The Data Point: 67% of Businesses Processing High Payables Want an ERP Assist

As payables grow, so does the complexity and room for error, which finds many corporates turning to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to automate this processing pain.

In “The ERP Solutions in B2B Payments Tracker®,” a PYMNTS and American Express collaboration, we delve into how digitization is pushing out manual entry and invoice reconciliation to the delight of accounting departments unable to keep up with the demands of this function.

• Over two-thirds of organizations with more than 2,500 payables per month said ERPs are very or extremely important for increasing the number of payables.

With new PYMNTS data projecting that up to 80% of all buyer-supplier transactions may be done digitally by 2025, as mobile, contactless and digital payment solutions upend the industry with positive progress, more companies see the logic of using ERP systems to automate more of this workload and workflow, giving corporate teams automation with greater certainty.

Based on PYMNTS research, the tracker stated that just over two-thirds of organizations “with more than 2,500 payables per month said ERPs are very or extremely important for increasing the number of payables, and 95% of companies that had implemented ERPs reported in a recent study that these systems have improved their business processes. The top three ways ERPs produced a return on investment (ROI) included reduced IT costs at 40% of respondents, reduced inventory levels at 38% and reduced cycle time at 35%.”

Additionally, the tracker noted that the most impactful ERP integrations are using application programming interfaces (APIs) to acquire full access to ERP data and functionality, improving outcomes.

“APIs allow companies to boost the interoperability of their systems and those of their clients, improving remittance details and back-end operations,” the tracker stated. “APIs can aid payments and reconciliation processes by accessing a greater share of data, reducing the amount of missing remittance information and avoiding the need for phone calls or emails to follow up on receipts.”

Get the tracker: The ERP Solutions in B2B Payments Tracker®