Performance Measurement is a process for assessing progress toward achieving predetermined goals that includes the following:

According to Wikipedia, public relations is the management of internal and external communications to create a positive image.

Accounts Payable organizations have done a lousy job of public relations, and it is a major reason why the contributions of AP have gone unrecognized over the years. There I said it. Who out there will challenge my statement.

Non-PO invoices are a considerable "Pain Point" for AP personnel. In most cases the invoice is sent directly to the client for approval. From my personal experience some 40 percent of late payments at AT&T were the result of receiving the invoice for payment from the client after the terms had expired. However, when the KPIs are published, we in AP are usually blamed for the percentage of late payments which had nothing to do with our cycle time process.

The next several blog submissions will deal with what I call the "Pain Points" in Accounts Payable. The first deals with a "Pain Point" that is near the top of very AP professionals list, namely "Rush Checks". They are sometimes referred to as On-Demand or ASAP Requests.

The TAPN/IOMA certification program has been very successful since first introduced at Johnson & Johnson.

A major contributing factor to the success of this program has been the recognition an A/P professional receives having successfully met the standards for the most comprehensive certification program available today. This recognition comes not only from their management, but also from their peers.

In addition to the other benefits afforded by certification, two additional benefits were recently cited by TAPN member A/P organizations.

There are only a few vertebrae of difference between a "Pat on the Back" and a "Kick in the Butt."

As I conduct Certification training, one issue that accounts payable professionals continually share with me is their frustration of how their contributions go unrecognized and unrewarded by management. In many cases, accounts payable personnel are the lowest paid group within financial organizations. A/P is also way down on the priority list of organizations' capital funding.

An A/P certification trainer’s lunch hour experience in Johannesburg, SA

I had the great experience of training 62 A/P professionals that are member the Gauteng Province Shared Service Center. There is a great deal of commonality among A/P professionals regardless of where the A/P function is performed in the world, and also very similar personnel concerns.

There have been more changes in Accounts Payable in the last five years, then in the previous ten years. This rapid rate of change can be primarily attributed to the growth in technology solutions. Many A/P organizations' that invested in such technology have earned the designation as "Best-In-Class."

The Hackett Group, which specializes in Benchmarking, defines "Best-In-Class" as being in the top 25% quartile in both qualitative measurements and traditional quantitative measurements such as cost, cycle time, quality and productivity.

"We are working on it" — or if I am in the southwest "we are fixing it" — is the expression I often hear about a best practice I discuss during an accounts payable workshop. We laugh and move on to the next subject. Fortunately in several organizations, I sometimes hear "we are doing that today," which is a way of identifying where a best practice has already been implemented.

Example — When two people are playing tennis, initially they lob the ball to each other. Then one player says lets play a game. What happens to the level of intensity when practicing stops and play begins? The reason the level of intensity increased is because you are now keeping score.