Accounts Payable Association Podcast

In today's episode, Jamie sat down with Rachael Long, the Accounts Payable Manager at Breedon Group. Breedon Group a leading construction materials group in the UK and is a major producer of bulk and bagged cement.  Rachael is the manager of a 15 person accounts payable team, so Jamie wanted to find out more about her thoughts on mentoring and leadership within her role as well as the mentoring program Breedon Group has in place and why it's so successful.  “I always try and lead by example” “It’s being the best I can be to show the team they can be the best they can be”

In this episode of AP Talks, Jamie is joined by Julia Stovold, Documation’s Marketing manager for an in-depth discussion on how automation continues to change the AP department.  Documation’s family of consultants, developers, account managers and support team are experts in the field of document management and business process automation.  “But where does that leave the AP/P2P teams? The team are going to undergo a ‘role rethink’ and not everyone is going to be happy about it!” Julia also explores the 6 Key elements of The Fears of Change: Denial, Anger, Fear, Insecurity, Sense of Loss and Loss of Identity “Automation will change the landscape of the AP / P2P teams, there will always be people who are change resistors and may never get on board, but to balance this there will be passionate advocates of the change too”

Jon Stovold returns to AP Talks to give us some insight on a new topic, Digital Transformation. John Stovold is the Marketing Manager for Itesoft and is constantly exploring all the new developments in the finance industry. “The concept of digital transformation is to take the human element out and replacing it with a machine to deliver more benefit at a lower cost” “The more data you can get and the higher quality you can get it, the more impact this has later down the line”

With 20 years of finance recruitment experience, Karen has a track record of recruiting top finance talent for businesses across a range of industry sectors and is a trusted industry voice on career planning and market insights.  In this podcast, Karen, Gareth and Jamie discuss what makes a good leader and the importance of mentoring for your employees' growth.  “You might listen to this and think you have never mentored someone but I bet 9/10 of you have as you have given someone encouragement and empowerment” “To be mentored is just reaching out to somebody in a very human way to ask for help”

In this podcast, John Wallace - CEO of Documation & Jamie discuss how invoicing has changed through the years.   John Wallace is the CEO of Documation and is a widely recognised thought-leader in the field of finance process automation and transformation, with a particular focus on AP.    In this in-depth episode, John puts all the confusion regarding e-invoicing to rest, clarifying what exactly e-invoicing is, where it starts and where it ends and the formatting issues some have experienced.   Quotes “80-90% of all invoices received are on email." ‘’With a true E-invoice, what we’re doing is essentially transferring data rather than a document directly from the supplier to the buyer.‘’ ‘’We understand the landscape and we can help people understand what’s out there and see what’s fit for purpose from the particular view of their business.’’ "Governments around the World are using e-invoicing to close the tax loophole."

In this second part podcast, John & Jamie talk over the how technology & automation are impacting Accounts Payable teams looking at how different generations are being impacted.   Quotes   “How do managers prepare for cultural change”   “Who remembers the days of dial up internet? Individuals need access now at the click of a button”   “Accounts Payable teams are the backbone of an organisation, if you want to learn about everything that goes on in a company work in the AP team”  

Today's guest on AP Talks is John Stovold UK Marketing Manager of Itesoft. In this two-part podcast, John & Jamie talk over how technology & automation are impacting Accounts Payable teams looking at how different generations are being impacted. Quotes “How do managers prepare for cultural change” “Who remembers the days of dial-up internet? Individuals need access now at the click of a button” “Accounts Payable teams are the backbone of an organisation if you want to learn about everything that goes on in a company work in the AP team”

Rod Chadwick is the Head of Process Simplification at Royal Mail, he was a speaker at our conference in 2018 and he promised he will be speaking again this year. In this podcast, he discusses the challenges he faced alongside his team in the road to automation.

Patsy Christian works in AP for more than 15 years, she managed teams as small as 3 people. Now she is Accounts Payable Manager at Bourne Leisure.

Matthew is the Undergraduate Careers Manager, Lancaster University Management School (LUMS); a globally ranked, quadruple accredited, Top 10 UK Business School, at The Times University of the Year 2018. In this role, Matthew leads on the employability provision for over 3000 undergraduates, which includes a bespoke programme of careers education modules, information, and employer events. As an experienced Careers Consultant, Matthew specialises in the fields of accounting, finance and consultancy, and successfully coaches candidates through the competitive graduate, placement and internship recruitment stages now expected within the industry. He works closely with the ICAEW, CIMA, Hays Recruitment and a broad range of national and international employers, from across the finance and accountancy sectors.  Prior to his current role, Matthew trained as a commercial recruiter with a focus on temporary, graduate and permanent roles within small and medium enterprises in the North West of England

Daniel Ricardo is the Director of a small (8 strong team) Online Marketing agency concentrating on delivering effective Inbound Marketing strategies.  Strategy Plus has been delivering online marketing solutions since 1997 for all kinds of businesses, from start-ups to multi-nationals.  Daniel also enjoys boxing and promoting the Jewellery Quarter!

Michael Ryan is a Business Transformation leader with over 20 years experience implementing Change in a blue chip environment. He knows how challenging it is to create sustainable Change. Michael is an energising Motivational Speaker who lives and breathes Change because he believes it starts with you!

Karen Young is a Director of Hays and a recruiting expert,  extremely passionate about helping people to find the right job, and companies to find the right person to do a great job for them. Her specific area of expertise is the recruitment of senior accountancy and financial appointments. 

Stewart Griffiths is the Payments Manager at Bio Products Laboratory, passionate about people, process and technology he is a recognised industry contributor. With over twenty years experience working in transactional finance, Stewart has a proven track record of developing teams and implementing robust processes for businesses like Green & Black’s Chocolate and fashion retailer White Stuff.  His goals for 2019 are to engage more with fellow industry peers to better understand the challenges the world of AP is facing and offer his advice and support whenever possible.

Today we have a special guest over the pond. Debra is an accounts payable speaker, consultant, and trainer with over 20 years of experience in AP, AR, general ledger, and financial reporting for Fortune 500 companies including Verizon, General Motors and Aramark. For the past eight years, Debra has focused on Global Vendor Maintenance, and recently implemented a vendor self-registration portal for 140k+ global vendors across five ERPs. In her consultancy, she focuses on internal controls and authentication to prevent fraud in the vendor master file.

Our guests John Wallace CEO of Documation who will share a real view of what makes a journey into Automation successful & more importantly where to start. Also we welcome a client of Documation Gary Feary, Director of IT Solutions at Graftons

After working in the finance and treasury departments of several large companies Mary Schaeffer turned to writing and consulting full time.  Tips from Mary Schaeffer "If you can learn a little bit about blockchain which I think is coming at us, artificial intelligence, RPA, if you can learn about these impact the Accounts Payable function, you'll have given yourself that little bit of an edge, and we all need that edge to kind of get to the next level. So you can be the missionary in your organisation pushing forward with this" "Go to Youtube, put the words in "accounts payable ai" "accounts payable RPA" some of those little videos are not that long and read!" "Don't be scared if you are! It's a world of opportunity out there, there's a lot of change coming, learn all about it and be part of it!"