Why outsourcing accounts payable and accounts receivable is the solution to the staffing crisis

Corcentric

Businesses of all kinds are facing staffing shortages. From hospitals to pharmacies to schools, the struggle to hire people is real.

Within those businesses, there is a staffing crisis occurring in Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable departments. For a myriad of reasons, these positions are getting harder and harder to fill, and it’s costing companies time and money.

The good news is businesses looking to fill the gaps in their AP and AR operations can turn to managed services.

What’s causing the shortages in AP and AR

The hiring challenge within AR and AP departments has proven to be a perfect storm. There are various factors that have come together to create this problem. Baby boomers are retiring in large numbers and there isn’t enough interest in jobs in the AR and AP spaces to make up the difference. Many companies have multiple locations, which means multiple AP and AR operations that need managing, and the pool of employees is too shallow.

Add in the coronavirus, which fast tracked these trends as well as caused mass layoffs and furloughs, and businesses end up in quite the predicament. The fact also remains that the pandemic is not over, which means people are more comfortable with remote work and mandates are causing people to walk away from jobs. Even the new breed of individuals looking to enter the accounting job market might not be able to do so because of schools suspending classes or going fully online (which often leads to lower retention rates).

These variables paint a grim picture for business leaders looking for AP and AR professionals, however, help is available.

Managed services to the rescue

Whether in times of crisis or success, the benefits of outsourcing accounts payable and accounts receivable are endless: reduced head count, unlocked cash flow, improved vendor relationships, cost savings, and much more. The right external provider will automate accounts receivable or accounts payable (or both), implement the technology needed to maximize efficiencies, and enable growth by serving as an extension of your team.

From a staffing standpoint, managed AP and AR services can fill the gaps in resources with automation technology. Time-consuming tasks like data entry, approval workflows, and invoice processing are no longer burdens, which means resources spent on back-office support can be put towards more important company initiatives. Reallocating AP and AR tasks through outsourcing saves money in head count, eliminated checks, and payments rebates.

But the thing about managed services is that it’s not about taking over tasks with process automation technology in order to lower costs, it’s about enlisting a solution tailored to achieve the target business outcomes of customers, and those outcomes are not limited to fixing staffing problems.

There is a consultative and collaborative aspect to managed AP and AR services that goes beyond implementation to ensure that these processes are sustainable and deliver value such as:

  • Organizational efficiency and scalability
  • Payments optimization
  • Working capital improvement
  • Risk and fraud reduction
  • Elimination of bad debt
  • Dispute prevention
  • Reduced DSO

So if the problem is staffing shortages, or some other headache within the AP and AR departments, making the switch from in-house to managed services is a viable solution.

The Corcentric difference

As previously mentioned, managed AP and AR services focus on business outcomes and providing a strategic business partner, and no one does this better than Corcentric.

Corcentric’s Managed AR and Managed AP solutions house everything – services and technology – under one roof. Sure, a technology service provider, business process outsourcing (BPO) organization, or consulting firm can give you some element of a value proposition, but not all of it. Corcentric acts as a single provider of technology and services, while prioritizing metrics and best practices to drive results.

Whether you want to transform accounts payable or accounts receivable, or both, Corcentric can create a cost-effective solution tailored to your company’s needs. Get started today.