ERP + AP: Why the Smartest S/4HANA Strategies Include Specialist Partners

As companies seek to drive innovation and improve efficiency, SAP S/4HANA has emerged as a powerful tool . However, many quickly realize that core ERP alone isn’t enough to deliver best-in-class outcomes—especially in critical functions like accounts payable and invoice management. That’s why more SAP organizations are taking a modular technology approach and turning to specialist finance automation partners like Basware to complement S/4HANA. These best-of-breed platforms reduce the complexity of ERP deployments, accelerate time-to-value, and provide robust capabilities for invoice lifecycle management (ILM), compliance, and AI-driven insights.  

The New Reality for Invoice Lifecycle Management 

The way global companies manage invoices has changed dramatically in recent years. It’s no longer just about matching purchase orders and invoices. Today, invoice management must support end-to-end automation, real-time compliance, and strategic decision-making. 

Finance teams face growing pressure to: 

• Comply with fast-evolving global tax and e-invoicing mandates 

• Mitigate financial and fraud risks 

• Optimize working capital and supplier relationships 

• Deliver actionable insights on cost and cash flow
   

These demands are further compounded by the need to drive efficiency and maintain seamless collaboration with internal users and external suppliers—all while embracing AI to scale operations intelligently.  

 From Invoice Accuracy to Invoice Assurance 

With Basware, organizations can improve invoice match rate and capture every invoice with 100% accuracy through SmartPDF technology. Moreover, the platform’s automated coding for non-PO spend, using machine learning like SmartCoding, generates accurate invoice coding proposals based on historical data. This intelligence speeds up tasks, eliminates errors, and leads to dramatic decreases in processing errors. The AP Protect feature gives organizations an added layer of security—detecting anomalies and reducing fraud risk across the invoice lifecycle. 

As a result, businesses can authorize payments up to 30 times faster, leading to significant labor savings and the ability to earn early payment discounts. Basware customers have seen invoice processing times drop from 11 days to less than 24 hours, with over 95% touchless processing achievable. 

“While we could configure SAP to do what some of Basware does, we’d never get it to be as good as Basware,” Bill Martin, IT Director and Business Partner for the North America Small Packaging Division, Mauser Packaging Solutions  

Recent Basware projects have yielded exciting results: one R&D driven company was able to overcome issues with heavily-localized processes by harmonizing systems. With Basware’s help, this company achieved $9 million in productivity savings and 25% customer experience improvement.  

Another oil and gas company used Basware ahead of its SAP S/4HANA implementation to achieve early compliance and benefits. This resulted in $17 million in value through accelerated benefits. 

This isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about delivering measurable value. According to Basware’s global ‘AI to ROI’ research, 50% of CFOs say they’ll cut AI investment within a year if it doesn’t deliver tangible ROI. That’s why specialized solutions like AP automation are essential to an AI strategy, because they’re already turning investment into impact. 

 Visibility and Compliance 

Another critical driver for the focus on AP automation as its own module is the enhanced visibility and compliance it brings. Finance departments face a “compliance minefield” with e-invoicing and tax reporting regulations constantly evolving across different regions. Legacy ERP systems, often aren’t specialized enough in this area and struggle to adapt to ever-changing mandates. In contrast, leading AP automation solutions provide real-time audit trails and can adapt to new e-invoicing requirements within weeks.  

What This Means for SAPinsiders 

One-size-fits-all no longer works. Unlike monolithic ERP systems that require costly upgrades and lengthy implementations, modern invoice automation solutions have open architectures that integrate seamlessly with existing tech stacks, enhancing rather than replacing investments. Basware is designed to integrate with 250+ ERP systems simultaneously and fits organizations with multiple ERPs and over 50,000 invoice transactions per year. 

True AI isn’t built overnight.  

While legacy ERPs offer some pattern matching, specialized AP providers develop “true AI” that continuously learns from vast datasets (like Basware’s 40 years of data from 2.4 billion invoices) to detect anomalies, flag duplicates, and protect against fraud. 

It’s sink or swim with compliance. Specialists are built for rapid adaptation to complex and evolving regulatory environments, unlike older ERP systems. Leading organizations seek to optimize AP before, during, and after moves to new ERPs like SAP S/4HANA. Many of these companies have turned to Basware to achieve these crucial benefits.  

 AP professionals can read Basware’s white paper to understand these potential benefits in depth.