What high customer satisfaction looks like in AP automation
Senior Manager Content Marketing at Medius
There's no shortage of AP automation vendors making the same promises: fast implementation, powerful AI. seamless integration and 24/7 support. Every sales deck you see starts to blend into the next. The question is who delivers on those claims, and if their customers will still have positive feelings about the product two or three years in.
That's what IDC set out to measure, and the results for Medius are hard to argue with.
IDC's 2026 SaaS & Agent Path Survey asked 2,845 current AP software users across all regions and company sizes to rate their vendors on 32 different metrics. Current users of the products you're evaluating, rating the platforms they use every day. Medius placed in the highest-scoring group and earned IDC's 2026 SaaS CSAT Award for Accounts Payable. That's independent, third-party confirmation that Medius delivers on its promises. But the data goes further than the award. It shows what drives satisfaction in AP automation and where most vendors fall short.
The metrics that separate good platforms from great ones
IDC's framework covers three broad areas: the vendor relationship, the implementation experience, and ongoing product value. Medius scored above the market average across all of these categories. Here's what that means in practice.
Implementation experience
This is where most AP projects fail before they ever go live. Lengthy timelines, heavy IT dependency, and expensive consulting engagements consume budget and favor before a single invoice gets processed. IDC's data shows ease of implementation is one of the top metrics where AP customers say their vendor fell short. Medius scores above the market average here, and it's not by accident. Most Medius customers go live in less than 90 days, integrated into their existing ERP(s), and achieve the results they were promised.
AI-driven capabilities
Most vendors in this space have added AI to their marketing. Fewer have built it into the core workflows and use a rich historical data bank to power it. Medius uses AI to code invoices, flag anomalies, match purchase orders, and keep the process moving without someone intervening at every step. That's not automation with an AI label on it. That's a fundamentally different approach to how AP gets done. Customers notice, and IDC's scores reflect it. Medius uses AI throughout the AP process, not as a layer on top of it.
Ease of integration
ERPs are broad and complex financial systems that were never meant to handle the intricacies of invoice workflows, payment processes, supplier records. AP automation solves for that gap, but if the integration between the two is fragile, everything downstream breaks. IDC found ease of integration to be one of the most common sources of unmet expectations across AP vendors. Medius integrates with major ERP platforms including SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Infor, and NetSuite. That depth of ERP coverage matters. It's the reason Medius can support complex, multi-entity environments where simpler tools can't keep up.
Built-in analytics
Finance teams need visibility into what's pending, what's paid, and where spend is going. Without it, AP is just a processing queue. IDC's respondents who felt their platform fell short flagged built-in analytics as one of the top gaps. It's one of the reasons AP teams feel like they're always behind. Medius Analytics gives teams that visibility out of the box.
Trusted brand
Trusted brand is one of the 18 satisfaction dimensions IDC tracks, and it's one of the most powerful ones. It means customers believe the vendor will keep investing in the product, pick up the phone when something goes wrong, and still be the right partner three years from now. It's established through every implementation, support interaction, and release. Medius scoring above the market average here speaks volumes about how customers experience the relationship over time, not just at the point of sale.
What the market data says about where AP is headed
IDC also asked AP software users across all vendors about their spending plans for the next 12 months. 61.5% said they expect to increase their AP software budget. Only 3.8% expected to spend less.
That's a category with momentum. More investment also means higher expectations, and less patience for platforms that promise one thing and deliver another.
Among the 28.5% of AP customers who said their platform fell short, the most cited gaps were ease of integration, ease of implementation, availability of training, and built-in analytics. Those are some of the core things an AP platform should do well. They're also the exact areas where our customers rate Medius above the market average.
What to look for when evaluating AP software
Customer satisfaction data is one of the most reliable inputs available when evaluating AP automation platforms. It paints a better picture beyond what a vendor's product does, telling you what it's really like to use it over time, at scale, once the demo is long over.
When you're evaluating vendors, press on the specifics: how long implementation takes, what your team needs to provide, where AI does real work versus where it's just labeling, how the platform connects to your ERP, and what reporting looks like without custom development. Those questions cut through the marketing. They're also where the gap between vendors becomes most obvious.
Our customers gave Medius top marks in all of those areas and is why IDC placed Medius in the highest-scoring group across all AP vendors in the 2026 survey. If you're looking for a reason to put Medius on your shortlist, Medius customers just gave you one.
Read the full IDC report to see how the scores break down across all 32 metrics. Or if you'd rather see the platform directly, book a demo.
