3 Disruptive Trends Shaping the

FUTURE OF
FINANCE &
PROCUREMENT
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EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Disruption — no doubt you’ve heard this buzz
word a lot in recent years. Our ways of doing
business are being disrupted due to our
current landscape. Everywhere we turn, digital
revolutions, economic changes, and back
office functions like finance and procurement
are changing drastically. Processes related to
Purchase to Pay (P2P) have undergone — and
will continue to undergo — significant changes,
and new trends are cresting over the horizon,
promising to bring more innovation ashore.
INTRODUCTION
AI, robotics, big data, touchless processing
— it sounds like some futuristic movie
you saw in the 90s, but these innovative
technologies have arrived and are
impacting businesses today while helping
them stabilize and remain flexible
during disruptive times. Organizations
are looking to harness the power of
But what does that mean for YOU in your role
as a finance or procurement professional?
It means now is a great time to prepare for
life post-disruption when these megatrends
become the new normal.
In this paper, learn how artificial intelligence
(AI) and robotic process automation (RPA),
business ecosystems, and predictive analytics
will influence the future of finance and
procurement, and what you can do now to
prepare.
these advancements with applications
that maximize speed, efficiency, and
accuracy in processes and arm decision-
makers with critical information to
drive competitive advantage, develop
transparency across the organization, and
thrive amid disruption.
This paper focuses on three mega-trends
and predicts their influence on the future
of finance and procurement:
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE AND
M AC H I N E L E A R N I N G
are re-inventing the dynamics of
the AP department
B U S I N E S S EC O S YS T E M S
supporting automation are the
foundation for predictive analytics
DATA GAT H E R E D
T H R O U G H AU T O M AT E D
S O LU T I O N S
strengthen business continuity and
resilience
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 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE
#1 LEARNING ARE RE-INVENTING THE DYNAMICS
OF AP AND PROCUREMENT DEPARTMENTs
AI has been steadily evolving with major
improvements in recent years. Today we
are surrounded by AI-driven technologies
that are often quite subtly trying to help or
influence us, for example, suggesting what we
might want to read, watch, hear, or purchase
— silently aggregating transactions and
making assumptions based on trends. We are
beginning to see task assistants and associate
systems that, with the right interface, allow
humans to delegate work to a computer.
Finance is just the latest in a series of
business functions being affected by the rapid
increase in the use of AI and RPA. A range of
solutions for automating accounts payable
(AP) have been progressing over the past 30+
years already, minimizing the need for a large
staff of AP clerks. The figure below shows
the rapid advancements in technology in this
function over four generations. Solutions
have evolved with increasing degrees of
process automation and RPA will continue
to incorporate types of AI, such as machine
learning, to assist people in completing tasks
and making decisions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning (ML) technologies can help
optimize your operations to efficiently
keep business moving. Using unique
algorithms and advanced purchase-to-pay
(P2P) technologies, all your organizations’
information such as purchase orders (POs)
and invoices, are detected and not only
processed quicker by your AP team, but your
own data is fed back to you to reveal insights.
The data gathered also creates a digital
trail that safely stores and includes all vital
transaction data. You’ll get 100% visibility into
the journey of your invoice, tracking every
step of your operations and retaining those
records securely. With the click of a mouse,
important audit documents can be retrieved
from the system, providing a single source
of truth for your invoices and payments, and
ensuring compliance with global regulations.
AI and ML technologies improve AP processes
through their ability to mirror offline
processes including automatically notifying
approvers, authorizing steps, and matching
POs with fewer human interactions and
fewer errors. These technologies also capture
and serve up your invoice data in a single
view so that you can identify efficiencies
and areas to help your organization achieve
100% touchless AP processing. In many
circumstances, most of the manual processes
are eliminated entirely – so when getting into
the office to process AP documents by hand
is nearly impossible, these technologies play
an even more important role.
In procurement, automated solutions can
reduce late payments to suppliers, set up
recurring spend payment plans, calculate
accurate purchasing volumes to obtain
discounts, and easily exchange financial
information and documents like POs, invoices,
and contracts. This enables you to keep the
flow of goods, services, and money moving.
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T H E E VO LU T I O N O F
A P T EC H N O L O GY
1ST GENER ATION INVOICE PROCESSING
Manual coding & matching.
$15 per invoice 20,000 per FTE
$25 per PO 80% on-time
2ND GENER ATION INVOICE PROCESSING
Matching with exception handling automated with rules,
coding templates.
$5–$10 per invoice 50,000 per FTE
$18 per PO 95% on-time
THE FUTURE WITH AI AND ML
Don’t worry. You’re not going to manage a
staff of robots — studies show that people
will work alongside automation to focus
on the human elements of processes,
while machines take over the error-prone,
manual activities. The AP department of
the future focuses on more value-added
tasks, like analyzing data to predict profits,
revenues and cash flow, cross-functional
budget-planning, forecasting, and more.
The finance team of the future takes this
into account when hiring staff, ensuring
that people have the breadth of skills
needed to work alongside technology, and
offers on-going training to prepare staff
for new responsibilities.
The Procurement department of
the future focuses more on supplier
relationships – one of the most critical
elements to ensuring company success.
Strengthening your communication
with key suppliers, understanding their
challenges and status, paired with
accurate spend data, fosters pricing
discussions, and contract negotiations
that may not happen if data gathering
was complicated or fragmented.
Through transparent relationships, you
can optimize spend with your strategic
suppliers and identify “go-to” suppliers
you can trust in challenging times.

