How Automation Can Remove Vendor Onboarding Frictions

IBM launches blockchain-based contractor management solution

NEWS & TRENDS

Page 12

FEATURE STORYPage 8

How AP automation improves bottom lines and vendor relationships

DEEP DIVE

Page 17

MARCH 2020

A look at next-generation AP automation developments, including how companies — particularly SMBs — can benefit from automated AP practices and how Shake Shack’s automated AP upgrade could trim extra costs and keep its inventory on track

An interview with Dan Miller, senior vice president of product management at Sage Intacct, on how streamlining vendor onboarding can help both vendors and their partners build profitable working relationships

The latest AP automation headlines, including IBM’s decision to partner on a blockchain-powered contractor management solution and why SMBs are retaining manual processes despite automated solutions’ perks

A data-rich look at why savvy firms are using AP automation to streamline their vendor onboarding practices and forge long-lasting relationships with business partners

Information on PYMNTS.com and Bottomline Technologies

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F E AT U R E S T O RY

N E W S & T R E N D S

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A B O U T

The Next-Gen AP Automation Tracker® is done in collaboration with Bottomline Technologies, and PYMNTS is grateful for the company’s support and insight. PYMNTS.com retains full editorial control over the following findings, methodology and data analysis.

AC K N OW L ED G M ENT

Technologies like machine learning (ML) and artifi-cial intelligence (AI) are becoming more prevalent in accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) operations, but recent research shows ac-counts payable (AP) professionals have mixed views on such tools — and that many businesses are sticking with paper-based legacy processes.

A recent informal poll revealed that many financial professionals are unaware of ML’s significance in their firms’ accounting and planning operations, and a separate survey of AP professionals from around the world found that 25.7 percent believe it could take up to five years for their departments to become fully automated. A recent PYMNTS report discovered that 80.8 percent of AP departments still pay suppliers with paper checks and that 45.2 percent rely on cash to do so. It also found that 72.4 percent of such departments receive

invoices via postal mail and that 43.8 percent re-ceive theirs via fax.

PYMNTS’ research shows that onboarding is a different story, however, finding that 63.4 percent of AP departments rely on digital procedures to onboard suppliers and 49.5 percent use manual methods. The former share will likely increase as more suppliers and businesses realize automation eliminates time-consuming and error-prone fric-tions from the process.

AP automation also ensures payments to suppliers are made on time, which goes a long way toward keeping relationships profitable for both parties. Plenty of providers are collaborating or merging to offer new solutions to improve onboarding and other AP-related processes, while others are de-veloping or rolling out their own offerings.

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Across the next-gen AP automation space

Technology giant IBM is tackling the challenging and often-convoluted process of managing contrac-tor invoices, recently announcing plans to launch a blockchain-based solution later this year with the help of blockchain consulting company IT People. The solution will be powered by Hyperledger Fabric technology and will automatically track timesheets, handle contractor onboarding and ease related in-voicing and invoice payment processes.

Fast-growing quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain Shake Shack is also embracing automated solu-tions, recently adopting procure-to-pay software that integrates purchasing and AP for greater trans-parency into its procurement operations. The New York-based QSR is implementing this and other sup-plier management products as part of a $3.5 million back-of-house digital transformation to reduce man-ual efforts, optimize inventory orders and realize cost savings.

Shake Shack is just one of many companies see-ing back-end AP automation’s benefits. Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are often hit hard by manual processes, but a recent report reveals that automated AP solutions could reduce their costs and improve their bottom lines. It found that 86 per-cent of SMBs manually entered accounting data and that potential operational disruptions could deter many from adopting digital alternatives. Automated services could cut an average of 40 days from their invoice processing times and save them approxi-mately $12 per invoice.

For more on these stories and other recent next-gen AP automation developments, read the Tracker’s News & Trends section (p. 12).

Using cloud solutions to smooth vendor

onboarding

The financial accounting software market is growing and expected to gross more than $19 billion annual-ly by 2025. Much of this expansion is being driven by chief financial officers who are pushing for a switch to low-cost, scalable, cloud-based software solu-tions, and many providers are developing products that cater to these demands. In this month’s Feature Story (p. 8), Dan Miller, senior vice president of prod-uct management at Sage Intacct, explains how the company is meeting businesses’ needs with solu-tions that remove vendor onboarding frictions and keep supplier relationships strong.

