[Music] hi everyone mark brousseau here i have an admission to make i'm a big fan of old-time science fiction movies and part of the appeal of these movies to me is that many of them follow the same basic premise aliens come to earth from outer space they promise to solve humanity's problems in reality they're here to eradicate humanity humanity fights back it occurred to me the other day that accounts payable professionals view accounts payable automation with the same level of distrust that they'd have for those aliens who came to earth they believe that automation is really here to eradicate their jobs well the difference between old time science fiction movies and accounts payable automation other than the missing ray gun spaceships and little green men is that accounts payable automation really is here to eradicate manual tests and not take away our jobs highly automated accounts payable departments find that once they're freed from manual tasks such as keying invoice data chasing down information and dealing with endless inquiries from suppliers about the status of invoices now they have more time to focus on higher value more fulfilling activities that can help move the business forward and there's really three things that automation frees up your staff to focus on the first is data analysis everyone wants better visibility into their cash flow and spending [Music] the second is supplier management organizations are better able to manage their supplier relationships as well as their spend and the third is cleaning up their filthy vendor master database enough said about that so we shouldn't look at automation with distrust it really is here to eradicate our manual tasks now about those little green guys in your backyard i'm not so sure