Making sense of the world of B2B payments and procurement technology: AP automation components (Landscape Overview)

From an industry analyst perspective, AP automation is a fascinating market. It’s not like other areas of enterprise technology (e-procurement, sourcing, contract management, vendor management systems, customer relationship management, etc.) that typically debut in the Fortune 500 or Global 2000 before making their way into the middle market and smaller businesses. No, the rise of AP automation has largely been a bottoms-up journey. It is one that started with the middle market and small business users and vendors specializing in selling into these markets.

Today, AP automation technologies differ materially based on the breadth and depth of use cases (e.g., invoicing processing requirements — basic vs. advanced), company size, industry and technology systems environment, among other variables. It is challenging to compare head-to-head AvidXChange to Basware to Medius to Tipalti, for example, as we might with e-procurement providers for a particular software selection requirement — they all specialize in specific use cases and have carved out different niches that make them great (or not-so-great) depending on customer priorities!

This Spend Matters PRO series began with a look at the legacy world of B2B payments and how the incumbent/new universes have interplay with each other. Now we can turn our attention to segmenting and defining the modern non-bank world of B2B payments as it relates to procurement and finance technologies.

For the series, we’ll look at this sector’s four categories of providers:

• Accounts payable automation providers
• Procure-to-pay (and source-to-pay) providers address AP automation use cases along with deeper support for e-invoicing, ordering functionality and varying degrees of payment capability.
• Dedicated payment solutions combine technology and services to automate or digitize B2B payments and/or deploy payment infrastructure.
• Working capital solutions leverage data and bank relationships to enable early payments and optimize working capital.

This PRO landscape overview begins by providing a succinct introduction to AP automation (overall) and highlights our Fall 2020 SolutionMap vendor ranking/scoring (including providing an example of how Basware and Medius perform in our subscriber-only SolutionMap Insider ratings). Finally, it provides insight into the B2B payment capabilities offered by AP automation providers.