The second-annual AP Honors Ceremony celebrated the accounts payable profession and recognized excellence in the field. During the ceremony, Ardent Partners presented awards for outstanding performance and execution in the last year — “The AP Honors” — to a variety of high achievers including Accounts Payable and P2P leaders and teams, as well as ePayables (AP Automation) solution providers and other experts.
Let’s look at the Best Technology Partnership award finalist.
Best Technology Partnership: Presented to the best partnership between a solution provider and their accounts payable team customer on to a technology deployment.
Finalist: Bridge Investment Group and PredictAP
Company: Bridge Investment Group Holdings Inc. is an American alternative investment company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company focuses on investments in the real estate sector as well as credit investments. It has expanded into other areas such as the private-equity secondary market, property technology, and renewable energy.
Employees: 2,200
Group Website: Bridge Investment Group and PredictAP
Key People: Brittany White, Vice President, Technical Applications; Jon Clark, Director of Financial Systems Administration; and David Stifter, Founder and CEO of PredictAP
*All data given above is based on publicly available information.
Bridge Investment Group’s Journey with PredictAP to Revolutionize AP Processing
Managing accounts payable at Bridge Investment Group, a leading alternative investment management firm headquartered in Salt Lake City, is no small feat given the company’s complex structure. Spanning multiple asset classes, such as real estate, credit, renewable energy, and secondary strategies (and $49.2 billion in assets under management), Bridge’s AP operations are decentralized, with several distinct AP teams handling invoices for various verticals like multifamily workforce, commercial, logistics, etc. In total, 10 to 15 dedicated AP invoice processors manage a staggering volume of transactions.
This complexity led Bridge to seek a partner to address AP processes that relied heavily on manual data entry or outsourced services, causing inefficiencies and variability. The firm chose PredictAP, a solution provider reshaping AP processing with cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. Ardent Partners spoke to Bridge’s Brittany White, Vice President, Technical Applications, and Jon Clark, Director of Financial Systems Administration, as well as David Stifter, Founder and CEO of PredictAP, about the transformative impact of the partnership.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Recognizing the need for a scalable, adaptable, and efficient solution, Bridge piloted PredictAP within a small corporate group. The results were game-changing. The adoption of PredictAP has driven significant improvements across Bridge’s AP operations.
In the past year, Bridge processed approximately 200,000 invoices through PredictAP — an increase from 8,000 per month just a year earlier to 27,000 per month today. White shared that this exponential growth has translated into substantial time savings of approximately 6,000 hours annually across the firm’s AP teams, equivalent to a 50% reduction in processing time. Such gains are not merely quantitative. PredictAP’s ability to learn from historical data and adapt to each department’s unique coding requirements ensures accuracy and consistency, reducing downstream corrections and promoting organizational knowledge resilience, she noted.
From Skepticism to Adoption — The Power of AI in AP Processing
Clark said rolling out PredictAP across a large, diversified organization like Bridge was not without challenges. Initial buy-in required a proof-of-concept phase. One pivotal moment came during a beta test with property managers in Bridge’s Office Group. Clark explained that an unexpected outage with PredictAP highlighted the platform’s value, as managers, who had come to rely on its efficiency, expressed frustration at returning to manual processes. Their passionate advocacy convinced senior leadership to scale PredictAP company wide.
At its core, Stifter shared that PredictAP leverages AI to automate coding and allocation tasks, learning and improving in real time. The solution provided several benefits to Bridge’s complex structure.
- Customization across verticals: PredictAP adapts to the nuances of each department, from multifamily housing to senior living, handling unique coding rules and allocations seamlessly.
- Knowledge retention: PredictAP ensures that institutional knowledge remains intact, even amid staff turnover. This resilience has proven invaluable in maintaining continuity and efficiency.
- Ease of use: With minimal training required, the system simplifies user adoption. Employees can drag and drop files or email invoices, review predictions, and approve them — all within minutes.
- Accuracy and insights: Metrics provided by PredictAP indicate field-level prediction accuracy consistently exceeding 90%, even as new groups and datasets are introduced.
Transforming the AP Landscape
Bridge Investment Group’s success with PredictAP underscores the broader potential for AI in financial operations. White said by eliminating inefficiencies and empowering teams to focus on higher-value tasks, the technology has not only improved Bridge’s productivity but also reshaped the way AP processes are perceived and managed.
As White and Clark both noted, the partnership with PredictAP has been exceptional. From delivering on promises to adapting to unique challenges, PredictAP has earned their trust — an achievement few technology vendors can claim. The adoption of PredictAP is just one example of Bridge’s forward-thinking approach to innovation. By harnessing the power of AI, the firm is not only improving operational efficiency but also setting a standard for adaptability and excellence in the investment management industry.
PredictAP’s success at Bridge demonstrates that with the right technology and a willingness to innovate, even the most complex processes can be streamlined, unlocking time and resources for strategic growth.
