]

Efficiency rules in the modern business world, and cost savings are frequently one of the primary goals of executive leadership. As part of this objective to run an efficient organization, it is vital that the procure-to-pay (“P2P”) team drive as much value from their associated processes as possible. One of many ways to do this [...]

There is significant enterprise value hidden in the supplier, or vendor, payments that enterprises make every month. Smart organizations realize this, and have begun examining their payments process to uncover every scrap of enterprise value possible. As a result, the supplier payments approval workflow has also started to be considered as part of a holistic [...]

Each year, Ardent Partners conducts a series of market research studies focused on the accounts payable (“AP”) and P2P markets. Our most recent of these looked at the state of business-to-business (“B2B”) payments and captured the key findings in a report called “The State of B2B Payments 2015: Emerging Business Value.” The report captures the [...]