Ardent recently completed its annual AP-themed market research study, “The State of ePayables 2021: Operating in the New Normal”, which is part of an ongoing dialogue that the Ardent team has had with AP and finance leaders for more than a decade. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be discussing the results from this year’s study in a series of articles on this site. If you’d like access to this report, make sure to register for our newsletter with a business email address.
Over the past sixteen months, many AP teams faced major disruptions, significant threats, and entirely new challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. By and large, AP professionals worked urgently to ensure business continuity, bolster financial resilience, and prepare their enterprises for the next economic phase.
Ardent’s recent interviews with AP professionals on the topic yielded a wide range of perspectives including:
“[The pandemic] changed the way invoices were processed, to obtain visibility…It changed remittances from paper to electronic remittances…It encouraged the business to use purchase orders.”
~ AP Staff, Travel Industry, Europe
“I was in hospitality and was laid off because there wasn’t any business. I went to a competitor who filed for bankruptcy. Now, I am working for an eCommerce company where they had the most growth as a result of the pandemic. I saw both sides of the pandemic and how they impacted business. One pulled through, one shut its doors forever, and the last is thriving.”
~ AP Specialist, South America
“[COVID-19] has forced us to evaluate and optimize our internal procedures and has resulted in streamlined procedures. We have deployed new Automation and are continuing in our efforts to reduce the number of touches our P2P process takes.”
~ Director of P2P, Manufacturing, North America
“We had little impact as we were mostly automated. Due to Covid we were able to get more vendors to email invoices and receive payments electronically.”
~ Senior Manager in AP, Media, North America
“The pandemic has had little effect as we have been setup with our systems and automation processes for quite a while now. That allowed us to easily work from home.”
~ AP Leader, Financial Services, North America
“No major issues, the function was already able to work and pay remotely. We established a governance framework to approve all PPE requirements. We relaxed matching rules for low value transactions to maintain cash flow and moved a number of suppliers from contracted terms to immediate.”
~ Senior Manager in AP, Health Care, Europe
