Cassie Petrie, Managing Director SMB EMEA at SAP Concur
Effective financial management is critical, but it can be challenging due to limited resources and complex financial regulations – especially for SMBs.
However, many SMBs may be struggling to see how AI and automation can tangibly improve their operations. While the likes of ChatGPT have made AI more accessible to everyone, it can still be challenging to assess how it can truly benefit them as a business and their customers.
The reality is, by adopting AI-powered solutions SMBs can automate various financial processes, such as bookkeeping, budgeting, and forecasting, freeing up valuable time and resources for other core business activities.
These technologies can analyse financial data in real-time, providing businesses with up-to-date insights into their financial health, cash flow, and profitability. SMBs can enhance accuracy, improve efficiency, ensure compliance with financial regulations, and drive growth by making data-driven decisions based on a comprehensive understanding of their financial performance.
And in the current economic climate – a close eye and cash flow, improved forecasting and more time to spend on other areas of the business are critical.
There’s no denying that finance teams and SMB leaders are more pressured than ever. Tasked with finding more efficiencies, reducing fraud and cutting costs. But is the technology they’re using supporting them on this journey, or hindering them?
Eliminate bottlenecks and reduce tedious manual tasks
Finance teams are pressured to become more efficient by increasing spend compliance, reducing fraud, and eliminating waste. However, much of their time is spent with manual, error-prone data entry, managing approvals, and audits. These tasks are time-consuming and difficult. They slow down your team and leave them with little time for creative problem-solving.
By streamlining routine tasks, organisations can eliminate the bottlenecks bogging them down. Automating manual tasks can also create integrations to smooth the flow of data and approvals and help employees to focus their expertise on more strategic and complex activities, driving innovation and adding value to the organisation. The result is increased productivity, improved operational efficiency, and the ability to make more informed decisions, ultimately leading to better financial outcomes.
Improve visibility and decision making
When out-of-compliance spending requires a human to decide whether to approve or deny, there is much room for interpretation – unless they have all the relevant data at their fingertips. Connecting travel and spend data sources and using intelligent technology gives them access to more information allowing business-critical decisions to be made quickly and confidently. Empowering people with high-quality information allows them to be analytical in finding areas for improvement and creative in finding the solutions. Integrating travel and expense solutions with financial systems provides near real-time insights into spending so your business can be more agile and responsive to change.
Enhance accuracy and cut out fraud
AI algorithms have proven invaluable in finance by harnessing their analytical power to detect potential risks and identify fraudulent activities. Detecting non-compliant spending patterns and repeat offenders is critical to your finance team’s mission.
The goal is to find errors before payments, or spending are processed. Even beyond fraud prevention, identifying new patterns can help inform policies to guide future spending and create a culture of compliance. With better insights, your finance team is well-equipped to move forward with creative solutions to optimise travel and expense costs.
People cannot always spot patterns and trends that machines can. By analysing vast amounts of financial data, these algorithms can quickly flag suspicious transactions, identify unusual patterns or anomalies, and monitor account activity in real-time. Through advanced machine learning techniques, AI algorithms can learn from historical data and detect patterns that may indicate fraudulent behaviour, such as unusual spending patterns or unauthorised access attempts. AI can also employ intelligence capabilities using multiple variables to validate routine transactions and highlight exceptions.
Staying ahead of competitors
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organisations that have yet to embrace automation in their expense invoice processes are already falling behind. Automation has become crucial to streamlining and optimising financial operations, including invoice management. By automating expense invoice processes, businesses can significantly reduce errors, eliminate time-consuming manual tasks, and improve overall efficiency.
Automation allows for seamless invoice data extraction, validation, and processing, ensuring accuracy and reducing the risk of human error. Additionally, automated systems can perform intelligent matching and verification of invoices, flagging discrepancies or irregularities for further investigation.
This level of automation saves time and resources and enables businesses to gain real-time visibility into their financial transactions, enhance compliance, and make data-driven decisions. In contrast, companies that continue to rely on manual and paper-based invoice processes face slower processing times, increased potential for errors, and a lack of timely insights. By adopting automation, these businesses avoid lagging behind their competitors, who have already embraced the efficiency and advantages of automated expense invoice processes.
