Name: Beyond Invoice Processing: AI, Payments, and Risk in Modern AP
Uploaded: 2026-04-16T16:16:07.670Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 44 s
Description: Beyond Invoice Processing: AI, Payments, and Risk in Modern AP

Transcript for "Beyond Invoice Processing: AI, Payments, and Risk in Modern AP": Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're gonna give folks a couple minutes to trickle in here. I hope everyone's having a good week so far. Glad you guys could join us. We're just gonna go ahead and give it about thirty seconds here just to get everybody situated before we get started. And I do see some folks coming in here. So we're gonna go ahead and dive in. Hello to everyone joining us today. Thank you for joining our webinar. My name is Taylor Decorte. I am on the North American events team here at Imperson and your host for today's webinar. Our webinar today is beyond invoice processing, AI payments and risk in modern AP. Just a few housekeeping items before we get started. This session is being recorded. A copy of the recording will be emailed to you twenty four hours after the event ends. To the right, you'll find the engagement section with several tabs full of goodies. Under the docs tab, we've curated some additional resources relevant to today's material. You'll also find a q and a tab. Please feel free to submit any and all questions here. We encourage you to submit those through out the webinar, and we'll do our best to address them all before our session ends. Chat is also available today, so feel free to engage with us and your fellow webinar attendees. Today, we'll be covering the state of AP, what defines AP performance, how AI changes payments, and what goes into evaluating a modern AP solution. And to deliver that content, we have Landon Gordon, our VP of product management at Imbursed, and Andrew Bartinelli, founder and chief research officer of Ardent partner partners. Before I hand it over to them, I want to mention why we are so fortunate to have Andrew join us today. Ardent Partners recently released their 2026 AP automation and payments technology advisor, which evaluates providers across the full invoice to pay life cycle. In that report, Imbursed was recognized as a mid market leader with particular strength in invoice automation, payments, and overall platform execution. And the reason that matters is not the ranking itself, it's what sits behind it. Ardent is defining what modern AP should look like and how finance teams should evaluate solutions. Today, Andrew and Landon will connect those insights to what we are actually seeing in the market and how finance leaders can apply them. So if you have not checked out that report, you can do so under the docs tab. And with that, I'll turn it over to Andrew. Great. Thank you, Taylor. Hello, and good day, everybody. Yeah. So, excited to be here. We're gonna be talking about, the report that Taylor just mentioned. You know, I've been working in space for a little bit more than twenty five years. I worked for a firm called, Art and Partners. We're a research and advisory firm that's laser focused on the source to pay process. We do a bunch of different things in the space, all research based. We do technology evaluations, and we're gonna get into that, in the report. We also do market research, and we're gonna share a little bit of that as well. If you like what you've, you know, what we're talking about today, you might need to go visit ardenpartners.com or, our EP focused blog called payablesplacepayablesplace.com. So let's dive in. Landon, are you ready? We'll take that as a yes. Yeah. And just, you know, side color commentary. Oh. We can hear you fine. me okay? Hear you fine. Yeah. I was just I was saying let's go. Yeah. Right? So, yeah. Oh, Yeah. okay. I was I was just gonna validate Andrew. Yeah. That's great. Yep. Go ahead. Yeah. So. that's fine. So, the session, today really is about a fundamental shift in how AP is viewed and what it's expected to deliver. Right? For years, AP was measured primarily on efficiency, but that's no longer enough. Right? The the conversation, really has shifted. Right? It's about control. It's about risk. It's about financial impact. You know, what we will do today is, you know, look at the traditional model, challenge it, and introduce what modern AP leadership actually looks like. And and, you know, we're gonna do this in a very structured way. What I wanna first do, though, is take a look at the market where we are, you know, overall as an industry. Right? And so, let's take a little look at AP today. Right? And so, you know, as I mentioned, right, so, Arden has been doing market research in space. Right? So I've been doing, you know, these very deep dive sort of AP focused studies for, you know, this is now our twenty first year of doing that. And so we've been able to track the trends. And, you know, one of the things that we have seen, you know, over the, you know, past twenty years, over the past ten years, over the past five years is that AP continues to be more strategic, and that evidences itself in a variety of ways. Right? So ten years ago, the primary focus for AP organizations was to be, you know, an efficient operation. But, you know, over time, I think there's been a much greater understanding within AP and then outside the walls of AP that AP that the function itself can be, you know, an operational hub of excellence. But, also, you know, there's a phenomenal amount of information, right, that AP both creates and processes. And so becoming an intelligence hub is something that we see more and more, AP leaders and organizations really, you know, you know, aspiring to and then and then pursuing. And we see that in the top AP priorities here today, which is that, you know, technology really, you know, is going to be a driving force. Right? We're gonna talk about AI in a few minutes, but, you know, the the path towards AP excellence starts with a firm foundation around your processes, around around your your people, but but but also in the technology. When we look at the challenges. Right? You know, when you look at all of the challenges facing, you know, the modern AP operation, the modern p two p or source to pay operation. Right? You're looking at tariffs, inflation, geopolitical tensions, market volatility. You know, there is a what is almost, I would say now a pervasive sense of uncertainty in business. But when you look at the challenges that the AP organizations are are are facing, you know, it's it's much more directly, you know, hits home. Right? The top challenges this year and for the past couple of years, right, are, you know, processing speeds, around visibility, around exceptions. And the underlying, you know, sort of core cause of those challenges, right, is that there's simply too much paper still in the in in the average AP department today. Right? We have not moved to fully automated. You know, we have not, you know, made you know, we've made significant strides forward, but there's still a long way to go. Right? You look at challenges around risk and payments, and we're gonna talk about that. Right? Those are now areas that are well within the purview of