Why BAT Won’t Sign an AP Contract Without Outcome-Based Pricing (and How It’s Working)
A recap of our SSON webinar: Visibility Wins, From Data to Decisions at British American Tobacco
Outcome-based pricing in accounts payable is not an entirely new idea. But what is rare is seeing it work at scale, with a global enterprise holding separate parties accountable to the same performance targets. That is what Rob Bullen, Group Head of GBS at British American Tobacco (BAT), walked through in our recent webinar with SSON, and the model he described is one that more AP, GBS, and P2P leaders should be paying close attention to.
By the numbers: BAT's AP transformation at a glance
For AP teams and GBS leaders, there are several predictable results from fragmented automation systems that give limited process visibility:
- Touchless invoice processing rate grew from 25% to 75% thanks to P2P transformation
- 30,000 suppliers onboarded across BAT’s global supply base
- Close to 4,500 people across 7 global hubs transferred to Accenture on March 1st 2026
- 83% of webinar attendees said fewer than 25% of their internal AP goals had been passed to vendors as contractual targets
- 80%+ touchless processing rates are now achievable with modern AI-powered AP platforms
- Up to 40,000 invoices per FTE possible with AI-driven invoice automation
Why AP automation has underdelivered for 25 years
Steve Standring, Chief Revenue Officer at Springtime Technologies, opened the session with an observation that will resonate with anyone who has been in the function for a while: 25 years of AP automation has, on the whole, been quite disappointing.
Early OCR tools routinely struggled to reach 50% accuracy. E-invoicing networks required supplier participation that most suppliers were unwilling to give. ERPs were not designed with the AP matching process in mind, and the gap between what vendors promised and what organizations actually experienced rarely closed. All of this is to say that the function has been consistently punching below its weight.
The arrival of AI-powered invoice processing has changed the picture meaningfully of course. For example, modern platforms can now hit touchless processing rates above 80% and support up to 40,000 invoices per FTE. But Steve’s broader point was not really about the technology, instead it was more about how organizations consider their AP and what they expect from it.
Contract compliance, early payment discounts, supplier relationship health, and cash flow visibility all run through the AP function. It’s the one place where a significant amount of commercial value either gets captured or quietly disappears, but most organizations have instead been relegating it to a mere back-office cost center.
BAT's P2P transformation: from 25% to 75% touchless processing
On March 1, 2026, BAT transitioned its global GBS operations to Accenture, covering seven hubs and close to nearly 4,500 people across Latin America, Europe, Malaysia, Pakistan, and India.
Prior to this transformation, BAT’s purchase-to-pay function was fragmented in ways that are common but rarely acknowledged openly.
Invoice processing lived in finance. Procurement lived in supply chain. Nobody was connecting the two in any meaningful way. Supplier onboarding was slow across a base of 30,000 suppliers. Touchless processing sat at 25% despite years of effort and seemingly countless tool implementations. And still the procurement team had no reliable way of knowing whether suppliers were being paid on time.
The targets set for the transformation were ambitious: 75% touchless processing, close to 100 role efficiencies, and a P2P function that operated as a genuine competitive advantage rather than a burden.
The 'Three in a Box' model: outcome-based AP vendor accountability
Rather than outsourcing and hoping for results, BAT created what Rob refers to as a ‘three in a box’ model. Simply put, BAT, Accenture, and each technology vendor they partner with are all contractually committed to the same productivity outcomes. What does that look like in practice?
- Accenture is contractually accountable for the efficiency targets it committed to at the point of agreement.
- Technology vendors in the stack are each contracted to deliver the specific outcomes their part of the solution is responsible for. Fees are structured at risk: if agreed outcomes are not delivered, there are defined financial consequences.
- The goal is that whoever provides a solution is also in this together with the client, not just a vendor collecting a license fee and getting to the support tickets when they can
Rob was direct about his position on vendor contracting: he will not sign a contract with a software provider unless they have skin in the game. He believes outcome-based pricing is quickly becoming table stakes across the industry, and the webinar audience data suggests most organizations have a long way to go. 83% of attendees said fewer than 25% of their internal AP goals had been passed to vendors as contractual targets.
What is outcome-based pricing in AP automation?
Outcome-based pricing is a commercial model in which vendor fees are tied to agreed, measurable performance targets, such as touchless processing rate, invoice cycle time, or on-time payment rate. If the vendor does not hit the agreed targets, there are financial consequences. It is the opposite of the traditional model, in which vendors are paid for licenses or transactions regardless of whether the outcomes they promised during the RFP phase actually materialize.
What AP visibility actually makes possible
Outcome-based pricing sounds promising if you’re looking to onboard a vendor with the confidence to support it, but organizations still have one big factor to consider: visibility. After all, you can’t hold a vendor accountable for an outcome you cannot measure. That is the practical reason, not just the strategic one, AP visibility matters and it is why reporting infrastructure is not optional in an outcome-based model.
Jasna Janjic, our Solutions Architect, walked through Invoicetrack’s reporting suite Beachwalk, live during the session. The reporting capabilities she demonstrated included the following:
- KPI dashboards tracking touchless rates and processing times against contractually agreed targets in real time
- Process mining reports showing precisely where AP teams are spending their time and where bottlenecks are forming
- Benchmarking against top-performing rates across the Invoicetrack customer base, giving teams a meaningful external reference point
- Payment risk reports that identify which invoices are at risk of late payment before it happens
That last capability connects to a process change BAT made that might sound straightforward enough but turned out to matter significantly. BAT now measures payment terms from the invoice receipt date rather than the invoice date. As Rob explained, the previous approach effectively shortened the window of time available to process and pay, because the clock was running from a date that predated the invoice arriving. Switching to receipt date was a practical fix, but one that required the visibility to identify the problem in the first place.
A deeper look at what this means for AP, GBS, and P2P leaders
The BAT case is a useful reference point because it is not a proof of concept but a live, global implementation with contractual accountability built in from the start. Here’s a few things worth writing down:
- Outcome-based pricing is achievable, but it requires agreed KPIs upfront, a single source of truth for reporting, and vendors who are contractually obligated on their delivery.
- AP visibility is not a nice-to-have in this model. It is what makes the whole structure enforceable. If you cannot measure it, you cannot keep your vendors or partners accountable.
- AP is more strategically important than most organizations treat it. The data flowing through the function touches contract compliance, supplier relationships, early payment capture, and cash flow. Treating it as a back-office cost center means leaving value on the table.
- The savings fund the investment. As Rob put it in the session, the right technology, properly governed, pays for itself. And the sequencing really matters: choose correctly, govern tightly, and measure everything.
How do you hold vendors accountable for results?
The BAT approach offers a clear blueprint: agree on specific KPIs before signing, use a single reporting platform that all parties can access, and write financial consequences for non-delivery into the contract. The ‘three in a box’ model, where the client, the outsourcing partner, and each software partner/vendor are all bound to the same outcome targets, is one of the more robust structures available for large-scale AP transformations.
Watch the full session
Rob and Steve go into more detail in the full recording, which includes a live Invoicetrack demo conducted by Jasna. Watch the recording: Visibility Wins, From Data to Decisions at British American Tobacco on-demand now.
This webinar was produced in partnership with SSON and Springtime Technologies.
Are you left wondering what end-to-end visibility could look like for your organization? Do you have questions about how outcome based pricing could work for your organization? Springtime Technologies is a leader in AI-driven automation for the AP sector, serving enterprise-level clients across the globe. Let’s talk.