[Editor’s Note: Ardent Partners recently published its Accounts Payable-themed report, “Accounts Payable 2024: BIG Trends and Predictions”. Over the next few weeks, this site will feature articles highlighting the key discussion points from the report.
In 2024, the fifth year of the new decade, the accounts payable (AP) landscape continues to undergo broad, sweeping changes, driven by the events of recent years marked particularly by the global pandemic, unprecedented inflation and rising interest rates, supply chain disruptions, and lingering economic uncertainty. As finance and other business leaders forge ahead into 2024, it is evident that these market events drove a major shift in perceptions regarding the accounts payable process, greatly aided by the resilience of the many AP teams who ensured stability and delivered a real financial impact. In the wake of recent events, businesses have come to a resounding realization — a robust AP operation can be a strategic powerhouse capable of delivering tangible value, enhancing bottom-line performance, and optimizing overall operations. The evolving landscape underscores the imperative for organizations to recognize and leverage the strategic potential embedded within their AP functions.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll feature the BIG trends in accounts payable followed by equally BIG predictions for 2024 that will help AP, P2P, and finance professionals understand the key issues at hand and better prepare them for the year ahead.
BIG Trend #1 – AI Is Everything Everywhere, All at Once
Perhaps only the newly-minted billionaire, Taylor Swift, had a bigger 2023 than the widely acclaimed (but also, severely overhyped) technology known as artificial intelligence (“AI”). While Taylor has a legion of “Swifties” actively supporting her every move, AI was not far behind in regards to overall attention and impact in the year that was. Artificial intelligence dominated both business and consumer discussions, with solutions like ChatGPT presenting a renaissance of automation that represents to many the future impact of AI. Whether or not Chat GPT is an online parlor trick, the underlying technology has extraordinary potential.
Within the AP realm, AI has the potential to channel an entirely new level of innovation that will enable both AP professionals and their leaders to transform the tactical and strategic activities of the function (such as invoice receipt and processing, as well as B2B payment scheduling, and working capital optimization), while also tapping into a currently underutilized repository of AP information, data, and insights.
BIG Trend #2 – The Growing Impact of “Community” Intelligence
None of us is smarter than all of us. While the events of the last few years (during and after the pandemic) pushed more workers/teams to operate remotely, new concepts of community have emerged, driven by the advancements in technology and workforce collaboration, enabling enterprise teams to advance and mature despite their locations. In the fast-evolving landscape of AP and finance, web-based technologies, like many ePayables solutions, now offer AP teams, stakeholders, and trading partners the ability to communicate, collaborate, and execute business transactions like invoice and payment processing on a single platform. These platforms foster community engagement and allow AP teams to stay abreast of industry trends and regulatory changes, as well as new governance regulations/policies and the latest best practices.
While broadly leveraging shared “team” knowledge can empower AP teams to reach new performance heights, the ability to connect to much larger online networks and/or communities comprised of hundreds or thousands of distinct AP organizations that actively participate and share information (data, metrics, best practices, technology workarounds, etc.) can be game-changing. Typically supported and managed by an ePayables solution provider, these emerging communities are changing the traditional corporate mindset about what is and what is not proprietary information. The result is that more AP leaders are sharing (in an anonymized way) many of the “secrets of their success,” enabling other members to improve at a faster pace.
BIG Trend #3 – The Year of Efficiency, Part II: The Story Continues in 2024
Do you know what makes your CFO happy? Growing the topline. You know what makes your CFO even happier? Growing the topline while also shrinking the bottom line. Meta Platforms Inc. (i.e., Facebook) founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, proclaimed 2023 to be the “Year of Efficiency” and then stood back and watched his stock price (and net worth) nearly triple as his company grew while cutting expenses. The rest of the market took notice and many have followed suit. Expect those efforts to continue in 2024.
The good news is that Best-in-Class AP organizations have operated for years at extremely high levels of efficiency, processing their invoices and payments at rates that are between 60% – 80% lower than their peers. The rest of the AP market has taken notice of their Best-in-Class counterparts and the strategies and technologies they leverage to great success. As more AI capabilities become available within ePayables solutions, the opportunity for AP departments, including the top performers, to drive greater efficiency will only increase.
Stay tuned for our next set of BIG trends on Thursday!