the average for typical AP operation. An AP operation of any size. Right? Large enterprise, mid market, SMB. Now, one of the things that we track and and I and I hope is useful to everyone who's, listening in today, right, is is that we do track the operational and performance benchmarks, in in AP and have been doing this for a long time. You know, we have you know, when you look sort of year to year, you see that the that the gains made industry wide, right, that the average numbers that you're seeing here, you know, are are are moving in the right direction, right, in the long term. But but but maybe a little bit slower than than we might have imagined or certainly that I might have imagined when I started, you know, working in the space a long time ago. You know, just to call out. Right? So, you know, over the past couple of years, we've seen a a a pretty solid collapse in the average cost to process a single invoice and then the amount of time that that takes. But invoice exceptions remain, you know, you know, a pretty significant problem. Right? We saw it as one of the top challenges. It it remains a top challenge for AP organizations. Right? The number here, really says that that that almost one in five of all of the invoices that come through the average AP depart you know, come to the average AP department's front door require some level of work, some level of intervention. Right? And so while we're seeing things like more suppliers being enabled, you know, a a higher percentage of invoices being processed straight through, you know, the there's still work to be done. Right? So generally a common theme in AP. And so, you know, let's let's sort of fifth from, you know, sort of the market research, and let's look a little bit more, you know, take that market research and and do a little bit more of an analysis. Right? So, you know, what's defining, you know, top AP performance in 2026? Right? And, you know, I I I think, right, so, you know, it it's it's beyond invoice processing. You know, it's the title of the webinar, and and I think it's it's it's a clear message and one that I hope that that that you do take home. Right? And that is that incremental automation is no longer enough. Right? Most organizations have automated some aspect of their AP operation. Right? It it it it may be, you know, on on the receipt on the front end. You know, you may have some some level of automation, you know, through the entire process. When when we look at, you know, sort of the level of automation and and and, you know, on a range from from none to fully, you know, we do these heat maps. You know, the average AP organization is, you know, partially automated, but not fully automated. And, you know, the automation that is in place helps on the efficiency side. Right? We've talked about the improvements we've seen in the average cost of process, and invoice, but, you know, they haven't solved some of the larger issues, around risk, around visibility, around financial control. And that, you know, as you think about the incremental improvement, right, the the next sort of slight moves, you know, we are starting to see, you know, and reported back to us, you know, that these incremental investments are delivering diminishing returns. And that, you know, what what we believe and, you know, it's long been our case, right, to to start to think about your AP or operation in a more holistic fashion. Right? And that's not just attacking the the the paper at the front door. It's it's automating the processing. It's automating the payments, and it's building the infrastructure and governance around that. And this is going to become more and more important as AI starts to, play a much larger role in software and and in the world. So, Landon, I can pull you in. Yeah. And I mean yeah. No. It's absolutely. So just so everybody, like, absolutely agree with Andrew. We love the Ardent partners and the the research they provide. We we really we try to utilize when we see insights that they bring to the table. You know, just a couple things that just following up with, like to think about that 35 straight through processing means two out of three invoices are still needing a human touch. Right? So that problem of some teams will automate one piece, declare victory, and then wonder why they still don't have control. So what we want what we see when we talk to teams is how to automate parts of AP, but the experience is still fragmented. So they are moving faster. They're not actually gaining that control. So that automation does not necessarily always mean control. You know, disconnected systems, equal kind of a limited impact. So what we see really in helping folks, is how does invoice capture is automated? The team's still chasing approvals, toggling between systems, and manually managing payments. And so a true transformation happens when you unify the entire invoice to pay life cycle, either in one system or in an integrated way that that really seems seamless for the AP teams. And so that's one of the things that we really try to focus on and continue to focus on in helping, you know, align with where Arted sees the challenge in the market is that single unified platform of a invoice approval payment, so you have visibility from start to finish, for every dollar on the AP side. Right. Right. And and and ahead, and and. and and what Take it. away. Yeah. And and what Landon says here, right, makes a lot of sense. Right? So, you know, the we are at a point in time in the market and in the industry. Right? So if we were talking fifteen years ago, right, the different technologies and and and and and the way that best practices emerge, you know, we're we're at a point in time now where technology deployments right there there there's a proven path to AP excellence to best in class performance. And that really is the holistic view across invoice, across process, and payment. So so that really does resonate. And and so so as you're sitting here, right, and and you're saying, well, you know you know, there's a broad range of you listening in today, and and you're at different points in your sort of digital transformations or broader organizational transformations, however you wanna think about that. You know, the reality is that, you know, if you haven't started to look at expanding the responsibilities of your AP organization, you know, pretty soon you're going to be asked to do so. Right? The the expectations placed on AP have fundamentally expanded in the marketplace. Right? So if you're not dealing with these, you know, these bulleted, items here today, you will be soon. And, honestly, you should be starting to think about them if you're not. Right? It's no longer just about, you know, processing invoices efficiently, you know, being a partner to, you know, a a procurement transaction. Right? That's valuable. It's very important. Right? It's still the core, sort of, you know, sort of, you know, it is the foundation of AP, but, you know, it the, you know, the need in you know, you can frame it as the competitive landscape and all of the challenges that that all of, you know, companies in the mid market and and and and and in the large enterprise