Deep Dive: How AP automation can power

vendor relationships

Forming strong vendor relationships is critical for businesses’ growth, but finding and onboarding the right supplier partners can be a slow process involving in-depth research and cost-benefit anal-ysis. These procedures require insight and data analysis that can be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve through manual methods alone, leading some companies to leverage automated AP and AI-powered solutions. This month’s Deep Dive (p. 17) examines how AP system automation can improve company-vendor bonds and make sure partners are paid regularly and on time.

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Portion of AP departments that believe the collection of suppliers’ credit information is the top use of digital onboarding

72.1%

Portion of AP departments that still pay suppliers with paper checks

80.8%

Share of AP professionals who acknowledge that paper-based manual processes can damage supplier relationships

24%

Share of AP departments that rely on digital procedures to onboard new suppliers

63.4%

$15MEstimated annual cost of inaccurate supplier onboarding data and incomplete risk assessment for businesses

What is AP automation’s role in establishing and strengthening supplier relationships?

JON NEILL

vice president of vendor enrollment at Bottomline

“Accounts payable automation plays a significant role in fostering strong relationships between organizations and their vendors.  Vendors are becoming increasingly inter-ested in the ability to take control over their payments, including having the ability to accept payments in a secure environment with enhanced visibility and automation. The core benefits of AP automation are often focused on the accounts payable department, but many of those benefits also extend to the accounts receivable team, driving better alignment between the two with increased value realized for both parties.

In speaking with AR teams, we overwhelmingly find that these groups are focused on eliminating the acceptance of paper checks as a way to mitigate fraud and the amount of time and labor it takes to process check payments. Often, they prefer their customers adopt AP automation as a way to achieve four primary objectives: improve se-curity, automation, visibility and days sales outstanding. By adopting AP automation, organizations will enable their vendors to achieve these objectives.

When organizations select the right AP automation partner and solution, they will not only accelerate the on-boarding process with new vendors but also strengthen their existing vendor relationships.”

EXECUTIVE

Insight

F I V E FA S T FAC T S

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Automatic, AI-based invoice data captureDigitize paper-based invoicesReduce manual input errors

Faster invoice trackingLocate related documentsEnhance visibility and a single system of record

Reduce onboarding errors due to manual inputCollect preferred payment methods for suppliers

Faster workflow processesMatch invoices, POsExpedite invoice review, approvals

Reduce dependency on paper checksAdopt more secure electronic alternatives, including ACH and virtual card solutionsIncrease transparency

Increase spending oversight Greater cash flow visibilityReduce costs and earn rebatesIncrease collaboration opportunities with AP teams and treasurers

Innovating the invoice

Integrating ERPs, internal systems

Expediting onboarding

Streamlining approval workflow

Transforming payment processes

Optimizing working capital

Payables

Payments

ECOSYSTEMFrom Payables To Payments Innovating The Next Decade Of AP Automation

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FEATURE STORY

The financial account software market is on pace to reach $19 billion in sales over the next five years, and such growth is necessary to match busi-nesses’ fast-paced needs. Firms of all sizes are searching for tools that provide better insights into their cash flows, as such knowledge is critical to helping them maintain solid relationships with both vendors and customers — especially amid in-tensifying competition.

Growth can create frictions, too. Some business-es must juggle outgoing payments to vendors in international markets, for example, or cater to oth-ers’ more complex payment agreements. Easy, efficient AP technology can instantly categorize these transfers, and businesses can upgrade their financial management with automation and cloud implementations to create lasting — and more fi-nancially viable — vendor relationships, said Dan

F E A T U R E S T O R Y

How Automation Can Remove Vendor Onboarding Frictions

Miller, senior vice president of product management at financial software provider Sage Intacct. Such technology can also help companies keep up with competitors by eliminating frictions throughout the AP process involving onboarding vendors and track-ing payments.

“We have solutions — both natively [as well as via partner] products — for helping new vendors or help-ing with vendor [onboarding],” Miller told PYMNTS during a recent interview. “There is a real value in bringing [these solutions] together at the vendor on-boarding stage [because it] saves a lot of time in figuring out how that vendor relationship is going to be structured. You bring in new vendors [and] you need to be sure how that vendor [is] expecting to be paid.”

Handling onboarding with a one-step solution also gives businesses better understandings of their cash flows, allowing them to leverage additional solutions or innovate their in-house processes.

Data’s importance in one-step onboarding

Boiling the entire onboarding process down to one step is not easy, however. Businesses and their sup-pliers encounter massive amounts of data each day, meaning both parties must receive information in a timely and easy-to-understand manner. Such details must be quickly analyzed when onboarding vendors.

