Preventing Fraud at AT&T with Automated Onboarding and Risk Management

100,000+ suppliers. 70+ business units. Lots of email exchanges to onboard suppliers. And it left AT&T exposed to fraud. During this session, we will walk through AT&T’s supplier onboarding process and transition to a self-service supplier portal to protect against fraud and dramatically reduce the manual work required to onboard suppliers.

• How AT&T is consolidating the onboarding process from one process for every BU to one dashboard for everything
• Improving the experience for internal clients and suppliers through intelligent automation
• Addressing payment fraud at the vendor master level
• And Akhilesh Agarwal discusses new fraudster tactics in 2022

Mark Brousseau
President, Brousseau & Associates 

Over the past 26 years, Mark Brousseau has established himself as a thought leader on accounts payable, accounts receivable, payments and document automation.   A popular speaker at industry conferences and on webinars and podcasts, Brousseau advises prominent end-users and solutions and services providers on how to use automation to improve document- and payments-driven business processes.  Brousseau has chaired numerous educational conferences and has served on several industry committees and boards.  He resides in Center City Philadelphia with his wife and three sons.

Ken Reatherford
Director, Finance Global Operations, AT&T

With 32 years of finance experience at AT&T, Ken Reatherford has had a very fulfilling career and is proud to call AT&T ‘family.’ As the Director of Accounts Payable, Global Operations, he leads several teams responsible for all aspects of paying AT&T suppliers and employee expenses, which combined process over 22M invoices worth $120B and issue over 18M payments to suppliers and employees. Prior to being the Director of Operations, Ken’s previous roles included Project Management, Mergers and Acquisitions, Financial System Support and Operational Support all in lead positions.

He was born, raised and currently resides in the Midwest region of the US. He spends his free time with his rescued Bullmastiff, working in his yard and on home projects, spending time with family and traveling both abroad and within the US.

Akhilesh Agarwal
COO & EVP, Global Procure to Pay Solutions & Applied Technology, apexanalytix

Akhilesh Agarwal leads the apexanalytix solutions practice responsible for apexportal, the industry’s only 100 percent touchless solution for global supplier information management and working capital optimization. He leads the development of new client-focused software innovations, guided by the regular trend analyses he conducts to ensure that apexportal delivers real-world efficiency and productivity benefits. He also oversees pre-sales, product management, project planning and reviews, risk mitigation and the delivery of seamless solutions to large global clients across country borders.

Akhilesh has extensive background in product design and execution in accounts payable, accounts receivable and related areas. Before joining apexanalytix, he was vice president of technology for iQor, a provider of intelligent customer interaction solutions, where he earned a reputation there for consistently delivering on high-visibility, high-performance projects. He also is a former associate director of software development for Receivable Management Services and a former project manager for Aditya International.