Is a recession on the horizon? There is a lot of speculation by the media that there is a looming recession, and 60% of enterprises (500+ employees) are planning to take action to prepare for this possible economic downturn.
Among many organizations, a strategy that has become a priority is to focus on reductions in non-essential spending and optimizing internal processes for higher resiliency.
Modernizing Accounts Payable (AP) has become the top internal process to achieve this, allowing organizations to closely manage costs while ensuring business continuity during uncertainty.
Accounts Payable plays a critical role in day-to-day business operations, and automating AP is the quickest way to become recession-proof.
3 Key Benefits of AP Automation During a Recession
AP teams inherently feel the impacts during economic downturns. Here are three reasons why organizations should prioritize AP Automation during a recession.
- Efficiency
Without the ability to hire new AP specialists or new spending on business process outsourcing, AP teams must optimize their workflow in both offices and remote workplaces to maintain their average level of output with fewer resources during recessions. By eliminating manual data entry and paper invoice processing, staff can quickly, securely and accurately process any received documents in the accounting system, ensuring the cash flows between you and suppliers and partners.
- Cost Reduction
Inflation has increased overall spending across the board for finance departments. Handling paper invoices and manually entering invoice data can cost your organization time and money. AP Automation minimizes manual data entry and human errors and shortens the approval process for time and cost savings.
- Vendor Relationships
Any payment delays can affect your relationships with your vendors and suppliers. During times of uncertainty, it’s crucial to maintain healthy supplier relationships by making timely payments and answering vendor inquiries promptly.
- Visibility
Regarding recessions, enterprises need clear visibility into cash flow and invoice processing to navigate critical business decisions when facing a cash crunch. A strategized digital AP process helps you gain greater visibility into the AP document lifecycle.
While AP Automation brings all these benefits to organizations, the use of Machine Learning brings the benefits of automation to a whole new level.
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), teaches itself by utilizing historical data to predict future outcomes. Machine-learning software uses algorithms to find patterns within the data to learn and improve continually.
How Machine Learning is Transforming Accounts Payable
The AI software will automatically depict the historical patterns and intricate suggestions for cost allocation within an organization, eliminating redundant manual invoicing procedures. These enhancements have the potential to significantly speed up the entire AP process while also freeing up staff’s time to prioritize more critical or value-added tasks.
Implementing AI-based AP automation does not imply that you will have less control over your AP operations but that you will have more control with less effort. The machine strictly follows the rules and structures you set in your process. The technology will handle the primary and manual tasks, and intelligent dashboards will alert AP employees to exceptions. Therefore, the automated controls embedded into the AP system remain in your control.
Machine learning also improves accuracy in detecting invoice data acquired using optical character recognition (OCR) and can minimize the number of human errors that can occur during the process. Machine learning is smart enough to detect duplicate invoices and other possible symptoms of fraud.
Looking Ahead
These additional benefits are crucial to organizations during an economic downturn by maximizing work efficiencies. Ready to discover how Machine Learning and AP automation can help your business prepare for a recession?
Get started by looking at the right Invoice Processing Automation with Machine Learning to reduce the cost of doing business, further enhance workflow productivity, and assist retain key business talent.