“There are some standards under which compa-nies tend to want to operate and [that order] how they want to engage with each other, but there are also a lot of variations in expectations of individual

vendors,” Miller clarified. “[There are] some circum-stances [in how] a customer-vendor relationship is set up [that] drives how payments get [managed]. Because of that variation, there is work [needed] to make sure you build it into the system so that [it] gets [to] where the data collection [is] really important [and where] the AP staff is going to actually pay bills.”

Businesses must be able to understand these vari-ations when they begin onboarding, he added, so Sage Intacct has also built automation into its on-boarding solutions. Providing AP automation and ERP solutions in one product allows businesses to streamline the process and more easily move for-ward with trusted vendors. Data is an essential to this process, Miller said, which must be tailored to each individual client.

“I do not think when you get to mid-market [size] … [that] the one-size-fits-all [model] works,” he noted. “When you are dealing with potentially hundreds of vendors the odds of you having a one-size-fits-all re-lationship with each of them? … [That] really means manual work for the AP team.”

Cash flow and AP automation innovation

Sage Intacct has worked to create solutions — in-cluding its Sage Intacct Intelligent General Ledger as well as products it developed with partner com-panies — that can capture this information upfront and add support for AP automation and other tailored tools, Miller said. Solutions are then person-alized to address clients’ needs via vendor discounts, subscription payment support and other tailored fea-tures that create more efficient relationships.

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Infusing data transparency within these solutions helps firms further personalize their offerings, but the main benefit to one-step onboarding is in untan-gling businesses’ cash flow information.

“[Businesses are] trying to optimize their cash flows,” Miller said. “That is one of the biggest things we hear [from] customers: ‘How do they understand where they are from a cash perspective? How is their future AP going to play into that?’”

Automating AP and vendor onboarding will enable businesses to gain real-time views of their cash flows and determine how much funding to put toward

innovations, but the technology is still in the very ear-ly stages of implementation. This is especially true among SMBs, with a recent survey finding only 5 percent of such companies had fully automated AP processes.

It is becoming clearer that these types of solutions are necessary for businesses of all levels, however — especially as the amount of data firms generate in-creases. Companies will thus need to keep searching for products that can help them manage that data and court the right partner vendors to keep up.

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Across B2B payments IBM launches blockchain solution to reduce

onboarding costs

Reconciling contractor invoices is one of AP de-partments’ biggest challenges, but providers are working to ease the process. Technology giant IBM recently announced that it would launch a blockchain-based contractor management solu-tion called IBM Contingent Labor later this year, according to a press release. The solution, in-tended to reduce vendor onboarding costs, was created in conjunction with blockchain consult-ing firm IT People and is powered by Hyperledger Fabric technology. It will automatically track con-tractor onboarding, purchase orders and time sheets as well as eliminate blocked invoices and guarantee on-time invoice payments. IBM said the solution will enable vendors to upload invoic-es and purchase orders while allowing users to generate supplier invoices based on approved blockchain-stored timesheets.

Contingent Labor, which started in 2018 as a man-agement solution, is the latest of several IBM blockchain offerings. The company also partnered with shipping company Maersk on a blockchain

platform to enhance transparency and digitize shipping management. A recent press release stated that the solution, TradeLens, is being pilot-ed with Jordanian Customs and will be leveraged to “simplify the exchange of goods, automate documentation and increase cooperation and communication between counterparties.”

Signature Bank unveils Finrails AP platform

to streamline vendor payments

Many businesses are clinging to friction-laden and time-consuming manual invoicing and paper checks, but solutions are being developed to sim-plify AP processes. PYMNTS research found that 46.4 percent of AP professionals would prefer to electronically process invoices to improve opera-tional efficiencies and that 38.5 percent would like to adopt automatic order matching technologies for the same reason. An additional 22.9 percent say they would like to integrate ePayables with vir-tual cards into their broader B2B operations to do the same.

Chicago-based Signature Bank is launching a technology platform  called Finrails AP to simpli-fy B2B transactions and streamline payments to vendors and suppliers by reducing onboarding

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frictions. The cloud-based solution automates B2B payments via a secure digital dashboard, and the bank said payments are facilitated using virtual Visa commercial cards, ACH and checks. The offering provides built-in fraud detection via Signature Bank’s Positive Pay authentication application as well as in-creased visibility into cash flows. Businesses do not have to be Signature Bank customers to use Finrails AP, according to the news release, and a bank cus-tomer service team will assist vendors in moving to electronic payments.

