Accounts Payable Content

There’s nothing attention-grabbing at the board level about efficient transactional processing (unless of course you put a clever spin on it and simply call the latest instantiation of it “AP robotics”). Yet sexy or otherwise, processing transactions is the traditional role of AP. But given this constraint, how can AP rise up in strategic value and do more than just become more efficient? Perhaps the function needs to explain the value it can bring in terms that executives and stakeholders in the business, customers, suppliers and shareholders can appreciate.

Part 1 of this analysis featured observations on the intersection of sourcing and supplier management with A/P, payment terms, and discounting strategies based on the personal […]

One of the fundamental challenges of A/P strategy and payment in the past (for organizations of all sizes) is that it has not been a scientific or measured exercise. Thomas’ father used to run Northern European sales arms for various US industrial equipment firms, and he would tell his staff that payments to vendors could only be paid a few days past the end of each quarter, once the firm had settled its books! This was to pull cash to central accounts, and then push it back out. In other words, it was a lot of work and supplier frustration over evanescent paper results.

Editor’s note: this is a two-part series. Part 1 features observations and insights from Spend Matters’ Thomas Kase focused on AP, payment terms, strategic sourcing […]

In the first installment of this series, we covered five initial opportunities for Intuit/Quickbooks to provide additional network-based services to the users of its SMB […]

We’ve been covering Intuit’s investment and partnership with supplier network/platform/e-invoicing provider Tradeshift in a series of columns (see titles/links at the end of this post). […]

Read Part 1 and Part 2 here. To conclude our look at payment terms and accounts payable strategies (and our own personal experience as an […]

Here at Spend Matters, we’ve spent quite a bit of time covering the technical intersections of eProcurement and e-invoicing, not to mention the broader (and […]

In yesterday's installment of this accounts payable saga, I shared the backdrop of a supplier contracting and on-boarding process involving a larger global organization and […]

We all too often find ourselves in the role of researchers and analysts at Spend Matters, having to do significant homework before covering a story […]

Over on Spend Matters PRO, we’ve started to feature a series on the evolution of the e-invoicing and related supplier network markets, including buying trends […]

Click here to view a webinar we recently did with Coupa and Dell titled "3 Ways to Earn Loyalty and Profit from Your Suppliers: Lessons […]