CFOs and AI Help Emerging Enterprises Accelerate Time to Cash™

Watch more: How the Emerging Enterprise Business Is Accelerating Time to Cash

The pace at which emerging enterprises convert sales into cash has become a defining measure of resilience and competitiveness. In fact, it was the subject of a recent PYMNTS Intelligence project, the Time to Cash Index.

These firms, taking in between $250 million and $2.5 billion in annual revenue, increasingly see time to cash not as a back-office metric but as a core driver of business velocity.

Of course, the executive most responsible for this time to cash velocity is the chief financial officer. That role is evolving too as CFOs take ownership of decisions that directly improve cash flow, liquidity and control. “CFOs are in the business of control,” Jeff Feuerstein, SVP of Paymode Product Management and Market Strategy for Bottomline, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster during a recent PYMNTS Roundtable.

The move toward automation and artificial intelligence (AI) deepens that responsibility. Feuerstein said the ability for technology to “take care of decisions rather than just provide insights” represents a significant change in how finance leaders operate. The expectation that payments and receivables processes work reliably and transparently reinforces why CFOs increasingly anchor these efforts.

Liquidity Gap and Supplier Readiness

Webster raised the practical challenge at the heart of liquidity: Cash flow breaks down if suppliers are not structurally ready to be paid. She described a “first-mile problem” in receivables, where onboarding, documentation and data readiness determine whether buyers can approve payments quickly. If those conditions are not met, friction sets in and the cash cycle slows.

Prashanth Ravishankar, SVP for Coupa Advantage and Supplier Offerings, agreed that readiness is often misunderstood. Many suppliers believe they are prepared to transact, but the requirements for being ready to get paid are more complex. As he put it, getting “ready to do business, but moving to ‘I am ready to get paid’ are two different things.” Trust, clarity and compliance all need to be in place before an invoice even enters the workflow.

Onboarding, Transparency and the Cash Journey

Ravishankar positioned onboarding as the essential starting point for shortening time to cash. Coupa’s marketplace, involving millions of buyers and suppliers, is built around eliminating the early friction that delays transactions. The goal is to “seamlessly automate the onboarding of suppliers” so buyers immediately know that requirements are met and that incoming invoices can be trusted, he said.

Invoice transparency is the next critical step. Ravishankar said buyers must be confident the invoice reflects the purchase accurately, and automation helps establish that confidence. When onboarding is automated and invoices are validated quickly, the downstream journey to cash becomes significantly more predictable.

Bottomline’s Paymode-X, for its part, offers a network of more than 550,000 authenticated suppliers, which further enhances trust in the links between buyers and suppliers.

Data-Driven Front End Reshapes Expectations

Pamela Novoa Ralli, head of product management at FIS, emphasized that the transformation begins at the data “front end.” She noted that 2025 marked a dramatic shift in buyer expectations, with customers demanding real-time analytics, higher accuracy and more intelligent use of their data. In her words, customers now “expect analytics and the insight and the intelligence that you deliver to be 95% plus accurate.”

That jump in expectations affects the entire buyer-seller relationship. Firms want both control and speed. Some want humans in the loop for every decision, while others want automation to run quietly in the background. Ralli said these differences are cultural and require solutions flexible enough to serve both approaches.

Inertia and the Persistence of Paper

Feuerstein described inertia as the most common barrier to improving time to cash. He said many organizations are held back by the “inability to stop doing the things that they have been doing for so many years.” These include manual approvals, paper-based invoicing and spreadsheet-driven reporting. He also called the U.S. B2B payments landscape a “fragmented ecosystem of paper-based processes.”

The problem is not technology availability but mindset. If processes do not feel strategic, they are not prioritized. Organizations that view the back office as a strategic function are the ones that move from manual routines to automated workflows that support faster cash cycles.

Cost of Manual Work and Debate Over Integration

Manual work slows everything. Without automation, invoices take longer to validate, suppliers wait longer to receive confirmation and buyers cannot forecast accurately. These frictions compound, creating avoidable delays.

Ravishankar addressed a related question: whether firms should consolidate into one system or rely on multiple specialized tools. There’s no single answer because companies often operate with a mix of systems acquired over time. End-to-end control is attractive, but he noted that “end to end is a tricky question” because selling, buying and treasury functions do not always align neatly in a single platform.

Instead, firms should determine the metrics that matter most and assemble tools around those priorities. Feuerstein agreed that accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) ecosystems rarely integrate perfectly, which makes a data hub even more essential for visibility.

71% Are Improving, but Others Lag

Webster noted that PYMNTS Intelligence has found that “71% of the CFOs that we talk to are doing well,” meaning they improved time to cash in the past year. The remaining firms tend to be those with outdated processes, unclear ownership and technology adopted without complementary process redesign.

That’s a significant market in need of modernization. Ralli said transformation requires equal investment in people, processes and technology. She warned that companies often invest in technology but overlook the organizational changes required. Without champions, governance and redesigned workflows, tools alone cannot accelerate the cash cycle.

Feuerstein underscored that real-time forecasting is entirely possible with available tools. He highlighted payment hubs and dashboards that consolidate data across bank accounts and ERPs, saying, “We are here and able to deliver and develop these systems.” Firms that adopt these tools gain visibility they cannot achieve through spreadsheets or manual reporting.

AI, ROI and the Trust Curve

Ravishankar said AI already delivers meaningful ROI. On the buyer side, Coupa sees “about 5.8% savings” and “over 270% ROI” over three years. But trust develops gradually. Firms start with areas where they are comfortable allowing AI to act autonomously and expand outward as confidence grows.

Looking ahead, the executives agreed that 2026 will require stronger data standardization, better orchestration across systems and targeted AI capabilities that accelerate onboarding, coding and supplier verification. Feuerstein said firms should refresh their payment strategies and focus on the areas where AI can be applied most effectively.

Ralli said CFOs need clarity about “what a machine can do versus what a human can,” and make investments accordingly.

The emerging enterprise’s path to accelerating time to cash, the group agreed, is a combination of data, control and automation. With the right mix of people, processes and technology, firms can compress the cash cycle and position themselves for faster, more reliable financial performance in the years ahead.