Research

The value of accounts payable (AP) research and benchmarking to companies is multifaceted, offering insights that can significantly enhance operational efficiency, financial management, and strategic positioning. Thus, APQC is conducting new research to understand the current state of broad accounts payable processes. By understanding and applying industry best practices, companies can streamline their AP processes, mitigate risks, and position themselves for sustainable growth.

APQC partners with ScottMadden to conduct a bi-annual Finance Shard Service Benchmarking Study that collects measures and best practices concerning: • Characteristics of top-performing SSOs • Ways automation and GenAI are changing the traditional FM SSO • Trends with governance, globalization, and hybrid work models

As part of the 2025 Financial Management Priorities and Challenges research, APQC surveyed finance professionals from various industries, geographies, and organizational sizes. Surveyed topics include trends and challenges in digital transformation, cash flow management, and finance risk management.

This collection curates content that will enable learning and development (L&D) leaders to develop a foundation of L&D knowledge, tools, and strategy. It includes guidance on: -Choosing the best L&D structure for your organization -Investing in L&D technology for different learning needs and budgets -Selecting and using L&D measures to measure success

What does it take to successfully onboard workers today? As younger generations make up a greater portion of the workforce and remote and hybrid work becomes more common, employers are questioning whether their current onboarding programs are effective. To help answer this question, APQC surveyed employees about their onboarding experiences. In early 2025, employees who had been working in their current role for two years or less responded to survey questions about onboarding approaches, timelines, learning approaches, delivery methods, overall effectiveness, and employee satisfaction. The research findings reveal what the ideal onboarding experience looks like for today's workforce.

What kind of employee experience engages employees today? With more generations in the workforce; a mix of remote, hybrid, and in-office employees; and reports that employees are over-burdened and burned out, employers are uncertain about what it will take to engage and retain all of their employees. To help answer this question, APQC surveyed more than 600 workers asking what motivates them to perform their best work and whether they are receiving the things they find most important from their employers today. The research findings included clear moments that matter in the employee experience today that HR professionals and leaders can focus on to improve the employee experience at their organization.

These toolkit collections provide guidance, tools, and downloadable templates to help organizations carry-out workforce planning and HR transformation.

KM programs continue to use APQC’s flagship KM benchmarking survey to level-set and evaluate their KM programs. In 2025, APQC expanded and enhanced this survey in response to shifts in enterprise knowledge needs, workforce structure, and technology capabilities. The current assessment provides today’s KM programs with the data and insights they need to make smart decisions about how KM should be staffed and structured, the resources KM needs and how they should be allocated, the tools and approaches needed to enable the flow of knowledge, how success should be measured, and what kind of results to expect. This collection highlights results from the research, including benchmarking data and related insights.

This research explores the role of KM teams in driving digital transformation and the effectiveness of various technologies, such as virtual collaboration, machine learning, and AI, in knowledge management. The research aims to provide insights into current trends, deployment strategies, and the impact of technology on knowledge management capabilities.

APQC's Knowledge Management Essentials series explores key KM topics and offers introductory content, best practices, and tools and templates. The research collections provide a wealth of information about knowledge management techniques and approaches, along with practical tips for getting started and staying updated on new resources.

The content within the collection will teach you about key performance indicators (KPIs) for information technology, as well as proven performance improvement drivers and best practices. This content is derived from an analysis of APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking® in Information Technology Organization Performance assessment and is a collection of benchmarks and metrics, as well as best practices and business drivers.

The goal of process management is to improve performance. Whether the emphasis is customer retention, cycle time, employee satisfaction, efficiency, business growth, productivity, or any other goal, organizations implement process management to improve something. Without an overarching management strategy, improvements often breed unintended consequences that harm other parts of the organization. APQC conducted a survey to understand process improvement programs in key areas such as identification of which processes to improve, prioritizing and selecting which process improvement projects are worth employees’ time, and the sustainability of process improvement projects. This collection contains the survey findings and insights for organizations to benchmark in these key areas.

APQC conducted a survey to understand process management program practices, strategies, and resources. The survey report uses APQC’s Seven Tenets of Process Management as a structure for assessing key areas such as governance, strategy, change, improvement, measurement, tools, and models.

In February of 2024, APQC conducted a survey to understand how digital tools and technologies impact process and performance management (PPM) professionals and the organizations they support. This research explores the role of digital technology in the process and performance space categorized by organizational size based on revenue, including defining trends in digital and technology for the PPM space, defining what organizations see as future needs and approaches for digital and technology in the PPM area, and identifying leading PPM digital technologies and tools.

Prepared using data from APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking® in Sales and Marketing and APQC’s Benchmarks on Demand portal, these collections highlight sales, marketing, and customer service key performance indicators (KPI) benchmarks and practices for organizations across industries.

In its 2025 Supply Chain Management Priorities and Challenges research, APQC asked supply chain professionals across numerous industries about their expectations and trends for the year ahead. Some topics include operational and process innovation, logistics, procurement, sourcing, and supply chain planning.  Learn more about how well supply chains performed in 2024, changes and trends impacting supply chains, the biggest obstacles to improving supply chains, and focus areas and priorities for supply chains in 2025.

This 2024 update of APQC’s Sourcing and Procurement Blueprint for Success serves as a guide for how procurement professionals can achieve best-practice performance. The report provides a framework for optimizing the core processes comprising sourcing and procurement as well as performance drivers to achieve success.

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors are used to measure sustainability and organizational impact. ESG reporting is an essential part of providing updates to stakeholders of all kinds, including investors, regulatory agencies, customers, and employees. This collection provides insights into each of the ESG factors, the challenges in ESG reporting, the number of tracked metrics, the types of reporting standards and frameworks used, and more.

APQC conducts periodic quick polls in supply chain to learn about the latest trends in emerging technologies and key practices. This research from APQC gathered insights from supply chain professionals on a variety of topics.

As part of ongoing research in supply chain, APQC gathered information on the latest artificial intelligence (AI) trends, technology strategy, and decision making across different areas in supply chain.