July 31, 2026
Most recovery programs and automation tools are working. They’re just not reaching every layer of savings.
A finance leader at a recent industry event said something that stuck with us: “It’s time to sharpen the saw and break down silos.”
How Deep Does Your Recovery Program Go?
It’s a simple idea, but the implications are significant.
In our experience working with companies across 30 countries, the ones recovering the most value aren’t necessarily running better individual programs. They’re connecting the dots across them.
In this month’s S2P Edge, we’re exploring exactly that. It’s about going deeper and wider with what’s possible across your S2P data, because each layer finds things the others can’t reach.
Why the Layers Matter
Consider a typical scenario: a company runs a solid AP recovery program. It catches duplicate payments, missed credits, and pricing discrepancies. It appears to be working well enough.
What they don’t see is what’s happening one layer deeper.
Most programs are focused on common overpayments and surface-level errors. But roughly 80% of the recoverable value we find comes from supplier statement reconciliation and related categories.
And the same pricing errors showing up in AP transactions often point to deeper issues in how contracts are being applied.
Rebate tiers not triggering.
Pass-throughs miscalculated.
These aren’t AP problems, but they were hiding in AP data the whole time.
One manufacturing client saw this firsthand. What started as an AP recovery engagement revealed contract and pricing inconsistencies that, once addressed, grew into a global contract compliance initiative. The result was $98M in total savings over six years.
It happened because of the ability to look across AP transactions and deep into supplier statements. And then deeper still into the contracts themselves.
Going Deeper Doesn’t Mean Slowing Down
You might expect that going deeper into the data would take more time. In retail, the opposite is proving true. Retailers have always had a super complicated S2P process. Razor thin margins, countless promotions, and data living in multiple places, much of it unstructured. AP and merchandise recovery aren’t redundant — they’re reviewing entirely different transaction sets. Vendor funding, promotional deals, and constantly changing pricing create distinct layers of leakage that AP programs don’t reach.
Today, the ability to dig into emails, promotional data, and transaction details at speed is changing the math. One major US retailer generated $13M in fee savings and cut its claim-to-cash cycle by 9 months.
Looking Beneath the Transactions
This is the layer that asks a fundamentally different question. At the AP or retail transaction level, the question is: was this payment accurate and was this promotion credited properly? At the contract level, the question changes: is what’s being billed actually what was negotiated?
The gap between those two questions is where significant and largely unscrutinized spend lives.
On the direct spend side, contract terms like rebate tiers, volume discounts, and pass-throughs may not be applied as agreed.
On the indirect spend side, facilities management, IT labor, MRO, fleet maintenance, and other services contracts represent high-spend categories often managed by operations teams rather than procurement.
Most teams don’t have full visibility into whether what’s being invoiced matches what was negotiated. Contract compliance closes that gap across both.
Why Suppliers See the Value
A common question is whether recovery and compliance programs create friction with suppliers. The data says otherwise. When the process is structured and transparent, suppliers welcome it. They value honest feedback and process improvement, and they’re even more receptive to proactive and collaborative approaches where both sides benefit.
In construction, established contractors maintain dedicated audit rooms because the process helps simplify closeout, payments, and future builds.
Recovery and compliance programs, done well, create a shared language around what was agreed and what was delivered. That builds trust rather than tension.
The Compounding Effect
The feedback we hear consistently from clients is this: the more areas you look into, the more you find, and the savings compound. Each layer surfaces things the others can’t reach. And when those layers are connected, the picture becomes considerably more valuable than any single program can deliver.
This kind of connected visibility is also what positions organizations for what’s coming next, whether that’s agentic AI, real-time orchestration, or more preventive approaches. The foundation has to be there first.
That’s the July edition of S2P Edge. As always — if something here sparks a conversation you want to have, reach out: Speak with a PRGX expert.