Case studies are the main evidence offered in this category and they are written by the people selling. That does not make them worthless; it makes them documents to interrogate rather than to quote. Four questions turn a case study from a marketing artefact into something you can learn from, and the fourth question is the one that determines how much weight the first three deserve.
What was the baseline, and how was it measured
A saving is a difference from something. If the before figure was estimated rather than measured, the improvement is an estimate too. Look for whether the baseline was timed, over what period, and whether it included the exception handling or only the clean path. Baselines that appear as round numbers usually were not measured.
What was actually in scope
An organisation that automated capture only will report a different kind of gain from one that also changed its purchase-order discipline. Very often the largest reported improvement came from a process change that happened alongside the software and would have delivered most of the benefit on its own. That is useful to know, because you may be able to do the process part first and cheaply.
How comparable is the organisation
Invoice volume, the share with purchase orders behind them, industry, and how the team was structured beforehand. A hospitality group with thousands of small invoices and a professional services firm with a few hundred large ones will get different things from the same product. Comparability matters more than the size of the headline number.
Questions people ask about accounts payable automation case study
Are vendor case studies useless?
No, they are evidence with a known bias. The details, particularly about scope and baseline, are often genuinely informative even when the headline is promotional.
What should we ask a vendor for instead?
A reference customer of similar size and invoice mix, and permission to ask them what did not go well. The answer to that second question is the useful one.
Can we build our own baseline?
Yes, and it takes an afternoon: time ten invoices end to end, count monthly volume, and count how many had an order and a receipt behind them.