Friday, 6th January 2012

Leading Research Firm Provides Tools to Accelerate the Technology Buying Process for Accounts Payable.

Ardent Partners, a leading research and advisory firm, today announced the launch of a new research series focused on accounts payable technology – The ePayables SMARTSet™. The SMARTSet is a low-cost, comprehensive set of research tools and templates designed to guide organizations though the process of automating their accounts payable processes and selecting the best-fit solutions for their specific requirements and budgets.

“While the value proposition of automating the accounts payable process is fairly straightforward, presenting a compelling business case and then navigating the entire solution selection process can be difficult and time-consuming,” said Andrew Bartolini, Founder and Chief Research Officer, Ardent Partners. “The tools in our ePayables SMARTSet are designed to help accounts payable teams make smart technology decisions in an efficient and effective manner.”

“We have designed the ePayables SMARTSet to be flexible enough to meet the needs of enterprises just starting to think about AP transformation and process automation, mature organizations seeking to extend the value of their current investments, and those in between,” said ePayables Research Director, Vishal Patel. “Each document contains valuable pre-written content and market research that can be directly used to improve and accelerate the solution selection process and increase the user’s return on investment in accounts payable automation solutions.”

The following research documents and tools are included in Ardent Partners’ ePayables SMARTSet:
1. Business Case Template – This template helps end-users prepare a clear and compelling business case for an investment in AP automation.
2. ROI Calculator – This interactive tool helps AP leaders build an ROI model that is specific to their planned investments in AP automation solutions.
3. RFP Template – This template help enterprises clearly define solution requirements and organize them into a comprehensive and well-structured RFP for AP automation.
4. Solution Provider Landscape – This report helps enterprises navigate the solution provider landscape by discussing the key capabilities and performance of the leading AP solution providers in the space.
5. AP Automation Best Practices – This report highlights a collection of best practices drawn from Best-in-Class practitioners around the deployment and subsequent usage of AP Automation solutions.

These documents and tools are now available in the Ardent Partners’ Research Library. To learn more about Ardent Partners and this research series, click here.

About Ardent Partners: Ardent Partners is a research and advisory firm focused on defining, advancing, and promoting the supply management and accounts payable strategies, processes, and technologies that drive business value and accelerate organizational transformation within the enterprise. Ardent’s technology-oriented research is designed to help business decision-makers navigate the technology marketplace to understand (1) the underlying business value that can be derived from an investment in technology and (2) the surest and most direct approaches to attaining that value. The firm was founded by recognized industry analyst, Andrew Bartolini, in 2010.