AI, AP and What Great AP Teams Do Differently in 2026

Speaker 0: The Payments Podcast by Bottomline. Owen McDonald (host): Welcome to The Payments Podcast. I'm your host, Bottomline Managing Editor, Owen McDonald. Accounts payable (AP) automation is proving its worth in use cases spanning the B2B payments ecosystem. From the role of AI and AP to what makes a top-performing AP team in 2026, this topic is surprisingly nuanced. For that reason, among others, it's our pleasure to welcome back Andrew Bartolini of Ardent Partners as we unpack the new Ardent Partners 2026 AP Automation and Payments Technology Advisory Report. Andrew Bartolini, it's great to have you back on The Payments Podcast. Andrew Bartolini (guest): Oh, and glad to be here. Owen McDonald: Very glad you could be, Andrew. To set the stage, tell us the primary purpose of the 2026 AP Automation and Payments Technology Advisory Report. What did you set out to learn? Andrew Bartolini: Ardent Partners. We're a research and advisory firm focused only on the source-to-pay process. We're a specialty industry analyst firm that looks at the entire process, from intake all the way through payment. We've been researching and evaluating the AP automation and payments market for 17 years. And since 2019, we have regularly been publishing our technology adviser reports. Now the primary purpose of this 2026 technology adviser report was to give AP leaders a decision framework that they can actually use. We wanted to move beyond the idea of a simple vendor list and instead explain how modern AP solutions differ at the capability level and then look at how those differences affect day-to-day operations and which questions teams should be asking during an evaluation. Our goal with the report was to translate what has become a very complex technology market into something structured and actionable. We also set out to understand how AI and payments are changing what an AP platform needs to do. So, over the last few years, the definition of AP automation has expanded dramatically. It's no longer just about invoice capture and matching. It's about intelligence. It's about compliance, supplier experience, and cash management. And so, the report was designed to capture that broader reality and really this changing reality to help AP organizations select technology based on the way that they actually are operating today. Owen McDonald: So, it's very timely in that respect. It's an evaluation of top solution providers in the AP space, as you say. How would you characterize the evaluation criteria? How have they changed? How do you decide on what constitutes top performing AP systems in an ISO compliant world with everything else that's going on? Andrew Bartolini: We could do a deep dive, but I think to simplify it, the evaluation criteria was built around the way an AP department truly operates, not the way that software is marketed. We developed years ago a framework that really defined all of the steps across receive, process, and pay. The invoice and payment life cycle. We organized capabilities across those areas and then layered in governance, analytics, supplier enablement, and AI, where every category was tied to measurable AP outcomes such as cycle time, exception reduction, compliance risk, and payment optimization. And so, in an ISO compliant world, a top performing system must do more than just automate tasks. That's table stakes today. It needs to provide defensible controls. You need traceability. With the rise of AI, you certainly need data integrity and support for constantly evolving e-invoicing mandates. And so, we looked at how well each solution from each solution provider embeds those requirements into daily workflows, how transparent the audit trail is, and how reliably the platform can operate across countries, across ERPs, and across payment rails. So, just as an example, compliance was treated as a foundation, not a feature. Owen McDonald: You were sort of dancing around the edges there, but there's a lot of noise around AI and accounts payable these days, as you know. Based on your new market snapshot, how should organizations be thinking about AI when they assess solution providers? How should they be pressing vendors on the notion of explainable AI as opposed to so called black box solutions? Andrew Bartolini: The intent wasn't to dance around AI. In fact, AI is very front and center. The report includes sort of a detailed scope of the key capabilities that we believe AP departments should be seeking from their solution provider and the context around how to evaluate them. And so, AI is front and center in this report. And from my experience, this is really the first report that details out those capabilities and provides a road map for organizations. So, they can look at AI as a general construct. AI has become very complex, and the expansion of it has really grown extraordinarily over the past couple of years, and it's only going to continue to accelerate that path. And so, AP organizations should think about AI as an operating capability, not as a buzzword. The key question is not, 'do you have AI?', but 'what decisions does your AI improve?' What tasks does it help improve, and how can you prove it? So, we encourage AP teams as they're speaking, as they're going through their technology evaluations to ask solution providers to show how their models are trained, what data they rely on, how the system handles exceptions when confidence is low. Things very specific. So, AI in AP is valuable, but only when it reduces manual intervention without increasing risk. And so, AP leaders should be pressing for explainability as well. Because of the black box nature of AI, it's