Editor’s note: On April 16, Ardent Partners will host a complimentary webinar (sponsored by Concur) focused on the top trends in accounts payable for the year ahead (register at this link). Ahead of that presentation, run by Andrew Bartolini, Ardent’s chief research officer, and Christopher Dwyer, research director, we’re running a short series on the four biggest accounts payable trends in 2015. Today’s article, the last in the series, details the trend of changing skillsets for the accounts payable professional.
Between the increasing levels of automation across the entire accounts payable (AP) workflow, the heightened collaboration between AP and procurement, and the greater use of AP in working capital optimization, there is a seismic shift going on within many AP departments. As a result of this change in the way AP does its job—moving from a manual, paper-based process to a more automated, collaborative and strategic one—the skills inherent in the job must change as well.
To that end, 66% of respondents in Ardent’s ePayables research survey expect the skillsets of the AP team to change over the next year to two years. There are myriad reasons for this, such as the aforementioned technological and environment shifts as well as the changing economic realities in the marketplace. Enterprises find themselves more often relying on their suppliers to reach their goals, in addition to the internal functions and processes that drive both tactical and strategic value on a consistent / everyday basis.
Given these changes inside and outside the enterprise, it’s incumbent on the AP team to pay attention to how their jobs are changing. No longer is data entry the main focus of AP departments in many organizations; solutions such as scan-and-capture tools and eInvoicing workflows have mostly eliminated that need from the AP team’s plate. The movement toward greater automation, however, does necessitate an AP staffer with some technological know-how that can allow him or her to easily generate necessary reports and process invoices in the new workflow.
Increasing collaboration between AP and other teams, such as procurement and treasury, requires an AP staffer that can work well with others and build consensus among disparate business functions. And, lastly, the increasing importance of AP to the enterprise’s working capital optimization strategy forces AP team members to focus on payment strategies as well as data collection and analysis for treasury’s working capital objectives.
The above situations are only some examples of the different types of skills that AP professionals may need in the future. If an organization hasn’t yet experienced some of these changes, it’s only a matter of time before the enterprise sees this shift over the next horizon. To that end, it makes sense for AP teams and other leaders in the organization to take a hard look at how the AP team can remain an asset to the enterprise long-term instead of being relegated to the back-office (as it was in years past). The truth is that skillsets may not be naturally enhanced right away, but they are changing, and any enterprise that doesn’t begin planning now for new economic realities is missing strategic benefits.
Check out these related articles for more:
AP’s Top Trends for 2015: A Greater Involvement in Working Capital Optimization
AP’s Top Trends for 2015: A Stronger AP/Procurement Partnership
AP’s Top Trends in 2015: The Increasing Automation of Accounts Payable
