We are thrilled to present the winners for the AP Honors 2025 Awards!!! The winners were announced during a special ceremony on Tuesday, September 16th. You can view the recording right now (and .
The annual AP HONORS Ceremony celebrates the accounts payable profession and recognizes excellence in the field. During the ceremony on September 16, Ardent Partners presented awards for outstanding performance and execution in the last year — “The AP HONORS” — to a variety of high achievers, including AP and P2P leaders and teams, as well as ePayables (AP Automation) solution providers and other experts.
The AP Honors are brought to you by Ardent Partners. An expert committee selected the AP HONORS 2025 winners from the pool of external nominations.
Ardent Partners congratulates all of the nominees and finalists, but particularly the winners of this year’s awards.
We now present this year’s AP Honors 2025 winners!
THE AP HONORS CATEGORIES:
The AP Leadership Award (AP Manager of the Year): This award is presented to the AP leader who has driven new performance heights due to their direct involvement, leadership, and overall exceptional managerial achievements.
The award is presented to the executive who has driven their team to new heights as a direct result of their leadership, management, and direction. This AP leader effectively leads their team in the face of adversity and new business challenges, and has truly become an enterprise-wide champion by actively instituting collaboration with key stakeholders across the greater organization.
FINALISTS: (Clint Green at Boral) and (Rahmah Al Ali at Dubai World Central Corp.)
**WINNER: Rahmah Al Ali at Dubai World Central Corporation
Rahmah Al Ali of Dubai World Central Corp, through hands-on leadership and a commitment to continuous innovation, spearheaded the digital transformation of DWCC’s procure-to-pay cycle. This included implementing automation solutions, aligning payment processes with contract governance, and enhancing supplier visibility across all transactions. As a result, she achieved a significant reduction in invoice processing time, increased on-time payment performance, and strengthened compliance with government regulations.
Best Team Performance Award/AP Team of the Year: This award is presented to the AP department that has excelled across the full scope of the ePayables Framework (invoice receipt, approval, and payment) to make a significant impact on overall enterprise results.
This award recognizes an AP team that has not only driven success within its function but also proved that it can drive value across the entire organization. This team has enhanced other areas of the business beyond AP and utilized a blend of strategies, technologies, and new approaches to drive ultimate enterprise value.
FINALISTS: (OSM Thome) and (Yancoal Australia)
**WINNER: Yancoal Australia AP Team
Yancoal is a leading Australian coal producer with over 4,000 employees and $5.5 billion in annual revenue, which found itself operating with 14 separate AP systems across remote mine sites. The team took decisive action to centralize its finance operations through a shared services model to achieve the following results: 80% touchless invoice processing, 98% PO compliance, over 22,000 invoices processed monthly in multiple currencies, an average invoice processing time of 4.9 days, and a dramatic drop in cost per invoice to just $0.20.
The AP Innovation Award: This award is presented to the AP team that has used new and innovative strategies and approaches to overcome significant hurdles.
Innovation has become an important part of the AP profession. The team that receives this award has demonstrated the ability to harness traditional solutions, new platforms, and championed the adoption of these solutions to drive value beyond the realm of AP.
FINALISTS: (Intuit) and (Apotex)
**WINNER: Intuit AP Team
Laura Brinker and the Intuit AP Team implemented an invoice GenAI bot with optical character recognition (OCR) functionality to auto-retrieve essential data from the invoice file to create a record in their financial system. The bot eliminated manual creation of invoices (over 30K annually), calculated tax by country, ensured higher accuracy, quickened cycle times, leading to faster payments and lower compliance risk. This freed up AP’s resources by 50%.
The Technology Excellence Award: This award is presented to the AP/Finance team that has leveraged technology solutions to impact AP operations and performance.
This award is bestowed upon the AP leaders and team that have taken advantage of the innovation and functionality available within today’s AP automation platforms to drive incredible value.
FINALISTS: (EDL Energy) and (UC San Diego)
**WINNER: EDL Energy
During a major ERP transition, EDL Energy sought a new, fit-for-purpose AP automation platform. The platform reduced manual effort for supplier engagement, decreased the real-time volume of non-PO invoices, and provided actionable insights into their AP data.
AI Innovation of the Year: Presented to the solution provider who most significantly impacted the market with their innovative use of AI.
This award recognizes the provider whose technology delivers measurable value by transforming processes, improving outcomes, or redefining the art of the possible in accounts payable. Honorees set a new benchmark for how AI can drive efficiency, intelligence, and agility across the enterprise.
FINALISTS: (Basware) and (Precoro)
**WINNER: Basware
Basware’s Intelligent Invoice Lifecycle Management platform has been trained on more than two billion invoices, leveraging deep learning to deliver end-to-end efficiency, accuracy, and compliance. The platform relies on its AI-driven SmartCoding and SmartPDF capabilities, helping clients achieve impressive baseline metrics in touchless processing, electronic invoicing, and paid-on-time metrics.
Best Technology Partnership: Presented to the best partnership between a solution provider and their accounts payable team customer on to a technology deployment.
This award honors collaborations that go beyond implementation to deliver measurable business value, streamline processes, and drive innovation. Winning partnerships demonstrate trust, alignment, and a shared commitment to long-term success.
FINALISTS: (Stimson Lumber & Corcentric) and (Toyota Motor Company & apexanalytix)
**WINNER: Stimson Lumber & Corcentric
Corcentric‘s partnership with Stimson Lumber began in 2012. Stimson Lumber has realized a significant invoice processing time reduction (average of under 3 days) for accelerated invoice approval and payment processing, with a 98% electronic invoice submission for reduced errors and increased compliance. Stimson also realized 62% in electronic payments in 2024, fewer late payments, and increased visibility — leading to improved supplier satisfaction and increased AP team productivity. Additionally, enhanced payment security has been achieved through Corcentric’s StopFraud payment protection service. The partnership exemplifies how technology and trust can come together to solve complex business challenges.
Congratulations again to all the winners of this year’s AP Honors 2025 Awards!
Be sure to submit an award nomination when the 2026 AP Honors Awards opens for submissions next year! Announcement coming in early 2026!