3RD GENER ATION INVOICE PROCESSING

Fully automated process with maximized matching,
payment plan utilization supported by predictive
analytics, machine learning, and robotics. BUSINESS PLATFORMS SUPPORTING
$4 per invoice
$10 per PO
>99% on-time
Discounts captured
#2 AUTOMATION ARE THE FOUNDATION FOR
BUSINESS FLEXIBILITY AND AGILITY
90,000 per FTE

4TH GENER ATION PURCHASE-TO - PAY
Automation to use robotics to either fully automate or
assist people, leaving only judgment based decision-
making and optimizing productivity.
AI technology is reliant on accurate data. Without reliable and sufficient data, there is
no basis from which AI can learn and understand the business decisions that need to
be made. This is why it is imperative to collect and aggregate as much accurate data as
possible using best-fit solutions to build the full financial profile of your organization.
Leading procure-to-pay vendors have established ecosystems with many preconnected
and verified partners across various application markets.

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A “technology ecosystem” is defined as “the network of organizations
that drives the creation and delivery of information technology products
and services.” A future of P2P ecosystems supports a microservices
architecture that will enable customers to manage vendors and spend in
a core spend management platform, allowing them to capitalize on the
latest in specialist services. As finance and procurement professionals, you
should adopt solutions now that empower you to:

Get 100% of your suppliers

connected to your P2P ecosystem.
Aside from improving transaction accuracy,
this will help you capture more discounts,
eliminate paper, and improve efficiency.

Get 100% of eligible employees

using e-procurement. Data accuracy
will improve by ensuring everyone uses the
same system for 100% of their purchasing. To DATA GATHERED THROUGH

#3
make 100% achievement possible, the solution AUTOMATED SOLUTIONS
must be designed to fit the way each end user STRENGTHENS BUSINESS
does their job. CONTINUITY AND RESILIENCE

Automate 100% of orders and

invoices. Most P2P systems are only good
Global crises, unprecedented natural disasters, and international economic
at automating the invoices that originated
disparities shine a harsh light on a businesses’ gaps and weaknesses. To find
from indirect procurement systems. Make
traction now (and in the future), organizations must turn to automation to
sure the AP side of your P2P solution is a true
ensure resilience and business continuity. Visibility within the organization and
AP transaction hub for all of your invoices,
across the entire supply chain is critical to keep the flow of goods, services, and
regardless of the type of invoice.
money moving. Advanced automation is key to achieving 100% spend visibility.
(Learn more about Visible Commerce)

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T H E F U T U R E W IT H P R E D I C TIV E A N D A DVA N C E D A N A LY TI C S
By automating end-to-end functions,
from sourcing all the way through invoice
processing and payment — even areas
like travel & expense reporting and
asset management — you will create a
comprehensive data set to analyze and build
on with predictive and actionable insights.
This data set presents historical trends,
transactional details, user behaviors and
notifies you when there’s an opportunity
to capture early payment discounts,
consolidate suppliers, address potentially
fraudulent activity, and much more.
Advanced analytics gives your
organization visibility to continuously
optimize your processes and gain control
of your data to inform business decisions
and drive optimizations. It empowers
your organization with sophisticated
data needed to prevent late payments,
improve e-invoicing rates, resolve process
bottlenecks, and capture more early
payment discounts. Here’s how:
Prevent late payments: Built-
in ML technology scans the historical
trends of your payments and transactions
to identify patterns – becoming more
insightful over time. From there, the
technology aggregates the collected
data into predictive analytics that
conclusion
calculates the probability of on-time or The future of finance and procurement, driven by
late payments. AP teams can then drill digital commerce, will transform not only how you
down and determine what actions need work, but how you buy, sell, and interact. Now is
to be taken to prevent those identified as the time to understand the implications of team
late payments. Keeping up with payments development, supplier relationships, and cross-
means suppliers get paid, cash remains functional collaboration to build a business ecosystem
flowing, and supply chains remain strong. that is scalable for the future, regardless of what
disruptions present themselves. Invest in technology
Improve e-invoice rates: Machine that is designed to evolve with your organization – not
learning also strengthens your analytics something that will be obsolete and will need replacing
by showing the arrival times and format in a few years. Focus on people and understanding what
of invoices, giving AP teams the ability to they will need to be successful alongside the technology
analyze invoice arrival trends and identify that is transforming your business.
any delays. With this information, AP
can reach out to suppliers about invoice
formats and make a case for e-invoicing. Learn more about
With improved e-invoicing rates and more how Basware can help
of your suppliers processing invoices you future-proof your
electronically, transactions can be operations.
processed quicker, suppliers paid faster,
and early pay discounts captured.
LEARN MORE
Resolve process bottlenecks:
Advanced analytics can even provide
the data needed to pinpoint process
bottlenecks, understand why certain
invoices take longer than others, have
more exceptions than others, and
have a higher likelihood for delay. With
these insights, AP can quickly resolve
bottlenecks, eliminating unnecessary
downtime.
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A B O U T BA S WA R E
Basware is the only procure-to-pay and e-invoicing solution provider that
empowers businesses with 100% spend visibility through 100% data capture.
Our cloud-based technology enables organisations to fully manage their spend,
mitigate financial risk, and reduce the cost of operations via automation. With the
world’s largest open business network and an open technology ecosystem, we are
uniquely positioned to deliver the solution required for Visible Commerce, which
provides customers with complete transparency into all the flows of money, goods,
and services around the world. A global company, Basware has offices in 14 countries
and is traded on the Helsinki exchange.

Find out more at: WWW.BASWARE.COM

© Copyright 2020 Basware Corporation

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