Autonomous Accounts Payable: Agentic AI for AP Operations

Autonomous Accounts Payable

Overview

Autonomous AP reimagines Accounts Payable by placing business outcomes at the core. Designed with deep domain expertise and insight, it delivers measurable gains in business value by optimizing overall cycle time, elevating vendor experiences and enhancing controls for risk and compliance. The solution ensures interoperability across systems, enabling seamless data flow and real-time insights.

By combining decision autonomy to solve for exceptions with built-in forensic controls, enterprises can confidently determine growth indicators, strengthen compliance and assure payments. With Agentic AI, operations self-learn and adapt, reducing manual effort while driving speed to value and a frictionless supplier experience. Crucially, it addresses data security and human oversight to prevent errors and hallucinations, ensuring trustworthy outcomes and resilient supplier relationships.

Why Autonomous AP?

The Strategic Edge

The shift from assisted automation to true autonomy is transforming the world of AP operations. Traditional AP automation alleviates manual tasks but still relies on human input. Autonomous AP, powered by Agentic AI, breaks this dependency. It enables systems to sense, make decisions and drive the AP cycle end-to-end, autonomously.

Business outcomes that define your strategic edge

Numbers that Speak Volumes

~90%

Improvement in cycle time

70%

Fewer errors

95%

Lower fraud risk

~90%

Touchless processing

>90%

Vendor satisfaction

80%

Realization of early payment discount

>95%

Late-fee avoidance

>95%

Late-fee avoidance

Commercial Model

Consumption-based model

A flexible, pay-as-you-go approach where the model adapts to your actual invoice volumes. Ideal for organizations with variable or seasonal invoice flows, ensuring predictability and scalability without heavy upfront commitments.

Scales with your business activity based on the number of invoices processed and the volume of vendor queries handled
Offers cost efficiency and transparency by aligning directly with utilization

Outcome-based model

A value-driven model where the focus is on delivering measurable business results. This model ties directly to the outcomes achieved, ensuring both value realization and accountability.

Aligns to outcomes, such as cost per invoice, days payable outstanding and invoice ready to pay
Built on a value-sharing principle: Fixed fee + measurable risk/reward owned jointly
Builds trust and long-term partnership through measurable impact

Leadership Dialogue

Without a solid process in place, we’ve seen in the past that automation programs often fail to deliver ROI, sometimes not even covering their own costs. But with all the AI technologies emerging, there’s both a need and an opportunity to shift the focus from a productivity-driven operating model to a business outcome–driven one.

Leadership Speaks

Avishek Chattopadhyay

Executive Vice President, HCLTech

“I believe the future of AP goes beyond automation. With Agentic AI, we’re enabling systems that don’t just execute tasks, but make smarter choices. That shift means compliance is stronger, payments are reliable and partners have a smoother experience—outcomes that directly fuel growth and trust.”