Research

Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer-prize winning author, speaker, energy expert, and economic historian once said that “people always underestimate the impact of technology.” One group not taking anything for granted are the ‘Best-in-Class’ performers in the world of accounts payable.  Ardent Partners defines ‘Best-in-Class’  performance in our research reports as the 20% of enterprises with the [...]

Businesses and consumers today are fully engulfed by technology and the data it creates and captures. The same holds true for AP departments across the globe. Accounts payable’s “Big Data” has the potential to become the next major force and catalyst for the profession. In fact, over the next few years, Ardent Partners predicts that [...]

[Editor’s Note: Join Ardent Partners on our upcoming webinar, Accounts Payable 2021: Big Trends and Predictions (click to register), next Wednesday, December 9th at 2 PM ET.] As 2020 draws to a close, Ardent Partners is excited to bring you an ideal “stage-setting” event for AP and finance professionals as you move into 2021 The AP industry [...]

(Editor’s Note – This article by Christopher J. Dwyer, Vice President of Research at Ardent Partners, first appeared on CPORising.com on 11/20/2020) Never before has a public health crisis caused so much disruption in both the personal and business worlds. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented level of chaos as companies were forced [...]

There is no denying the many benefits that straight through processing of invoices brings to Accounts Payable. However, an organizations ability to achieve straight-through processing is contingent first and foremost upon being able to receive invoices electronically. That paper-based invoices remain such a huge proportion (49% according to Ardent Partner’s State of Accounts Payable 2020  market [...]

In a world where the speed of business increases moment-by- moment, and new competitors lurk around the next financial statement, it is imperative that enterprises of all sizes take a hard look at how they pay suppliers. The simple fact of the matter is that there is significant untapped value in the financial supply chain, [...]

From a technology adoption perspective, AP leaders for much of the past two decades tended to more often than not focus on how invoices were received, processed, validated, and approved than how they were paid.  However, over the last couple of years this mode of thinking has started to change. More recently, the ramifications of [...]

(Posted by Chris J. Dwyer) No matter how far you scroll on any preferred social media platform, there is one common news items that dominates the day (well, besides the United States election, of course). For the past seven-plus months, the world has been inundated with the social, personal, and business ramifications from a global [...]

For over a decade, Ardent Partners has conducted an in-depth market research study of the accounts payable (“AP”) market that leverages a unique framework to highlight the performance of top-tier organizations (which Ardent refers to as the “Best-in-Class”) by analyzing a specific set of benchmark criteria. In each of those years, Ardent Partners defined Best-in-Class [...]

(Editors note: this article, by Andrew Bartolini, originally appeared on CPORISING.COM on October 9th) In the 2020s, the accounts payable (“AP”) profession will continue to gain momentum and impact business operations and results in an increasingly strategic way. The global uncertainty that pervades today’s market indicates the very real threat of a deep economic downturn. [...]