The CFO wonders How hard can it be to ‘just’ pay invoices? and as a result, the only communication that Accounts Payable receives from the CFO is a directive for them to reduce processing cost. Then AP reacts to that directive by attempting (and failing) to implement best practices. These initiatives are often unsuccessful, and may have failed for one or more of the reasons:

• AP is the last step of a very chaotic purchase process
• AP does not have ownership of the process
• Procurement & AP have an at-arms-length, or even adversarial relationship
• AP is not aligned with the business
• AP reacted to noise rather than root cause analysis and metrics
• AP has not been groomed to lead a large cross-functional project