space. Right? It's a competitive it's a competitive world out there. You need to be operating efficiently and and not just on the processing side. Right? You need to be thinking about how does your organization contribute to financial performance. Right? And and that can include, you know, reducing fraud exposure, improving cash management, very big, item, ensuring compliance, maintaining stronger supplier relationships, and supporting better decision making. Right? So when when I think about the AP organizations that historically operated in a in a siloed sort of separate part of the finance department or or, you know, even separate from the entire organization. Right? You know, it's these items and the ability that AP has to contribute value in these areas that is also the argument for investment in the function. Right? It is the argument for, people to start paying more attention to your AP operation. And as a result, get the investment you need to become this really valuable contributor. Alright. So, you know, the most forward thinking, AP organizations and and and finance organizations are starting to reposition AP as a control center for outbound cash. Right? You know, under under any type of analysis. Right? If if you you know, in any industry, if you look at you know, if you take out payroll, right, and you look at, the rest of the money that is paid out of your organization, You know? AP is is typically, you know, the largest disperser of cash, and having visibility into that and and starting to understand that how and when you pay your suppliers is and should be a strategic business process. You know, it really starts to change the script for most organizations. Right? If you're simply pay you know, paying suppliers on a on a first in first out or, you know, on you know, without some sort sort of strategic guidelines from your, treasurer, if you have one in your organization, from your CFO, which you do have, or your controller. Right? You know, aligning the needs the financial and cash needs of the organization to what AP is doing, is what the the the best in class AP organizations are doing today. Right? And and and and and right it right. It really is rethinking AP. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I know. I mean, you know, days payment outstanding is is back again with a a vengeance, in the way you think of things, these days, and especially because as I think, you know, Andrew's gonna get into the AI side of that, you know, it's a it's a different kind of mindset. But this is where we see the biggest shift happening. Right? Finance teams are not asking for faster processing. They're asking for visibility, control for that full life cycle. So control comes from these connected data, not more dashboards. So going back with what Andrew was saying, cash management, supplier management risk, these used to live in separate teams, but APA is now becoming the connective tissue to this and and seen as that connective tissue. So I think it's a it's an important distinction to kind of, like, think through as we come into the next part of the this webinar as you see that that's where, you know, you need to be. So finance leaders, they they don't need more reports. They're they're needing more real time visibility into across this full life cycle from ingestion to pay. When AP payments and spend data live together, you can actually control outcomes, not just monitor them. And that real time spend visibility, that clean vendor data, the audit trail, policy enforcement, having those embedded in your workflows helps you make more decisions as though as and have more control than necessarily just, you know, trying to deal with the chaos that is on a day to. day basis. Right. You. can. go. Then that makes. a lot of sense. Right? Yep. Yep. Right. So, you know, what defines AP performance today? Right? You know, as an organization, right, you know, if you're not thinking about these other areas, right, and and and, you know, we like I said, we've we've at Arden, we've done, like, you know, a lot of research. Right? We've benchmarked thousands of distinct AP organizations. And and and we've honed in on, you know, really the drivers of operational success and and and and what are the strategies that provide visibility so that you can play an important role in cash, you know, in the cash management and then the supplier relationship management. But, you know, when we look here, right, you know, it it's not just about invoices per FTE. Right? It it's about how effectively the function manages exceptions, controls payments, delivers accurate real time data to the business. Right? And and, you know, again, it sounds like a lot. Right? If you're not, you know, on that path and on that journey yet. Right? You know, a lot of this can sound, you know, overwhelming and and and and and very significant. But but but the point is here that you can be a a strong partner. Right? It's not driving the cash management decisions, you know, you you know, independently within AP. Right? It's providing information to those that are making those decisions today. Right? And and it's it's providing that input, and it's enabling a more strategic approach, you know, on the payment side. You know? You know, same sort of model on the risk sides too. Right? The parallels. But but let's talk a little bit more about Yeah. And Andrew. Please. oh, Andrew just was gonna say, I love the way you guys framework this. Like, it it forces you to look past just the invoice and ask, like, what's your total payment execution story? Right? Like, the AP performances is not just thinking about, do I have the you know, I have a touchless process rate, but, you know, it also thinks about it all the way to the end. And I I really, really appreciate that you guys frame it this way, with Arden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And and and, I mean, hopefully, this is exciting and interesting for AP. Right? I I I've said, you know, for years, and for years, it continues to be true that there's never been a better time to be working in AP than right now, and that tomorrow is going to be better. Because you start to look. at the change in the dialogue of what a what the AP function actually is. Right? You move from something that is strictly, you know, process based to something that is a value added contributor, right, an intelligence hub. And and I, you know, I personally think it's very exciting. Right? And and and it has it has been a shift. It still is taking time. Right? This isn't something that you just decide you're going to accomplish today, and then tomorrow you are there. Right? You need to have. alignment on the process side. You need to have alignment on the organizational side. You need to have some budget behind it too. And and and and then your people. Right? You need your people excited, motivated, and trained to be able to execute on this strategy. Right? So it is really a great time to be working in AP. Here are two reasons why. Right? Payments and AI. You know, these are some of the biggest trends that we are seeing and and and, you know, particularly on the AI side. Right? You know, the thing that is going to have the most