The Hackett Group® Identifies Leading Accounts Payable Solutions Delivering 3.5X Productivity Gains Through AI Innovation
New research reveals how AI-powered capabilities enable touchless processing, global compliance and value realization
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT), a leading Gen AI consulting and enterprise digital transformation firm, has just released the results of its latest Digital World Class® Matrix, focusing on the accounts payable (AP) software solutions marketplace. Today's AP solutions deliver an expanding mix of capabilities powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that help their customers address complex requirements such as global e-invoicing, tax validation and fraud prevention.
AP organizations are facing significant internal and external pressures, including rising transaction volumes, increasingly complex global compliance requirements, and heightened expectations from finance, procurement, and business stakeholders. These challenges are compounded by the rapid evolution of agentic and Gen AI solutions, which require AP leaders to critically evaluate their process design, technology partners and service delivery models. The need to address these complex issues – while ensuring operational efficiency and compliance – demands a strategic approach to technology adoption and process optimization.
The Accounts Payable Digital World Class® Matrix provides an in-depth guide to some of the most significant software providers, including embedded suites and specialized point solutions. The report evaluated 15 providers for their capabilities and value delivered to clients, using vendor briefings, SolutionMap ratings, and customer feedback across 17 different criteria.
Capability ratings assess a vendor's capacity to enable key AP processes, including supplier information management, invoice creation, capture, submission, workflow, validation and compliance. It also addresses disbursement processes – such as payments, financing and dynamic discounting – along with core capabilities in areas like global complexity, technology platform and ecosystem, analytics, information management, and automated intelligence.
Value realization ratings assess a vendor's impact to performance, covering implementation metrics, integration and automation, user and supplier adoption and experience, data visibility and intelligence, quality and cycle time metrics, and overall satisfaction and business value to the organization.
Adopters of AP solutions are realizing very tangible benefits across a variety of key metrics. Customers benefited from a 60% average touchless invoice processing rate, along with strong ratings for quality and compliance. The research highlights that companies with 30% or higher touchless invoice processing have, on average, 3.5 times higher AP productivity. Additionally, average AP cycle times improved by 59% post-implementation, resulting in an average overall satisfaction rating of 79% and demonstrating value for their financial and time investment.
Leading AP solutions efficiently enable a variety of capabilities, including global e-invoicing and continuous transaction control (CTC) compliance, automatically classifying invoices, understanding and interpreting regional tax policies, automating inbox management, advanced approver intelligence, predictive analytics, continuous risk scoring, and agentic AI-driven insights.
"Generative and agentic AI capabilities are rapidly expanding to address increasingly complex end-to-end accounts payables processes, including everything from orchestration and knowledge management to accounting and tax validation," according to Richard Gardner, senior director of Market Intelligence at The Hackett Group®. "Our research shows that payables management and supplier inquiry management are two of the most common starting points for source-to-pay agentic AI programs, and the solutions covered in this report have experience and focus to accelerate that journey." By using this comprehensive analysis, procurement, finance, and AP executives can make informed decisions on the solutions that best align with their strategic priorities, requirements, and business value drivers.
Accounts Payable Digital World Class® assessments are part of The Hackett Group's full 61-page report. The Accounts Payable Digital World Class® assessments should be read in the context of the entire report. Download a complimentary summary of the learning research with registration. Contact us for inquiries about purchasing the full research report.
The Hackett Group® does not endorse any participant, vendor, product or service depicted in its research. This research should not be considered as advice that a reader select only those participants based on their ranking or position on The Hackett Group® Digital World Class® Matrix. You should not rely upon any material or information within this research as a basis for making any business, legal, financial or any other decisions.
About The Hackett Group®
The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT) is an IP and platform-based, Gen AI strategic consulting and executive advisory firm that enables Digital World Class® performance. Using AI XPLR and ZBrain – our ideation through implementation platforms – our experienced professionals help organizations realize the power of Gen AI and achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results, allowing us to be key architects of their Gen AI journey.
Our expertise is grounded in unparalleled best practices insights from benchmarking the world's leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 51% of the FTSE 100. Visit us at www.thehackettgroup.com.
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