Calling for automation in B2B partnerships

The B2B payments space may be ripe for automated solutions, but companies must determine how such upgrades will affect their in-house operations before adopting them. Managing strategic B2B partnerships has become more complicated as businesses’ part-nership networks expand, Michael Head, general manager of the Partnership Cloud product at tech-nology provider Impact, told PYMNTS in a recent interview. He said that automation could dispel much of the ambiguity involved in negotiating and fulfill-ing contracts and other collaboration-related issues but that businesses often lack sufficient digital chan-nels to initiate such partnerships, which leads them to miss out on potential revenue.

This steadily growing number of B2B partner-ships is inundating AP operations with invoices and payments, Head explained, and new waves of fric-tion are arising from legacy B2B partnership tools. Late or missed payments strain relationships, and post-payment processes — like return on investment (ROI) assessments, contract management, the gen-eration and sending of performance reports or the

submission of tax forms — also muddy the waters. A lack of automation may thus prevent business-es from expanding lucrative partnerships, gaining clearer views into collaborations’ effectiveness or fostering partner loyalty and satisfaction. Adopting automated technology would help them standardize management processes, eliminate frictions and en-sure timely payments.

Acquisitions and partnerships Emburse to automate vendor, non-employee

expenses

Some companies are partnering to produce more efficient AP solutions, while others are developing their own from scratch. AP automation solutions

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provider Emburse recently launched a payment service to compensate vendors and other nonem-ployees — a task more AP departments face as their companies turn to freelancers and contractors. The solution, Abacus Reach, will streamline expense re-imbursements for outside payees such as external consultants and job candidates.

AP teams can more easily verify company policies and submit travel expenses through the Abacus Reach mobile app, according to an Emburse press release, while nonemployees can access the plat-form via email. The company’s product serves AP professionals who have lacked efficient ways to pro-cess one-off or infrequent expenses.

Glantus acquires JPD Financial to expand its

AP service products

Some AP teams are developing in-house offerings, but others are turning to partnerships, mergers or acquisitions to produce innovative solutions. Dublin, Ireland-based financial automation and data intelli-gence solutions provider Glantus recently announced that it will purchase San Jose, California-based Vendor Credit Recovery services firm JPD Financial for an undisclosed price. The deal will “bring new levels of automation and AI to credit recovery and financial processing offered to global businesses and shared services units,” according to a Glantus press release.

Glantus is using the acquisition to boost its global reach, as JPD Financial has operations in the United States and United Kingdom. JPD Financial also offers AP auditing and master data cleansing to “im-prove long-term supplier relationships,” and said in a

press release that the deal would satisfy its clients’ demands for “automation and AI to drive efficiencies in their financial processes.”

Procure-to-pay developments Shake Shack adopts supplier management,

procure-to-pay solution

AP teams are not the only groups seeking digital solu-tions to expand their companies’ operations: QSRs are also turning to new software to boost efficiency, adopting procure-to-pay products that enhance their inventory and payments processes. Fast-growing restaurant chain Shake Shack recently made such a move, implementing supplier management solu-tions as part of a $3.5 million back-of-house digital transformation. Procure-to-pay products essentially integrate purchasing and AP procedures to give busi-nesses greater transparency into their procurement operations. Shake Shack’s solution will allow man-agers to order only the exact amounts of ingredients needed, for example, freeing restaurant staff to focus on preparing food.

The QSR hopes the move will both save employ-ee time and cut company costs. Studies show procurement organizations that apply some auto-mated technologies can experience savings of up to 17 percent, while those that undergo “complete dig-ital transformations” can reduce costs by up to 45 percent. Shake Shack plans to complete its imple-mentation by mid-2020.

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Vroozi and Stratas collaborate to expand

procure-to-pay solution into the UK, Ireland

Other U.S.-based firms are similarly extending their procure-to-pay solutions’ reaches. San Francisco, California-based procurement software and solutions provider Vroozi recently announced a part-nership with U.K. digital transformation services company Stratas to offer its procure-to-pay solution to middle market companies in the U.K. and Ireland. The former provides a cloud-based business pur-chasing solutions marketplace that consolidates employee, finance, key supplier and procurement operations onto one digital platform. Stratas helps companies digitally transform their financial and pro-curement practices, thereby reducing the time they spend completing paper-heavy manual operations.

