In order to stay competitive in the new economic environment, businesses require fresh strategies and practices. Many companies are experiencing devastating financial consequences from the pandemic, whether it is due to the supply chain management or due to the significant drop in consumer demand.
COVID-19 has accelerated the need for companies to innovate and implement new strategies to address current and future challenges. Companies must now be more resilient, technology-driven, and be readily able to adapt to change. It’s quite obvious that this pandemic is not a short-term crisis, and businesses need to adapt and pivot accordingly to ensure they continue operating smoothly. While the pandemic is the most recent challenge, it has really proven that businesses across all industries need to prepare for the unexpected.
Prior to 2020, remote working was often viewed as a perk. Now, for many, it has become the norm. And digital transformation – something that was happening slowly, has now become a critical priority.
As per a new survey conducted by Gartner, COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies by a considerable number of years, and many of these changes are here to stay. Digitalization has taken a quantum leap – at both the organizational and industrial levels.
The pandemic has been a reality check for companies who were hesitant to embrace digital technologies and now find themselves vulnerable. Organizations that embraced digital solutions have shown greater resiliency in the face of adversity and have been able to recover faster. Businesses that not only adopted digital strategies, but executed them before the pandemic, are now in a position to leapfrog their inactive competitors.
Past recessions have proven that controlling costs by improving operational efficiency, a task for which digital solutions are perfectly suited, is more effective in sustaining business through financial instability than conventional cost-cutting measures alone.
During such financial uncertainty, there’s a heightened need for businesses to manage cash flow more effectively than ever. Unfortunately, this has been difficult objective for many organizations to achieve. Remote working is posing its own significant challenges, particularly for firms still utilizing a manual accounts payable process. These companies are struggling with longer turn-around times, limited visibility, and control over their invoices. These problems create a bottleneck in accounts payable and result in unpredictable cash flow.
The streamlined AP process is crucial to an organization’s financial management. Streamlining accounts payable will help companies eliminate time-consuming, paper-based tasks, more effectively manage their cash flow and working capital, increase ROI, improve operational efficiencies, and enhance relationships with vendors and suppliers. Automating the AP process is a critical step that businesses need to do NOW !!
Here are the major reasons why:
- Increases Operational Efficiency
With accounts payable automation, work that used to take hours to finish will be completed in split seconds. This will leave the accounting team with more time to focus on vital tasks, thus increasing productivity & efficiency.
- Improves Accuracy
Manual data entry is inherently inefficient and error-prone. As per the Institute of Finance and Management — nearly 4% of supplier invoices generated via a manual process include errors. This results in dissatisfaction of suppliers and vendors due to incorrect or missed payments. A/P automation spots errors and rectifies them without much human intervention, vastly improving speed and accuracy.
- Enjoy Early Payment Discounts and Avoid Late Payment Penalties
Automating your accounts payable process will accelerate the invoice processing time, allowing your organization to regularly qualify for vendor discounts for early payment. You will never be subjected to late payment penalties again.
- Audit Readiness
Accounts payable automation software stores all documents in the cloud in audit-ready format. Auditors have easy access to all of your A/P data without having to dig through paper files or search for misplaced documents.
- Fraud Protection
In the event that fraud does occur, AP automation will tell you what happened, how it happened, and who is responsible for it. Automation offers a deeper insight into who authorized payments and the verification steps taken before approval.
- Save Money Per Transaction
AP automation accelerates the invoicing process, allowing your company to capitalize on significant cost savings. According to Business Finance Magazine — AP automation can save an average of $16 per invoice.
- Enhanced Insight
Featuring comprehensive dashboards, AP automation software offers clear insight into the payment cycle. You can clearly see invoice status in the payment cycle and who to contact in in the event of a delay. You can import and export data with real-time access, ideal for reporting and analysis, especially at the end of business cycles.
- Integrates with Existing Systems
Accounts payable automation software can effortlessly integrate with your organization’s ERP and major financial systems. There’s no need to log in and out of different applications or re-enter data to multiple systems, which significantly reduces the likelihood of errors.
Food for Thought
The economy is currently in somewhat of a downturn, and we are certainly far from being clear of this pandemic. Digital transformation is currently more important than ever before. To stay competitive, and avoid catastrophic revenue losses, organizations need to focus more on operational efficiencies versus layoffs. According to the Harvard Business Review – the biggest efficiency play is automation.
Automating the AP function is crucial to an organization’s fiscal management, as it will improve process efficiency, significantly reduce the cost per document processed, save time, improve visibility and control, and eliminate potential human errors.
Automation solutions adopted out of necessity will likely become lasting pillars of businesses’ infrastructure, enabling companies to thrive well beyond the pandemic.
Are you considering automating and optimizing your AP process?
Please contact our sales team: easales@ExpenseAnywhere.com