significant impact over the next five and ten years on AP operations. You know, but but but but taking the step back. Right? One of the larger arcing trends over the past ten years, within AP is to look at AP holistically. Right? Not just looking at the front end part of the problem, and the challenge and the and the organization, but to include payments as a core in the AP process. Right? So we've been you know, you know, we developed a framework years and years ago, that that that that has been largely adopted as the general model, right, of of receiving an invoice, of processing, and payment. And that if you are not carrying all the way through, you're not doing the full job of AP. And so, you know, why why why are we talking so much about payments? Right? I mean, payments, you know, from an from an operate you know, from a department standpoint are where risk and value come together. Right? You know, it is where fraud can happen, but it is also where working capital opportunities exist. You know, the broader, I think, sort of best in class view of AP has has has, you know, sort of adopted that approach from, technology standpoint and from an ownership within the organization standpoint. But in a lot of organizations, payments are still disconnected from EP, and and that limits both control and impact. And, again, you know, when we're talking about the connection of payments, right, it's not that AP needs to be making these unilateral decisions on when the payments should be, scheduled and executed. Right? It is having that cohesion so that the the people in your organization who understand your cost of capital, who understand your liabilities and and and, you know, sort of your lines of credit and all of the different decisions that need to be made can use the supplier payment as a financing mechanism that adds value to the larger organization. Right? And so, you know, Landon payments. Yeah. No. And I you know, just reiterating your last thing, like, it is where payments are, where risk and value converge. Right? Like, you you've got risk of it's the last place where you make sure that something doesn't go out, but it's also where you can really understand your capital, your DPO, what's your cash forecast, things like that. Where can you play well, discount? So I, yeah, I agree with you. Payments for us really where everything comes together or falls apart. Right? It's it's either it's where the risk shows up because it's the final place where it actually means value to money. So finance this is where finance can really create some value. It's why we've been been heavily investing in the payments infrastructure here. If you think about it, most fraud doesn't happen in invoice capture. You certainly, you hear about a lot of the the stuff that's happening with AI, and it's certainly getting more interesting in the marketplace as people are using AI tools to try to generate invoices. But we have, you know, services like ours where we have our AI transcript. They capture these AI created transactions, and we and we handle those extremely well so that we often don't see a lot of that. It really happens when it comes to payment. Right? Has somebody, changed the vendor account information? Has the has the vendor you know, they they don't it's somebody has hacked them, and they've actually gone in and changed the bank account, on their behalf. So, you know, we see some of those things or internal fraud that's related. It all happens in that payment space. So you you absolutely have to make sure that you have that control. So if payments are disconnected, you lose that control. If you don't understand the relationship between the vendor and that final payment when things happen, those are those critical control points that let you make the right decision, for that. So modern AP, they they must own they gotta own this AP execution. It's not just the past data downstream. You know, folks that are helping you facilitate payments, you know, they've gotta have the tool sets that are in it. And sometimes just the separation of systems does not necessarily mean separation of duty or that those systems are up to stuff with what you need to prevent that. And it's an important part of, like, how do you keep stream from, the beginning to the end. So our position, obviously, is we are working on, we have a payment hub embedded fraud prevention and payment timing optimization to help you for cash flow and discounts. Right. Right. Right. And and so, you know, just on on the risk side, right, I didn't include some of the metrics, but but really since COVID, there's been a spike in fraud attempts that have been experienced on the on the p two p side. You know, I think our our survey from last year said that, sixty five percent of of AP managers, saw a rise, last year in, fraud attempts, and that eighty five percent of that group were expecting more more attempts as you go forward. And while, you know, your IT departments may have, you know, sort of a a a larger sort of cover, you know, around those attempts, right, you know, with with security and risk software. You know, the strongest sort of, you know, you know, protector against the, you know, the source to pay transaction, the p to p transaction It's having that closed loop system, and and, you know, that's that's the strongest and first line of defense. So we wanna talk about AI. You know, Landon, I I I think it it it it's contractually mandated that as an analyst covering technology and the space that, anytime I'm speaking publicly, I have to mention AI at least for a little bit. You know, I think that, Yeah. you know, you know, everyone who's listening in today obviously has heard of AI. It has dominated the the the business discourse. It has dominated, you know, a lot of the conversation just online and in the market more broadly. You know, and and and and it has and it and it and and it's justified, you know, from our perspective. You know, when we do market research, right, I like to lead with the market research. Right? It it's somewhere along the lines of 75% of AP leaders believe that AI is going to have either a significant or transformational impact on their operations within the next two to three years. Right? So I believe that, you know, like most that AI is going to start playing a significant role within an AP department. You know, the timing of exactly when it shifts from, you know, you know, value to this broader transformation, I think there's legitimate debate around around the timing of that. But the reality is that that that the capabilities of AI and the innovation cycles that we're already seeing in the market, you know, this is gonna be happening a lot faster than, you know, when when these first, AP solutions were introduced to the market. You know? And and so, you know, while we can talk about, you know, the future where, you know, everybody's at home because AI is is doing all of the business for everybody, you know, the reality is is that in the short term, you know, while there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of value that that is actually very practical. Right? You know, AI, you know, on the automation side. Right? You know, again, the core