For over a decade, Ardent Partners has leveraged a unique framework to highlight the performance of top-tier organizations (versus all others) by analyzing a specific set of benchmark criteria. Over each of those years, Ardent Partners has defined Best-in- Class performance in this research report as the 20% of enterprises with the lowest average invoice processing costs and shortest average invoice process cycle times. Top-performing enterprises have taken their AP operations to the next level by leveraging technology to streamline the AP process, make it more efficient, and enable more strategic initiatives to be carried out. Best-in- Class enterprises have demonstrated their ability to drive superior performance across both traditional and contemporary AP metrics.

One area where Best-in-Class teams show a big advantage is with ePayments. Leading AP groups are known for their ability to.

• Leverage ePayments (60% more likely than all others), which can eliminate the deficiencies associated with paper- based checks, while also enabling greater payment agility, speeding up payment times, lowering costs, improving compliance, mitigating fraud,  and  providing  superior visibility into organizational cash flow.

• Provide rich remittance information to suppliers (2.5x more likely than all others) is one way of encouraging suppliers to accept ePayments. Providing detailed remittance information (such as purchase order number, invoice number, payment amount, date, contract, etc.) enables vendors to  much  more  easily  and efficiently reconcile payments to goods and services sold. This capability can also have the net result of cultivating stronger buyer-supplier relationships.

• Capture early payment discounts (61% more likely than all others), which is a primary means of deriving value from the payment process. Processing invoices and payments faster can result in significant opportunities for an organization to take advantage of any early payment discounts offered by suppliers. Compounded across hundreds or even thousands of invoices per month, the opportunity to achieve both a significant ROI and impact on cash flow is very tangible.

Best-in-Class organizations leverage B2B ePayments because they work. They enable them to perform better, faster, cheaper, and more securely than their paper-based, manual-intensive, error-prone, alternatives. Additionally, the past year has clearly shown us that those organizations using ePayments were much better prepared to handle disruptions in how and where they were required to work. Interest in automating B2B payments has never been higher than it is right now – and for good reason.

Tagged in: AP Automation, Ardent Partners Research, B2B payments, Bob Cohen, ePayables, P2P