The partnership brings a fully mobile “enterprise-grade [procure-to-pay] functionality” to middle market com-panies, according to Vroozi’s press release, and will provide Stratas’ customers with improved financial controls as well as upgraded spend management

and cost reduction capabilities. The latter began on-boarding the former’s customers in February.

Road to AP automation and smoother vendor onboardingAP automation could cut 40 days from SMB

invoice processing

SMBs often overlook AP automation’s abilities to cut costs and boost their bottom lines, despite the nu-merous product releases and news stories detailing its benefits. One report revealed that 22 percent of all companies manually enter accounting data, for example, but that 86 percent of SMBs do the same. Smaller firms with fewer resources have a lot to gain from switching to automated processes, as such a switch can reduce the time and expenses required to input, verify and approve information.

The perceived disruptions involved in implement-ing digital solutions appear to have slowed firms’

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adoption, but analysts suggest such concerns might be overblown. Businesses do not need to completely overhaul their operations to implement new technol-ogy, and they can find software that integrates with their legacy systems. Automated technologies could do more than simply improve SMBs’ daily workflows — some analysts estimate such solutions could help these firms cut 40 days from their AP invoice pro-cessing times and calculate that fully automating could save businesses approximately $12 per invoice.

AP professionals say manual processes

damage supplier relationships

Digital payment and procurement automation have well-documented benefits, including strength-ening business relationships with suppliers and vendors, but some AP professionals are finding it difficult to ditch manual, paper-based processes. A recent Association of Certified Accounts Payable Professionals (ACAPP) survey of more than 200 pro-fessionals and finance managers around the globe found that just 5 percent of businesses have ful-ly automated AP processes and almost 19 percent have none. Survey respondents also identified sever-al issues stemming from lack of adoption, including problems with paper-based invoices, as 24 percent of AP professionals stated that manual processes damaged relationships with suppliers. Many also re-ported that the time and effort required to manually process data were causing stress.

Many professionals reported that they did not envi-sion their firms adopting paperless processes in the near future, however, regardless of manual tasks’ in-efficiencies. Sixty-six percent of surveyed AP teams still spend more than five days a month handling

invoice management, even though cloud-based pro-cessing solutions could remove up to 90 percent of manual AP invoicing steps. The survey found that 25.7 percent of professionals still believe it could take up to five years for their departments to adopt full automation.

Supplier transparency could lead to

commercial success

Automating AP and payment processing stream-lines data collection from new vendors, deepening firms’ knowledge of their vendors’ practices and pol-icies and benefiting the entire supply chain. A recent survey found that the more transparency business-es have into suppliers’ practices, the more confident they are in their commercial successes. Harvard Business Review Analytic Services reported that ap-proximately 60 percent of 779 surveyed business leaders surveyed see significant risks in decreased transparency between finance and procurement functions and suppliers and discovered that 24 per-cent do not review their business practices with suppliers effectively.

Manual and incomplete data entry processes are be-ing overlooked and impacting bottom lines, according to some estimates. A report noted that mistakes in supplier onboarding details and unfinished risk as-sessments could cost firms approximately $15 million annually. Twenty-six percent of executives from the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey believe that better transparency in their fi-nance and procurement processes could generate savings of up to 20 percent.

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Strong vendor and supplier relationships are among businesses’ most valuable assets. Solid partnerships can make all the strategic difference, helping companies offer needed services, improve in-house operations and expand into new mar-kets. Turbulent ones can have the opposite effect, however, hindering firms’ potential and prevent-ing them from achieving their goals or adequately serving customers.

Developing profitable long-term business ties be-gins with onboarding, which requires lengthy vendor research, analyses of their leadership, products or services and projections of how such factors might help a company or its clients grow.

These processes takes significant amounts of time, labor and operational resources when han-dled manually, however. Teams must examine numerous supplier details to weigh how these at-tributes will affect their operations, yet they are unlikely to understand all facets of the potential business arrangement.

Supplier onboarding guided by automated and dynamic AP procurement processes can have different results. PYMNTS’ Payables Friction Playbook found that 64 percent of AP leaders believe greater data access and financial intelli-gence will boost their strategic capabilities and improve their operational insights. Such benefits

How AP Automation Makes Or Breaks Vendor Relationships

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can include understanding their own cash flows and management issues as well as those of their poten-tial partners.

The following Deep Dive explains how automa-tion can improve supplier onboarding processes, strengthen company-vendor relationships and boost all parties’ profitability.

