What Did I Learn This Week?

 This week was spent with a few hundred of my closest Accounts Payable friends at IAPP’s Fusion conference. Here are a few things I learned:

•  IAPP is no longer called IAPP – They are now IFO – Institute of Financial Operations. 
• Little things make big differences – Story Mustgrave (Keynote Speaker) 
•  A company can be automated since 1993 – I had a wonderful conversation with a group that have a shared services center (in the food industry).  They have been automated since 1993. They say it has changed over the years and a few of the break out sessions they attended they could have taught, but all in all they claim there is still room for improvement as technology improves.
• You can do European electronic payments from the US without setting up accounts in each of the countries. 
• There are a lot of companies that do AP Automation that do exact same thing yet claim to be different.
• The staff at IFO is really, really, really organized and hold great conferences!
• P2P is the next buzz word – brace yourself 
• Being balanced is over rated. 
• Automation is a worldwide hot topic
• (And – Drum Roll) The 8 Pitfalls is a huge hit (phew) – I have had a tremendous amount of conversations with people who don’t know where to start – don’t know how to build an internal case and don’t have the money to hire a consulting firm to help them… that is why I wrote the book. A few bullets up I mentioned there were a lot of AP Automation companies that do the same thing but say they are different. There is a challenge that is being created as the middle market starts to adopt AP Automation and they look to a few service providers for demos. Once the demos are done they are more confused by what they want/need than when they started. Now that the book is in the hands of many of people who believe they need the type of information the book has – the next is to see if the information will translate to a straighter and easier course for mid-market companies and automation. Stay tuned!

To get your copy of The 8 Pitfalls of Accounts Payable Automation – click here to buy.

For more information go to www.newwayap.com