important to understand the governance around the data, the ownership of the data. It's important to build in your own test and audit checks. If an engine auto-codes an invoice or approves a payment, the AP team has to be able to deconstruct and understand why that decision was made and have the ability, at least at first, to override it when needed. The most impressive providers treat AI as a copilot for AP professionals. So, there's guardrails, there's audit logs, and continuous learning in the solution, rather than a black box that magically replaces human judgment. And I should say that we're still very early in this, the development of the more advanced AI capabilities. We didn't grade the providers on a curve. There were no providers today that are really at the top tier on the agentic side. We see a lot of promise. We evaluate and seek to understand road maps as well. And so, we're looking at AI where it is today in the marketplace, but how can AP organizations best leverage the capabilities available today and what they should be looking for from their provider. Owen McDonald: Without getting into specific companies, Andrew, what did you find distinguished top performers, that you evaluated? What are leaders doing differently today in terms of technology execution and directing outcomes? Andrew Bartolini: I talked about the capabilities. How those roll up into the larger areas of invoice and payment processing. Having more than just check the box in those areas. It's sort of like the baseline for participation in the study overall. Now what distinguishes the leaders, the group that we call market leaders? I guess I would say it's coherence. The best platforms don't look at capture workflow, payments, and compliance as separate module. They operate as a single connected process with shared data and intelligence. These providers have invested deeply in areas like exception management or, if their clients have a global supply chain, global e-invoicing readiness, and the supplier experience and payments. These are the areas that determine whether an automation actually scales. Leaders also execute differently. So, you can have the capabilities, and if you can't get them out to market, if you don't have your customers leveraging them. Right? So, we include reference checks. We do deep dives on the demonstrations as well and see the solutions. And I've been working in the space for twenty-five years and you're able to judge and adjudicate and evaluate and essentially rank each of the solutions based on your experiences as well. But when we're looking at the leaders, right, they execute differently. They help measure outcomes with their specific customer, for each of their customers. And again, we have surfaced AI capabilities as an important part of the criteria because going forward, AI is going to have significantly larger impact on the overall flow and process of an AP department. And so, we looked at other things like, how does AI improve across processing or improving matching encoding, fraud detection, payment, in what we believe are practical and observable ways. Owen McDonald: Last question, Andrew. If you're an AP leader about to start a solution evaluation, what are two or three takeaways from this report you'd want them to have front and center as they progress through that process? Andrew Bartolini: So first off, I think it's important for organizations to understand their own requirements. Because at a high level, the AP process has the same basic steps. But once you start to look, dive down into your unique operation, your unique relationship with procurement, your unique relationship with treasury, your unique supply base. I think defining your own requirements is key. The first key takeaway is to evaluate capabilities before brand. Too many projects begin with a short list of providers instead of a definition of what an AP organization actually needs to do. That's why I think if you look at our report in the context of the other reports available in the market, we provide a framework. We list out detailed capabilities, something like forty or so. And so, you're able to go in and understand the providers across each of those capabilities. Some of those capabilities may not be directly applicable to your organization, but you can pull those out of the evaluation. Second, I think we're at a point in time where you really can't separate AI and compliance from the core evaluation. These aren't add-ons. They determine whether your automation is going to be sustainable over the next five years. The most successful AP teams and the most successful AP automation and payment deployment projects link requirements to outcomes, lower cost per invoice, better cash visibility, fraud reduction. And so, if AP leaders keep those connections in focus, the selection process becomes far more objective and far more successful. So, I think, one, start with a capability framework, not just the list of providers. Treat AI and compliance and payments as core requirements and then connect technology choices to business outcomes. Owen McDonald: Well, you heard it. Market performance, not marketing claims. Accounts payable fit for the next wave of tech innovation and demand. The how and why of it all clearly explained. That's Ardent Partners 2026 AP Automation and Payments Technology Adviser Report. Check it out. Our thanks again to Andrew Bartolini of Ardent Partners for his insights. To our audience, the smartest people in B2B payments, thanks for listening. Hit subscribe. Catch us again on your favorite podcast platforms, including Apple, Spotify, Blubrry, iHeartRadio, and YouTube. Bye for now.

Speaker 0: The Payments Podcast from Bottomline.