rate and and and by no means am I or were you trying to suggest that that processing efficiencies, processing invoices efficiently is is is is not important. It is. AI could help in that area. Right? You know, AI improves decisions across the process, right, from coding and matching to exception handling and payment timing. Right? But the key is not automation for its own sake, but better outcomes. You know, now I I I guess we've we've we've lost land in here. And so, I'll talk a little bit more about, you know, AI, and and and how, you know, you're most likely to access it. Right? You know? So, you know, there are, you know, within the market today, right, there are, you know, the AP automation solution providers and where you're going to first start to have the experience to access and start using AI, is going to be within the solutions that you're using today. And that that where we're we're seeing. Right? And so we've written playbooks, and it's talked about maturity and the different models of of of of how you sort of bring AI into your organization. But with the initial gains and the initial focus is is going to be, you know, a little bit more tactical. Right? It's going to take the, you know, the the the rapid sort of, you know, sort of high volume transactions and and begin to, you know, apply the AI dynamics to that. But, you know, what what I'll do is I'll just come to the next slide here. When when Landon comes back, we'll we'll we'll circle back, Taylor and and and and give him that opportunity. Unless you wanna talk about what would you like to do? I also can't hear you. I was muted. I can try and talk to Landon's points a little bit. here, going looking at his notes. Keep in mind, everybody, I am not the subject expert, so I'm not I'm sure I'll be able to do Landon justice here. But, if he's able to rejoin us, we'll circle back like Andrew said. But one of the things we wanted to touch on since we're talking about AI is the role that AI is playing particularly with Imbursed. So what we've established is that the value of AI is not about doing more. It's about helping your team focus on what actually matters. And one of the key principles that to our approach with AI at Imverse is that we are always iterating. AI is not meant to be a replacement. It is meant to be another tool in your pocket. So it is simply meant to help with the workload and to take on some of the bandwidth to ease those pains of things like all your manual processes, all of your steps that are a little bit more time consuming. We're hoping that that AI can help you get time back. And so what we do is we've really started implementing AI across our solutions in order to help increase things like accuracy rates, reduce risk, flag flag, risk for hear me? team. We we hear, you. and we think we have Landon back. So, Landon, Yeah. I was. just informing everybody about our approach to AI at Imverse and how we have started implementing AI, not as an end all be all solution, but how it is really used to help support as an additional tool, for folks. So can you talk to us a little bit about, some of the ways that we've implemented AI within our AP solutions at Imverse? Yeah. Absolutely. I, you know, I think for us, the the value of what AI we're doing is it under automation kinda undersells what AI is doing. Right? We're we're trying to help make the system smarter and what to flag and win. And so here here at Imberez, you know, the value of AI is to not necessarily do more. It's to help with the teams getting focused for what actually matters. And so as you see on the screen and sorry. I'm saying off video because I'm on my phone. You know, our goal in the invoice suggestion as we were talking about that touchless at the beginning back earlier what, Andrew was talking about, driving that touchless experience, trying to get to a high capture accuracy. Because if you think about where the world is right now and what AI is trying to do as we're flagging and getting information, we're building up. We are now above a 90%, capture rate on data from OC. Yep. Yep. And and so one of the things that. Yeah. yeah. So. oh, sorry. I know I went blank there for a second. I have my phone decided to, just auto mute me there. Yeah. And so, you know, to get to better exception tracking, when we can get up to that statistical above 95%, the closer we get, the better the AI is going to now help you with making better decisions. Less less about you guys dealing with the noise of the confidence rate is confused to now, intelligent routing and better decision support for that. Great. Great. Great. So welcome back. So one of the things. I wanted to know, right, is is that, you know, the report that our our our technology adviser report, right, which does evaluate the solution providers, it also includes large context around how do you think about the different capabilities that are available in the market. And AI, you know, is is is is also a focus. And so there's a discussion in there that really talks about what you should be thinking about and how, you know, and and and how you should be looking at AI within AP and and the evaluation sort of considerations, right, the evaluation criteria as well. So, it it it's only going to become more important, and so it becomes an area of focus. Another thing that that continues to be important is the gap between capability and outcome. Right? When you're looking at solutions, some can look strong on paper, but but they don't translate into meaningful outcomes. And that's that's oftentimes in the AP space. Right? In a different space in a different parts of our coverage are different. But but for AP, very true. The solutions that lack cohesion across the full process, right, that require third parties, that require different activities, You may have strong features in one area. Again, if you're not sort of viewing the whole, you're not ultimately bringing a strong operating tool, that allows you to have a strong operating model into yours into your solution. So I guess we just move forward there. Right. So the AP automation, market is crowded and often confusing. Right? Many sub providers claim similar capabilities, but they deliver very different results. And so if you don't have a clear framework, it's easy to make decisions based on perception rather than what actually matters. Right? And so, you know, Ardent has been, you know, writing and tracking I've I've spent almost twenty five years analyzing AP automation technologies. We've been writing a report like the one, we published, you know, just, two months ago, for about ten years. And, you know, we have, you know, one, you know, a rigorous process, right, that includes, detailed survey questionnaires of the solution providers, long briefings, and deep dive demonstrations. We call references, and and we take all of those inputs and evaluate them against a framework that reflects what is important and drives the most value to an AP operation. Right? It's 30 primary capabilities. It's six main categories. And and this also is where our market research intersects with our technology evaluations. Right? So we've been tracking the AP successes and challenges and failures and and the