Mari-Frances Bentvelzen, Business Head and General Manager of Global SMB at SAP Concur
As managers continue to drive their businesses through these uncertain economic times, it is important for them to properly equip and guide their organisations. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are looking to save money during this inflation crisis. By looking carefully into different areas, there are many hidden costs that can be found to combat rising expenses and interest rates.
With 2023 approaching, it’s time for businesses to be more proactive towards improving their processes. Automating administratively heavy tasks can be hugely beneficial in saving time and resources, both of which can have a big impact on the bottom line.
Although travel logistics, expense tracking and invoice processing can sound like a lot of background noise, these processes can all be optimised through automation. This offers more visibility for finance leaders and helps free up valuable time and resources for employees within the organisation.
Identify which key areas need automation
The first step to adopting automation is highlighting which areas can be improved with specific technology. This includes auditing the business and identifying which areas are outdated. From this point, businesses need to determine which processes and procedures may benefit from digital transformation. High on the list are manual processes and data input — two areas that often are riddled with mistakes and delays. Automating these areas proves to be useful for both the organisation and its employees.
Another common issue that finance leaders face is lack of access into full spend visibility. To improve decision making, managers must be confident about the trusted insights, transparency and perspectives in their business. Reporting tools and automated processes can help verify expenses through integration with other vendors and systems.
Without automation, it is difficult for finance departments to ensure all data has been inputted and centralised. This can make it difficult to determine the most appropriate and potentially effective areas to target cost-saving measures. Spend management solutions can, however, provide finance leaders with full visibility into where their money is being spend, enabling any spend that does not correlate with policy to be flagged. This can help businesses to reduce non-compliant spend and increase policy and regulatory compliance.
Find the best solution for both business and employees
Once these areas are identified, the business must adjust for compliance requirements, infrastructure changes and spend changes. Finance leaders should select the best solution to streamline current processes, whilst also improving budgetary controls and employee safety and satisfaction.
It is important for companies to place employee experience and innovation at the forefront of decision making, with training and ongoing employee support. Expenses — the reimbursement process, specifically — often have an under-appreciated role in employee engagement.
In fact, the new SAP Concur Employee Experience study reveals that 70% of employees in the UK are concerned about the impact of cost-of-living increases on their personal finances. And it’s late reimbursements for expenses that are causing employees to worry, with 56% worried about delayed reimbursements impacting their personal finances. This is why it is crucial for organisations to adopt automation to help accelerate processes and relieve reimbursement worry.
We worked with Brother UK (Printing and technology solutions) to automate their processes within their internal finance department. Brother has many employees who have worked for the company for more than two decades, with many processes identical to the day they started. Unsurprisingly, these employees were reluctant to making big changes, as they were used to carrying out their work in very specific ways. And with the obvious talent crisis, Brother realised that it was more important than ever to focus on the employee experience.
Brother put their employees first, ensuring communication remained transparent during the entire project. The company also brought staff directly into the decision-making process, elevating buy-in and a sense of ownership over forthcoming changes.
Now that Bother has automated many financial tasks, employees within the finance department are able to spend more time on strategic and rewarding work, rather than menial and time-consuming tasks. This improvement has been a positive experience for all. It has also helped employees to progress further in their careers.
Plan for the unpredictable future
Do you work for an SMB considering such changes? Don’t hesitate — now is the time to take the proactive step to streamline and grow your business. Overall, SMBs are being faced with the unknown and are being forced to adapt or pivot their business models. Finance automation will help futureproof your business during these uncertain times, bringing a level of stability to your organisation. This will allow employees to focus on future growth ambitions and make more informed decisions without having to worry about laborious tasks.
It’s important to remember a key part of running any business is relationship management — both with customers and employees. It’s important to choose solutions that will help drive profit margins whilst also acknowledging employee needs. For small businesses, maintaining clear communication with employees will not only help to ensure solution implementation is successful, but will also help to soften any resistance to automation.
And there’s so much more beyond basic finance automation. By taking an even deeper dive into invoices and expenses, businesses can find key data to help underpin certain goals such as reducing carbon emissions for business travel or enabling employees to submit expenses from anywhere at any time.
In the long run, digitising tired manual processes makes it more affordable for all businesses, no matter the size, to offer a competitive advantage during this era of change.
 are looking to save money during this inflation crisis. By looking carefully into different areas, there are many hidden costs that can be found to combat rising expenses and interest rates.){kind=link}