Guest Post: How Automation Helps Retain Talent in Account Payable Department

Manufacturing Accounts Payable (AP) departments face significant personnel challenges. There is only so much that can be done to entice job seekers and employees with higher wages, fat signing bonuses, continuing education perks, and other incentives. For manufacturing leaders worried specifically about losing their AP talent, digitally transforming the AP function into a rewarding and strategic role with automated, personalized tools is key to retaining and attracting top talent.

Corporate America is suffering from a massive labor shortage. More and more people are quitting their jobs in search of better paying roles, increased benefits and workplace perks, or more fulfilling careers. Manufacturing has been specifically impacted greatly by this recent phenomenon, commonly referred to as the “Great Resignation”. Managing unrelenting pressure to reduce overhead while navigating an uncertain economy is an ongoing struggle for manufacturing finance departments, inevitably driving many valued finance team members to look for new employment opportunities.

In order to resolve this situation and prevent the loss of additional AP talent, management must act quickly. In addition to reducing productivity, staff turnover can lead to more errors, late payments, and missed early payment discounts. Fraudulent transactions are also more likely to slip through without seasoned employees to catch them.

Many AP practitioners' days are spent typing invoice data, reviewing forms for typos and errors, chasing down information, and fielding calls and emails about invoices and payments from suppliers and vendors. Meanwhile, AP professionals must manage dozens of business rules, best practices, audit guidelines, and corporate standards for processing invoices and making supplier payments.

A typical AP manager spends more time processing transactions than on managerial tasks like data analysis and cost reduction audits. That time dedicated to repetitive and manual tasks is unfulfilling and could be spent on more valuable and rewarding tasks, including collaborating with stakeholders and analyzing financial information.

Learn More! The Value of Keeping Humans in the Loop in an Automated Environment

AP automation holds the key to eliminating the inefficiency and time consumption of manual, repetitive labor. Automation of rules-based tasks reduces employee burnout and turnover, which empowers AP leaders to streamline operations without a need to bring in and train more personnel. This allows AP team members to take part in more fulfilling, empowering data analysis and cost saving projects that have tangible effects on improving the business.

There is a misconception about AP automation, which is that it leaves behind hard workers who have invested in their skills. While this is an understandable fear, it is largely unjustified. Today’s AP automation solutions offer configurable workflows, automated work queues, online training, intuitive interfaces, and machine-assisted decision-making that actually empower workers to dedicate more time to the most impactful areas of their jobs and accomplish more each day. These digital tools enable AP departments to retain top talent and attract highly qualified candidates who are interested in working with state-of-the-art technology. Making accounts payable a more desirable job through automation can help to retain loyal employees, which solidifies a workforce from within.

Visit www.paymerang.com to learn more about AP automation, and contact Matthew Kirkpatrick, VP of Manufacturing at mkirkpatrick@paymerang.com.