Automating onboarding

Onboarding requires collecting as much informa-tion as possible on potential vendors or suppliers, including their credit histories, past performances and even ownership structures. Each detail affects partners’ abilities to contribute to business relation-ships, which means up-to-date information is crucial to making informed decisions.

Such scrutinization goes beyond simple checks of potential suppliers’ annual earnings or debt levels, however. Companies must leverage know your cus-tomer (KYC) anti-fraud checks to ensure the entities in question are not associated with fraud, money laundering or terrorism financing, among other ne-farious acts. Firms must also verify that prospective partners comply with mandatory local, regional, na-tional and international regulations.

Fifty-eight percent of business leaders believe en-hanced data insights can help their organizations comply with regulations and identify areas of con-cern. Performing such deep background checks can be challenging for firms with limited resourc-es, though. A grand majority — 96 percent — of U.S. employers report completing at least one type of criminal background check, which can cost $20 to $100 per person. Such checks on companies are

much costlier, and these expenses grow as more suppliers are onboarded. Some large firms even re-port working with more than 100,000 suppliers at a time.

Organizations cannot afford to skip this step, however, and collecting data on potential suppliers can be slow and rife with legacy processes. This is especially true for firms that silo information in disparate systems across the enterprise, causing potentially important details to slip through the cracks. Such practices af-fect other processes, too, including vendor payments, invoice management and procurement efforts, and all can lead to poor company-vendor bonds.

Automated AP solutions can put all these details into place, giving companies the information they seek in a fraction of the time manual processes require. AI- or ML-powered automation takes it a step further, sifting through large quantities of data and helping companies find the best partners.

Building better business bonds

Manual processes affect companies greatly, espe-cially as more businesses embrace digital methods. PYMNTS’ Payables Friction Playbook reported that nearly 90 percent of surveyed AP departments still use paper checks to pay suppliers, for example, and another survey found that 24 percent of AP pro-fessionals are aware that manual processes can damage supplier relationships.

AP teams appear to be more in step with the dig-ital times when it comes to onboarding, however. PYMNTS’ research found that 63.4 percent use digital methods to onboard suppliers, while 49.5 per-cent use manual methods. It also revealed that 72.1

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percent use digital means to collect credit infor-mation on suppliers, but 67.7 percent still prefer to negotiate contract terms with onboarding suppliers through manual methods.

Automation also facilitates interdepartmental com-munication, making documents and data available in real time to those who need them. Analysts argue that having vendor portals in which master data is centralized with invoicing, order and payment history may further streamline operations, especially when such portals are enhanced with AI or ML technology and connected to organizations’ AP and AR software. These links will ensure companies can make timely payments to vendors in their preferred methods.

Making AP automation key in supplier management will thus pay dividends, providing streamlined oper-ations, greater control over cash flows and deeper knowledge of partners’ activities.

Boosting bottom lines

Companies that fail to focus on AP automation are missing opportunities to optimize their returns, ac-cording to industry analysts. Automated AP payment can ensure bills are paid on time, which could be their greatest single contribution to fostering strong busi-ness ties.

Timely payments boost firms’ credibility with partners, keep collaborations solid and enable busi-nesses to better negotiate discounts on services or products. This in turn allows them to better manage cash flows and could even earn them discounts for early payments. Recent research found that only 33 percent of organizations were able to receive ear-ly payment discounts, however, and that 16 percent

never secured them. Other research shows that just 5 percent of businesses always pay their bills on time. These companies appear to pay late for numerous reasons, but implementing automation could allevi-ate some of the many potential issues.

Vetting new suppliers can be time-consuming, and analysts note that strategically important partners often require even more governance. Businesses that use AP automation to reduce fraud and friction and pay their suppliers on time are doing more than helping their bottom lines — they are building their reputations as reliable corporate partners with sup-pliers and beyond.

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A B O U T

PYMNTS.com is where the best minds and the best content meet on the web to learn about “What’s Next” in payments and commerce. Our interactive platform is reinventing the way companies in payments share relevant information about the initiatives that make news and shape the future of this dynamic sector. Our data and analytics team includes economists, data scientists and industry analysts who work with companies to measure and quantify the innovations at the cutting edge of this new world.

Bottomline Technologies provides automated payment technology solutions for several verticals, including education, financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing and technology. The company’s portfolio of solutions include document automation for invoice processing, financial messaging, legal billing solutions and spend management controls. Learn more at bottomline.com.

We are interested in your feedback on this report. If you have questions, comments or would like to subscribe to this report, please email us at feedback@pymnts.com.

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