Four forces are reshaping accounts payable right now. AI is evolving faster than businesses can adapt. Invoice and tax regulations are tightening across borders. Supplier health and supply chain resilience have become critical concerns. And legacy ERPs? They're not just showing their age—many are buckling under growing complexity.
AI and compliance stand out as the most powerful drivers of change, pushing finance teams to modernize beyond baseline AP automation. Increasingly, organizations are turning to specialized platforms—like Basware’s Invoice Lifecycle Management (ILM)—that support every step of the invoice journey: capture, validation, matching, approval, payment, reconciliation.
These forces are converging on finance operations, with AP firmly in the spotlight. Why? Because AP is uniquely suited for automation. High transaction volumes. Structured data. Clear logic. Repeatable patterns. Exactly the conditions AI needs to deliver immediate, measurable impact.
Let's start with results. Belden embedded AI across their invoice lifecycle and achieved 99.7% faster visibility, 85% faster processing, and 95% touch-free handling. That's transformation you can measure.
As we move from generative to agentic AI, the invoice lifecycle itself is changing. Traditional AP automation treats processes as discrete steps—capture here, match there, route elsewhere. ILM connects the entire lifecycle, learning across every stage and continuously improving outcomes. At Basware, that intelligence is trained on more than 2.3 billion invoices and backed by more than 40 years of expertise.
AP is becoming smarter and faster. The shift from rule-based automation to intelligent, learning systems is well underway. And when you look at AP as the bridge, autonomous finance suddenly feels far less distant.
Compliance used to be periodic. Now it’s always on.
More than 70 countries have already adopted continuous transaction control (CTC) frameworks, with over 100 expected by 2030. Real-time is the new standard, with governments accessing live transaction data instead of quarterly or annual reports.
LISI Group prepared early for e-invoicing mandates by embedding compliance directly into its operations, rather than bolting it on under pressure. The result? Reduced audit time, scalable compliance-ready invoicing, and built-in fraud detection.
Many organizations aren’t there yet. Only 24% describe their compliance approach as proactive, even though 92% aspire to reach that within two years. With so many country-specific mandates on the horizon, invoice compliance risk can no longer be treated as an afterthought.
Consider the reality of supplier invoicing today: multiple formats, manual onboarding, and disconnected portals that limit automation.
Now imagine buyers, suppliers, and tax authorities connected through a single intelligent ecosystem. That's what open invoice networks enable—real-time data exchange and AP automation at scale, with far less friction.
A multinational electric utility company manages three million invoices across 900 entities using SAP, Oracle, and Sage. Contracts and invoices lived in separate systems across multiple ERPs. By leveraging an open network, the organization connected everything—standardizing processes globally, strengthening supplier relationships, and reducing supply chain risk.
The network effect compounds over time: every new connection increases the value of the entire ecosystem.
Modern ERP environments are increasingly composable, cloud-based, and clean-core. That raises a strategic question: where should AP complexity live?
Our answer—before, during, or after ERP migration—is to keep AP innovation outside the ERP core. Why burden your ERP with complexity it wasn't designed to handle? Why accumulate technical debt with every SAP customization?
With modern, modular ERPs, integration is simpler than ever. There’s no need to be constrained by slow-moving ERP cycles when ILM allows AP innovation to move at the pace the business demands.
These four forces are converging, and AP sits at the center. CFOs are increasingly realizing its strategic potential. When AP becomes truly intelligent, it stops being a back-office function and starts operating as a control tower.
That means real-time visibility into spend. Predictive insights into cash flow. Built-in compliance across jurisdictions. Fraud detection at every step. And supplier network intelligence that strengthens entire supply chains.
That's what Invoice Lifecycle Management delivers. And while faster, smarter processing is part of the story, ILM is proving that AP is no longer just an efficiency play—it’s a strategic advantage.
These forces are already shaping the future of finance, and they’re not waiting for anyone to catch up.
To explore the business value of Invoice Lifecycle Management in more depth, download the IDC White Paper: The Business Value of Invoice Life-Cycle Management and see how leading organizations are using AI-powered automation to reduce risk, increase visibility, and unlock working capital.