Reimagining AP and Moving Beyond Digitization: An SAP Concur Conversations Podcast

We often assume that because Gen X through Gen Z have been brought up with technology — increasingly ubiquitous and advanced — people in younger generations will usher in the “next big thing” in digital automation. But in a risk-averse area such as accounting, is it too much to expect a revolution in the way, for example, accounts payable (AP) tools will serve us?

To share insights on what stands in the way of innovation and how AP and other functions could evolve to serve business at a higher level, Chris Elmore, Chief Evangelist at AvidXchange, talked to Jeanne Dion, Vice President, Value Experience Team at SAP Concur.

You can listen to this episode on our SAP Concur Conversations channel | Apple | Amazon | Spotify | Google or or your favorite place to find podcasts.

Younger workers are trained to uphold the status quo

Accounting professionals, whether in AP or other areas, work in an increasingly digital world. The logic, therefore, is that younger workers would be putting on the pressure and introducing innovation to bring on the inevitable goal of a paperless world.

Not so, cautions Elmore — at least not without encouragement.

“I have a colleague here at AvidXchange, and it’s his notion that over time, as the millennials take over, they’re not going to stand for these manual tasks, these paper-driven tasks. And so just by virtue of them taking over, the whole thing’s going to be digitized, because their lives are digital, and they’ve grown up [with devices in their hands],” Elmore says. “But I don’t believe that at all.”

The key inhibitor to innovation is that in accounts payable, for example, no one is incentivized to disrupt the status quo.

“Let’s say you are a controller bent on being reckless. You’re not going to be a controller for long. So, the base concept is that it’s a risk-averse population. It should be a risk-averse population [overall],” Elmore points out. “When you take that into account, the younger generation that’s getting their sea legs on the processes is getting trained by the older generation on ‘this is how you do it.’”

Younger workers have much to contribute — if encouraged

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a hunger for change, though.

“Falsely, there’s this view of accounting people of being rigid and not willing to change, and uncreative — that’s the one that really bothers me more than anything,” Elmore says. “The students [I teach at university] have none of those traits. They are creative. They’re full of ambition. They’re driven.”

They’re excited about getting into to the work and making things happen. But when they get there, they are stopped by people who don’t feel like the risk is worth the possible reward. The mentality is that “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

It is true that technology can only take things so far. If going paperless is the only goal, that isn’t doing much to move the business forward. There are only so many ways one can digitize an invoice, put it into an approval process, and present it to an accounting system.

The thinking needs to be more like, “What if I spent 90% of my time on 5% of the problems — the problems that really matter — instead of spending 90% of my time on 100% of every single line-item, of which only a small fraction will be a problem?”

The question that older professionals who are doing the supervising and training and younger professionals who are coming up the ranks need to ask is: “What could I do in addition to what I’m doing now that would add value to the company overall, that would add value to the bottom line?”

In other words, there needs to be a re-imagining of the entire system that goes beyond just digitalization — something that would add efficiency to the process and make it easier for everybody to work. It’s not just automating AP. It’s not just taking paper-based processes and making them electronic.

Evolving the technology elevates accounting

Often, people worry that automation will potentially eliminate their jobs — even accountants — when the truth is that automation opens up opportunities for accountants to make more valuable contributions to their organization.

“You have to focus on the purpose of the technological initiative, whether it’s accounts payable automation, Salesforce automation, marketing automation,” Elmore says. “And I get a lot of inspiration from manufacturing. They’ve already figured this out, and they have Six Sigma, and lean process, and all of these things that back up their need to automate.”

The best outcome in any automation, accounts payable or otherwise, is that it frees up time. It could have a financial ROI to it, but time is the real product — time that can be invested in new ways of working and advancing the company.

“In 1900, the loom industry was automated 90%. And the thing was, did jobs go up for looms or did jobs go down? Now, traditionally, you would think if 90% of the work was automated, there’d be all these loom workers that were out of jobs,” Elmore remarks. But instead, the opposite happened — the number of jobs went way up because “automation reduced the cost to produce the fabric, and people started using fabric in different ways. It opened up brand new markets.”

The technology that any company uses must focus on mission, purpose, and outcome, Elmore says, adding, “If it’s really neat, okay, that’s good. But I’m always shocked on how many people buy on cool and neat. It’s got to go beyond that. And that’s the thing that will permeate [good ideas] through the entire organization [to move it forward].”

Learn more about reimagining AP automation in this SAP Concur Conversations podcast.