Accounts Payable News^®

The accounts payable function can find itself operating within a bubble; cut off to some extent from the rest of the organisation in a constantly evolving environment where time is in short supply. The effect of this can be for the department to become insular, where the only measures are against past performance, and the only metrics used are the ones which were considered useful to that organisation at some point in the past.

If you work within the public sector you could be forgiven for feeling more than a little anxious over the last couple of months. You’ve been aware that cuts are coming, but you didn’t know when, how much, or if they’d affect you directly. Many of those within the corporate sector have been under the same cloud, though perhaps without the same inevitability.

With year-end optimism slowly ebbing away as we move towards spring, many in AP departments are still finding that they have to do more with less. And it’s not going to get any better any time soon. The words “the recessions over” draw to mind images of George Bush and his misplaced 2003 “mission accomplished” speech. Yes, the economy may be on the road to recovery – but there’s going to be an awful lot of debris along the way before we get there.

In today’s workplace, the term “best practice” is one which tends to be thrown in along with another marketing catchphrase “fit for purpose” which can generate the kind of eye rolling irritation which gives marketeers a bad name!