[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 a 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 #11 – The War for Next-Gen AP Talent Heats Up
As accounts payable becomes increasingly visible and critical in today’s enterprises, having the right talent to elevate AP for the future is essential. Today’s talent market is primarily “skills-driven,” meaning that businesses are not just hiring for roles but also for specific skills and requirements that go beyond traditional prerequisites. AP joins other business functions in today’s “war for talent” that continues to be waged post-pandemic.
AP leaders that want to maximize their efforts and help their organizations thrive in the volatile year ahead must develop and execute on a new staffing plan that leverages next-generation hiring strategies, such as skills-based hiring. Specifically, the identification of skills, both old and new, that will be critical to AP staff success is needed to ensure the team evolves as it advances through the rest of this decade. AP leaders will benefit from collaboration with groups like talent acquisition to better define the changing roles within the department and the best way to attract the best candidates.
AP must also lean into the strength of the extended workforce, which, according to Ardent Partners’ research, comprises nearly 50% of the average company’s total talent. In years past, Accounts Payable has long taken a “temporary staffing” view of the contingent workforce. However, with a more strategic approach, AP can transform its extended talent into a high-powered source of Best-in-Class skills. With a deep, highly skilled workforce, AP can pivot when it experiences market shifts, innovative technology developments like this wave of AI innovation, and other global payment trends.
Prediction #11 – “Fake” Data: The Fool’s Gold for AI Users
Many say that an AI model is only as strong as the data it relies on to function. In 2025, the huge potential upside in sales, valuations, and personal wealth from selling AI-powered solutions will convince some enterprise software solution providers that the use of fake data to train and drive the models used by their customers is justified. Over time, discrepancies will emerge between the model’s predictions and their customers’ actual outcomes. Audits will reveal that the training data provided to the AI was either manipulated or fabricated. The fake data will lead AI to generate inaccurate predictions and flawed strategies, impacting users’ performance.
The exposed providers will pay a big price in sales, company valuations, and potential legal liabilities. Providers’ clients and stakeholders will lose trust in their ability to operate and manage effectively, with impacted companies forced to enact a temporary freeze on their AI use. This will cause delays in operations and force teams to revert to manual or legacy decision-making processes. If any highly regulated industries are impacted, regulators will launch investigations into the breach, potentially resulting in fines, sanctions, or mandatory operational overhauls.
Ardent Partners does not expect this issue to hit the AP sector directly. However, these unique instances of fake data will remind everyone working in finance that the source, quality, and legality (in usage) of data used in AI applications is critical and must be validated frequently.
AP 2025 BIG Trends & Predictions (Part 12): Next week, we’ll conclude the series by exploring three remaining predictions.
