Comdata: The Necessary Shift To Full AP Outsourcing

Meitra Aycock, Comdata’s senior vice president of corporate payments operations, delves into how the COVID pandemic has made prospects more interested in AP outsourcing. “AP managers are often understaffed in the best of times, and today they’re battling the threat of a workforce dealing with COVID, parenting through remote learning and the array of other challenges,” she notes.

The following is an excerpt from What Did You Change?, contributed by Meitra Aycock, Comdata‘s senior vice president of corporate payments operations.

Historically, we have focused on our ePayables solution within the sales process because it has been the easiest first step for prospects who are seeking some form of accounts payable (AP) automation or are contemplating AP outsourcing. Virtual card adoption fuels investment for those AP departments, and empowers them to truly own the payments lifecycle as they see the impact they have within that decision process. Broader adoption of integrated payables — such as the outsourcing of all payment methods — is often too far of a leap for CFOs who are seeking efficiencies in their AP process, so the introduction of integrated payables has been a gradual shift for many customers and prospects.

The COVID pandemic has changed that approach, and we have seen that prospects are much more interested in full AP outsourcing. It has become too difficult to manage check runs with a remote workforce, or with a workforce that is impacted by the threat of COVID. AP managers are often understaffed in the best of times, and today they’re battling the threat of a workforce dealing with COVID, parenting through remote learning and the array of other challenges.

CFOs and controllers are now actively seeking a solution that mitigates that risk and allows their AP teams to shift their focus to vendor management and expense control.

Here’s an example of the shifting mindset we are seeing in the market: A CFO realizes that management of multiple hefty check runs per week is not sustainable in a remote workforce. They might conclude that the answer is to migrate as much of their payment volume as possible to ACH. They are concerned, however, about the potential liability of having their team manage vendor bank account details as well as the additional overhead of an outreach campaign. If they’re really attuned to the market, they also understand that moving to ACH tremendously impacts their ability to shift volume to a card and reap a rebate. They start Googling “outsourced payments” — and that’s where Comdata and an increasing number of providers enter the picture.

What does this really mean? It is in times of disruption that an evolving market moves forward at an accelerated pace. We are definitely in one of those market inflection points, where a typically conservative approach to the payments landscape needs some immediate solutions.