The finance function has become an early testing ground and organizational bellwether for process and performance improvements. In tracking the massive shifts and accelerated trends coming out of 2020, APQC has seen finance functions lead the way on global trends involving transformation,…

What is Digital Transformation? For the sake of this article, I will define the term by the two words that compose “digital transformation”: Digital and Transformation. Digital, or technology, AND transformation, or change, means that a digital transformation in your organization has produced a…

It’s hard to believe, but March 2021 marks more than one year since the pandemic hit the U.S. in full force. During that time, there have been many changes and challenges (both positive and negative), from scarcities in the supply chain, to new health, safety, and wellness protocols in the places…

2020 was a whirlwind of a year, and in addition to learning lessons from the past year, it is important to be thinking ahead to critical success factors for the year to come. To that end, in the fourth quarter of 2020, APQC recommenced its annual survey to understand the key priorities and…

The order-to-cash (O2C) process is fundamental to the basic objective of every organization—exchanging goods or services for payment—and ensures that an organization has the working capital necessary to operate. Encompassing so many customer-facing activities and interorganizational handoffs, the…

The pandemic has resulted in increased pressure on finance functions for more accurate forecasting, ready liquidity, and better working capital management. In order to better understand what success looks like for treasury during the COVID-19 pandemic and what it may look like in the post-…

The current COVID-19 environment has presented many challenges for planning and FP&A teams. Historical data is no longer terribly relevant to help predict the future. Some organizations (some online retailers, online grocery, face mask and hand sanitizer manufacturers, etc.), are seeing…

Now more than ever before, finance and treasury departments are experiencing a period of intense change, characterized by the accessibility and availability of a myriad of new cloud-based tools and technologies, increasing expectations of service delivery and business partnership levels, and the…

APQC is frequently asked for benchmarks, best practices, and examples for key end-to-end processes, such as order-to-cash (O2C). In addition, O2C content on APQC’s Resource Library is consistently some of the most popular content in terms of financial management downloads consistently over the last…

In this “new normal” (or “new abnormal”) that we find ourselves in as a result of the pandemic, the number of cyber and fraud attacks have been on the rise, as have their level of sophistication, as “bad actors” seek to take advantage of the situation. As the owners of remittance and payments…