[Editor’s Note: Ardent Partners recently published its Accounts Payable-themed report, “Accounts Payable 2025: BIG Trends and Predictions”. Over the next several weeks, this site will feature our series highlighting the key BIG Trends and Predictions from the report.
As we step into 2025, the world of Accounts Payable (AP) is poised for a transformative year, driven by the accelerating forces of artificial intelligence (“AI”), advanced automation, and the growing recognition of AP’s potential to deliver measurable operational and financial impact.
Since the pandemic began, AP has emerged as a strategic cornerstone for businesses looking to streamline operations, enhance cash flow management, and bolster profitability. AI-powered solutions are helping to redefine the function; the need for smarter cash management and stronger supplier relationships are also aiding the cause.
In this new age, smart executives have identified AP as an area of investment and a lever for driving strategic value. This attention has empowered many AP teams to move beyond transactional tasks, embracing roles that directly influence financial performance and operational excellence.
This Week’s BIG Trend and Prediction
BIG Trend #4 – AP’s Wild West Approach to AI
Industry-wide best practices for AI deployment are in their nascent stages, creating a wild west environment for AP. In their mad dash to optimize AI, some finance and AP leaders have taken a “move fast and break things” approach to their rollouts, relying primarily on their technology partners to identify the initial applications of AI and then quickly putting them into production.
These teams are moving fast — so fast, in fact, that they may be unaware of the things they have broken. Meanwhile, several groups have become true AI “snail-blazers,” unable to launch the most basic AI capability without innumerable tests and retests by external consultants, internal IT departments, and centralized AI governance teams. Eventually, the standard AI rollout playbook will chart a course between these two extreme approaches.
Prediction #4 – Inflation and Supplier Price Increases Ramp-Up in H2-2025
In Q1 2025, the new U.S. presidential administration will impose targeted tariffs on several key imports or regions, citing national security concerns and the need to rebuild domestic industries as tariff justifications. These tariffs will be met with immediate backlash from businesses, consumer groups, and international trade partners, that will argue they are excessive, protectionist, and harmful to consumers by being highly inflationary.
Many corporations, facing increased input costs due to these tariffs, will leverage the situation as an opportunity to raise prices. They may argue that tariffs necessitate higher prices to maintain profitability, even if the actual increase in input costs is less than the price hike. This “tariff-plus” pricing allows companies to improve profit margins while deflecting blame on external factors for price increases.
The lack of transparency in how companies are passing on tariff costs to consumers will make it difficult to determine the true impact of the tariffs on prices. Not surprisingly, unaffected corporations will take advantage of the confusion and increase their prices as well. The net result will be a broad-based increase in consumer inflation rates in the U.S. and the West roughly 3-to-6 months after the first tariffs are announced.
AP 2025 BIG Trends & Predictions (Part 5): Next week we’ll explore a new trend and prediction — Capital Costs Placing Greater Focus on B2B Payments and Cost of Capital Remains Higher Longer, respectively.
