In the hyper-competitive current world of business, it’s more important than ever to have a proper handle on your finances. And that means making sure that your finance department is running as smoothly as possible.
To give your finance team the best opportunities to grow and deliver on their potential, consider these five steps to revolutionize your financial workflows, from integrating systems to AP automation. By improving workflows and maximizing productivity, your business could reap significant benefits.
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Review your existing workflows
Before you can get started on the task ahead, you need to know exactly where you currently stand. It’s no use implementing solutions if you aren’t sure of what problems your team may be facing.
So, make it your first order of business to conduct a thorough review and assessment of your existing financial workflows and processes. This will allow you to identify key areas for improvement, finding any inefficiencies and bottlenecks that are holding your team back at present.
Most importantly, involve all of the key stakeholders within the review process so that you don’t miss any crucial insights into the current lay of the land.
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Invest in AP automation
One of the biggest pain points within financial departments is the need to carry out repetitive and time-consuming tasks. While these are often essential to ensuring that finances flow correctly, they can be a major source of inefficiency.
Your team’s time is far better spent on tasks that add to the value of the business and further relationships with clients or suppliers. This is where accounts payable automation comes in. It allows you to take a lot of the menial work in processing and coding invoices off your team, giving it over to the software instead.
Not only does automation free up your financial department to do other tasks, but it also reduces the risk of human error within the process.
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Integrate your systems
A simple way to smooth out your workflows is to ensure that all relevant systems are properly integrated. Siloing is a major source of inefficiency, as staff are forced to waste time tracking down information that should be easily accessible and visible.
Joining together existing systems, from your customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to financial systems is essential if you want your business to flourish.
Unifying your systems and software so that financial data is consistent and accessible will enable more informed decision making and real-time insights.
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Unify processes
Just as you integrate disparate systems to reduce siloing, ensure that all your financial processes are united into a single workflow. Having to move between different software and systems in the course of processing any given invoice, collating data or building a report only slows your team down.
Ideally, you want to bring everything together into a unified financial workflow that your team can easily follow. If your processes are all part of a centralized system that flows intuitively then this quickly cuts down on wasted time.
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Cut out inefficiencies
At the end of the day, reducing inefficiency within the financial department plays a major part in improving your teams’ workflows. When your team can operate at their fullest ability and focus then they will inevitably get more work done.
Taking the results of your review, target any repetitive or redundant steps and processes within the financial department. Utilizing tools such as AP automation allows your staff to cut out a lot of the little tasks that drain their time, leaving it to the automated software to handle those tasks instead.
Inefficiency loses your business time and money, so it’s essential to take steps to improve efficiency across the board.
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If your business wants to level up, then it’s essential to keep your finance department operating smoothly. Take these five steps to revolutionize your financial workflows and propel your business towards fresh opportunities for growth and innovation.
