Speeding ahead: 5 ways a digital experience platform (DXP) can help your AP team overcome invoicing challenges

As businesses look to cut costs and improve efficiency, they are increasingly asking accounts payable (AP) teams to do more with less. They want AP to speed up invoice processing, but at the same time, those teams are dealing with significant challenges: lack of staff, geographically dispersed teams, paper invoices, vendor inquiries, increasing fraud attempts, confusing regulation, and more.

To overcome these challenges, teams are turning to digital experience platforms (DXPs). These solutions help reduce the need for manual intervention, increase collaboration, automate data retention, reduce opportunities for fraud, and make insights available to the business.

The end result is more efficient and effective invoice processing.

The need for speed

As interest rates remain high, businesses of all sizes are looking for ways to cut costs and become more efficient. They want to improve their forecasting to reduce their need to rely on expensive loans. Increasingly, that pressure is being felt by the accounts payable teams that process invoices.

A recent Goldman Sachs survey of small business owners found that 71% feel that inflationary pressures on their businesses have increased over the past three months. In addition, 77% are “concerned about their ability to access capital.” As a result, most businesses are asking their teams to do more with less – and that includes the accounts payable team.

According to an Ardent Partners report, “AP departments are being asked to step up and contribute, not just tactically but strategically in a way that helps with reducing costs, improving supplier relationships, as well as maximizing cash flow.”

In fact, companies often view their AP teams as particularly valuable contributors to these efforts: That same report finds, “A robust 64% of AP leaders believe that their AP unit is viewed by other enterprise stakeholders as either ‘very’ or ‘exceptionally’ valuable to the enterprise.” Similarly, a survey cited by Procurement Magazine indicates, “When asked to rate a range of priorities on a scale of 1 to 10, finance leaders consistently ranked AP as their highest priority, with an average score of 8.”

Businesses are putting pressure on AP teams to handle invoices more efficiently, cutting costs along the way.