top performance, the group that we call the best in class, you know, AP departments, you know, for a very long time. And so we understand right. Right. It's not simply our view of of of what's strong from a functional standpoint or what makes the impact. Right? We're doing this in the context of understanding what has driven the top performers. Right? And I think that that's an important important thing to note, and context for for when you're reading the report. Right? So so what actually matters when selecting an AP solution? Right? At a high level, modern AP platforms need to deliver strength across several key areas. Right? You see them here, invoice processing, payments, supplier engagement, and AI driven intelligence. And so we do a deep dive, you know, into, you know, if we use those categories, the capabilities in each of these four areas. We also include user experience, analytics, and governance, as well as platform architecture and global support. And so, you know, what you're looking for is, you know, again, strength across all of those areas because weakness, or deficiencies in in those areas, are going to limit overall performance. Right? And so, you know, let let let's just take the example rates of invoice automation and processing. You know, we'll look at things like invoice file format supported, you know, preapproval invoice validation, global invoice and compliance, auto coding and routing functionality, exception handling, matching and rules engine, capabilities, workflow capabilities. Right? And so in the report, right, you also have this matrix, and you can then also make your own determination on how important those things are. Right? You know, we've set the framework so that it is usable to your specific needs and your specific considerations. And so, Landon, gonna gonna pull you back in here, you know, talk a little bit about, your perspective on what matters when you're when you're doing solution selection. Yeah. I'm you know, for us, you know, we went through, obviously, the, Ardent, the process for as you guys evaluate it, and you're extremely thorough and we, you know, with lots of questions. So, you know, it's a great report if you're looking for evaluation of that. So for us, you know, that traditional space of, feature checklists and, isolated isolated invoice automation. I think anybody these days, you're probably seeing a huge transformation that's occurring in the invoice automation process today. Ignored payment execution, right, and and your siloed data. Certainly, there's a world where, obviously, all of this needs to make sure that it's aligning with your corporate ERP systems and your financial systems. So it's more about, you know, how do you how traditional systems were designed to, kind of get through separation of duties when systems couldn't do that for you. And now here we are in this modern world. You know? The the AI evolution that's occurring right now, you know, it really is allowing for more of that, look for full cycle services that have that, classic AP separation of duty, separation of controls. You know, embedded payments because it's gotta be included as we've talked about. You now need to keep an understanding from from your invoice acceptance to payment so that you have a a perfect trail related to that. Like I said before, that DPRP integration is a really critical task to make sure that you, have an easy way to report in, what's going on with your chart of accounts. And I think the unified invoice to pay UX is just, you know, how you have to get visibility for real time and cash management and things. Now these dashboards and services have to give you the insights that you need for understanding, where you can flex, where you can change and adapt. And it's, you know, it's such a fascinating time. I I, obviously, am the AP guy, and I'm excited about it. But it it really is such a fundamentally different place than where you would have to worry about invoice templates and stuff like that. If you look at our AI OCR services today, we're doing handwritten notes from Arabic into, you know, a a fully digital PDF. That was something that, you know, we could only dream of, five years ago. And, you know, those are the things that are possible, today. You know, that's live today. So it's giving us that insight, that data that's helping you, really see transformation in those those workflow rules. Great. Great. Right. So, processing. Right. So, you know, again, key takeaway here, hopefully. That that processing efficiency really has become table stakes. Right? It's important that it gets you but it it it only gets you into the game. Right? You know, the automation in this market has matured significantly. You know, when we start to think about, you know, sort of the AP process holistically and and from a system standpoint, right, the the the introduction of AI, we're gonna spend a little bit more time talking about I AI in a second, and how, AI functions and the importance of having a common data model. I I think it it it's something that it is not as well understood in the AP side, and and it's going to become increasingly important over the next three to five years. But, you know, you have many solutions in the market today that are, you know, reasonably solid when it comes to capture and matching and workflow. And so differentiation in the market really, you know, for what we're seeing particularly in the mid market, right, would be around payments and around AI. And and, Lena, I know you've got some thoughts here. Yeah. I mean, again, we've, our pursuit right now, I I'll give you just a good insight. Like, last year when I was moving into an AI transcript service, we spent almost 40% of our development effort deprecating existing customer rules because the AI had changed so much, in, existing workflow rules for folks that we spent that that was a majority of our effort was actually, equally improving the OCR, but actually helping simplify yeah. This never works when you're on your phone. So sorry. It went on to screen share, and then I go into mute automatically. So, yeah, we've been spending so much time in that transformation. I think you see anybody that's really putting in meaningful AI has seen these kind of changes where they're they're really, redesigning prior systems, rules engines, things like that. Like, we're going into an age where rules engines are going to be driven by language models based off of both pre and post, insights and information. That's that is a learning model that's gonna help you go away from trying to design deterministic rules into adaptive rules. And so I think that's what we see really on that automation. You know, seeing that reality and that maturity coming along is to, like, reevaluate and think about, you know, how your workflow could really work instead of having to set every flag and condition in order to make it work. Great. Great. Right. So so payments as a strategic lever. Right? It it it is an area of differentiation. You know, even five years ago, right, when when the cost of capital was relatively low, you know, maybe it was a little bit less important. You know, with with with interest rates higher, you know, even if