AP Automation Can’t Fix What It Can’t Connect

Accounts payable has no shortage of automation.

However, the July edition of the Business Payments Tracker® Series, a PYMNTS Intelligence collaboration with WEX, revealed that functionality alone cannot modernize payment operations.

Businesses can digitize invoices, route approvals, detect duplicate payments, reconcile transactions and embed supplier payments directly into enterprise software. Yet inside many finance departments, employees still copy information between systems, chase approvals by email, review invoices manually and resolve payment exceptions one transaction at a time.

The report found that 89% of organizations use at least some AP automation. However, 78% reported employee stress caused by weak AP processes, and 67% said they spend at least five days each month processing invoices.

Modernization, it turns out, is not determined solely by how much functionality a platform offers but by whether the platform can be integrated into the systems, controls and working habits through which a company actually operates. The missing layer in AP automation is the experience of implementing the technology, connecting it to existing infrastructure and turning new capabilities into better financial operations.

AP Automation Has Reached Its Implementation Reckoning

Integration quality, API design and implementation experience now matter as much as payment functionality itself, the report showed. That shift reflects a practical reality. Finance teams may select an AP platform for its features, but technical teams determine whether those features can produce value inside a complex enterprise environment.

An invoice may be captured digitally, for example, but still require manual coding because the procurement and accounting systems do not share consistent data. A payment may be initiated electronically but still create reconciliation work because transaction details do not flow cleanly back into the enterprise resource planning system.

The labor moves from data entry to exception handling, from payment execution to reconciliation and from the finance department to the IT team responsible for maintaining integrations. Software may technically perform more tasks, even as the organization experiences little improvement in cycle time, visibility or operating cost.

Read the report: Who Decides Now: How Developers and Tech Teams Are Reshaping the Future of AP Payments

A platform may offer sophisticated fraud controls, payment routing and analytics, but those features produce limited value when data must be reformatted, manually transferred or reconciled across disconnected systems. By contrast, a solution with fewer headline capabilities may create greater operational gains if it fits naturally into the company’s existing processes.

The report found that 62% of businesses identify ease of ERP integration as the most important factor when selecting an AP automation solution, and 49% of finance leaders rank difficulty integrating with existing systems as their leading automation concern after costs.

A fragile integration creates financial consequences. It generates maintenance costs, delays deployment, produces reconciliation gaps and increases the risk that employees will bypass the system with manual workarounds. A strong integration, by contrast, can shorten implementation, increase adoption and allow finance teams to change workflows without repeatedly rebuilding the underlying infrastructure.

The AP automation market has largely solved the question of whether software can perform individual payment tasks. The harder question is whether providers can make those capabilities work together inside complicated, imperfect enterprises.

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