there are one or two cuts this year by the by the central banks around the world, you know, the the decisions made here have a much larger financial impact. And so, you know, being being being, you know, well well tuned to providing that information and to execute a strategy becomes much more important. Right? The ability to control, optimize, and secure payments, you know, is one of the things that separates the leaders from the rest of the market. And and and as I just was saying, right, it is where AP can have a direct financial impact. And that should be exciting, right, for people working in AP. Right? You can impact the bottom line by being, you know, coming in below budget, but but but in a much more significant way by, you know, really, you know, operating at a best in class level here. So what does good AI look like in AP? You know, first AI, you know, you've heard it. Right? It's it's it's not about replacing people. Right? We talked about the expanding mandate, that that AP, you know, really has or the expanded list of responsibilities. Right? Right? That list is only going to continue to expand. Right? We have all of these sort of challenges around manning managing trade transactions with with tariffs in here in The United States, and then global invoicing and the complexity there if you are paying suppliers in other parts of the world outside of The United States. The world is only going to get more complex. So AI, if you think about it, can be a tool to enhance and augment what you're doing today that allows your team to take on these new, these new and and and important roles. Right? You know, from from what does AI good AI look like today. Right? It's it's having an understanding of how if we're looking at decision support or if you're looking at how, you know, the model, you know, process the transaction, it's having an understanding of of of of how that was done. Right? As you start to move into the more sort of strategic, you know, decision making and and intelligence, right, that is going to become more important. Right? I I think you see confidence. scoring, continuous learning, human in the loop control. Other parts of it are around governance. Right? You know, you know, AI is really driven by, the data that is, you know, sort of the the the main inputs to the algorithm and to the execution of, you know, whether we're talking about agentic, or something that is more machine learning. You know, so working with and coordinating with your IT departments to understand, you know, what data is being used and and and and and putting some governance in place around that, working with your solution provider so that you also understand, you know, their approach to these important areas. You know, if you think about where we are, we're in the very early stages of this market. And so, you know, setting up the right foundation and and having good understanding, you know, it is very likely that, you know, if you haven't been using AI yet, that you will be asked to or prompted to or have the opportunity to over the next year or two. The reality is that other parts of your organization are using AI today and that you don't need to go down this path and reinvent the wheel. Right? You may have an AI council. You may that may be centralized within a within IT. It may be someone else within finance that's serving as the the liaison. But it's engaged with those organizations and find out what are your AI independently. Right? Yeah. And, I Karen, just to add to your other one, Andrew, real quick was. just. I explainable AI is, I think, should be nonnegotiable for finance. Like, if your system can't, if something's flagging it, you've gotta know why or your auditors aren't gonna be happy in the end. So, Right. yeah, can't can't disagree with I mean, I can't agree with you more. Right. Right. Right. Alright. Right. I mean, just to sort of double down on that point. Right? So the black box nature of how AI works. Right? You You know, there's an input or there's a trigger, there's a prompt, and then something happens. May look good, but you have to have some some way to, unwrap that. One, Yeah. because of what you're dealing with on on the financial control side, but, two, you want your teams to be able to adopt it and use these tools with confidence. Right? So they have there has to be that baseline understanding of how it works and some way to test it. Right? The auditability of it. So bigger picture. Right? AI is a component. I'm sure that for those of you that are going to market now looking at solutions, AI is, you know, going to be heavily weighted in your decision making. I think that that's valid. You know, I don't think the pendulum is swung completely to, you know you know, making decisions based solely on AI. But but there's clearly a lot of momentum, and it becomes an important consideration. Normally, when I talk about technology and solutions, I I generally recommend that you have to look at, well, what are the solutions in place today? And don't make large bets based upon road map in the future. I that said, I think when it comes to AI, it's. important to have an understanding of, you know, sort of the general philosophy that the company has with AI and the and the higher level plan of of how it plans to roll out the different capabilities and on what timeline. But but, again, instead of going back and looking more holistically, right, you know, you wanna look at, the importance of unified data, integrated payments, embedded compliance, and practical AI. Right? So I think practical AI is what we should be looking for in the market today. And it's not one feature here. And, again, you know, your your results may vary based upon your specific requirements. But but but but more broadly, I think, you know, if you're listening today, download the report, look at those criteria, and see how they map. If you don't have an RFP built in place, you can use that as as as the starting point. And so, Landon, gonna bring you back in here, talk a little bit. more about the, yeah, the report. and and numbers. it. Yeah. No. Absolutely. I look. This is where we're aligned clearly, with Andrew, just exactly how finance leaders should really be evaluating solutions today. Right? What's changed in the what these capabilities can live can't live in separate systems anymore. They have to be unified because the power of the unification gives you the data, the insights, the actions that occurred that lets that model learn how to continue to help you in a way that's that's more intentional, you know, not not, you know, I'm trying to say, like, it it's not it's really close. Like, you can actually be there in in a unified system. Whereas as you build separate systems, you have to think about you've gotta put all of these pieces together into somewhere else that's gonna be centralized. So, you know, utilize that unification to help you to make the great decisions. Have the insights, have that Copilot next to you so that you know what you're doing is great, in in the AP process. So this is where this is the lens we build here at Inverse. It's not just about automating steps, but connecting the entire life cycle so finance teams can actually control outcomes. So what do we what's our six points here? You know, unified invoice to pay platform, you know, capture approved payments in one system, embedded payments infrastructure. You want ACH and virtual cards and more control over execution that helps suppliers get the money the way they want and helps make it easier for you. End to end visibility, make sure you've got those real time insights across invoices, vendors, and payments, because that's how you're going to have, insights for control. Built in controls and audibility. That's the you know, policy enforcement is a critical aspect, to ensure that you feel like you're minimizing your risk, and improving traceability. And then AI that improves these outcomes, high capture accuracy, intelligent routing, continuous learning that helps feed that so that it continues to get there. When we all get to 98% capture rate, you know, the world statistically changes to the better. So we wanna we're trying to drive you there. That's where you're gonna wanna get. That's gonna drive those outcomes for you. And then flat you know, obviously, flexible integrated architecture for deep ERP integrations and scalability so that your systems can get the right information in for the rest of your, auditing and communications that you have to do as a finance team. Great. Great. Right. So a unified approach to AP and payments. Right? So this is the the AP framework that we developed years ago. You know, a connected data driven and controlled invoice to pay process. You know, we've not we didn't talk a lot about agentic AI, but these are the agents that start to take on tasks in a more autonomous way. You know, those solutions work best when they're looking at a unified data model and a solution that delivers, you know, all of this to you, you know, is, you know, is built with that in mind and will allow for a lot of leverage for, AI in the future. And so, you know, how do we think about, you know, what we've covered today? And and and and then I'll bring you in for a final comment here too, and then I guess we've got some questions. Right? You know, if you take anything away from from today, I think, you know, it should be you know, you have an opportunity to rethink the role of AP. Maybe some of you have already started that process. Yep. You know, I think as you're looking at how you do that and how you accomplish that, you know, you wanna be looking beyond just sort of core processing. Right, we've obviously spent a lot of time talking about payments. We we we spent a fair amount of time talking about AI. You know, they're we're doing that for a reason. Right? It is important. It is the direction of the market. And and I think that, you know, it's also important as you're thinking about your transformation, you know, that that that there's a framework. Right? That there's a structure, that there are outcomes, and that there are, you know, sort of, you know, that that the end goal is very clear to the organization. And so, Landon, thoughts here? Yeah. No. Just, if there's one thing we consistently see is that if if teams that separate APM payments, they're they end up reworking their strategy within a few years. So, you know, if you're in that space, start rethinking it now. Platform versus point solutions controls require unification anyways. Future is gonna be connected data, and that's gonna be, you know, with payments and intelligence. And then AP is really just no longer just a process. It's a control point for the business. It it is the control point for, the outbound vendor payments that exist that drive your business too. So that that is who AP is. There you. go. There you go. Oh, we've got some questions here. This is our contact information. Right? So we're not a consultancy, but if you have a question about solution selection, send me an email. Happy to jump on a quick call. Great. Thank you, Andrew and Landon. I wanna make sure we dive into some questions here. So, Andrew, I've got one for you actually. On our. slide where we were where you were talking about, the defining good AI, you mentioned confidence scoring. Can you break down, what confidence scoring means to our end partners, and how you guys are determining that? Right. So the the solution should actually be determining the actual confidence in the answers that it gives you. Right? So if you have used any of the LLMs, right, so CHET, VPT, or Gemini, right, they you you give them a prompt, and it gives you an answer. And it gives you an answer that seems like, oh, this is exactly it. But then if you dig into it and you start to understand, well, actually, oh, you know, you asked something about, you know, US presidents. Oh, he wasn't the ninth president of The United States. So there are some things that are that are clearly not not correct. It still presents this as, like, here's the absolute answer. Like, this is what you would read in an encyclopedia, and and it's definitive. The solutions, you know, to avoid issues around things like hallucinations and and and there's more controls there. And and and, again, there's the you know, whether you're talking about machine learning or onto a Gentic or beyond. Right? The the algorithms are are are making decisions based upon historical information, and sometimes that information is imperfect. And so when it is giving you the answer or the decision or is taking an action, it should give you a level of confidence. We are a 100% sure that this is the address of this supplier and that this is the routing information for payment. But if it's saying, well, we think this payment should be made at some point in time based upon these factors, it can tell you, well, we're we're 60% confident, we're 20% confident, or we're 90% confident. When we talk about human in the loop, you know you know, AI is not just taking over AP tomorrow. Right? Eight you know, the the AP staff needs to be in there and guiding these decisions and taking the inputs. And so when a solution gives you a confidence level, it's giving you an indication of what action should be taken next. Yep. And with that, I'd I'd be remiss to not to mention that, our May webinar is actually going to be focused around, AI, adoption and the future of AI. And we've actually are bringing on our VP of engineering here at Imverse who is very in the weeds, building out our AI features within Imbursed. So it's a great time to hear from an expert who, has a little bit more, technical knowledge around AI, to get his perspective. So be sure to register for that. And if you want to make sure that you are a part of all Imbursed webinar programs, sign up for our webinar subscription program, and you'll get automatically enrolled in not only that May webinar, but all webinars, moving forward. So thank you guys so much for joining us. Thank you especially to Andrew, from Art and Partners who, was our fantastic speaker for today. And if you haven't, please go check out that Arden report. And thank you as well to Landon Gordon. It's always a pleasure to have, you join us on the Inverse side as well. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. It was fantastic. to be with you. Great. Glad to be here. Take care, Thank. you,