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10 Ways that BPA Software Can Help Your Company Improve Efficiency and Productivity in Finance
We all want to optimize our businesses. Improving efficiency and productivity makes a company more financially stable, places it in a better position to take advantage of opportunities, and enables the company to keep up in the fast-paced modern business world.
In today’s world, digitizing business processes is key to keeping finance departments efficient and productive. The modern world runs on technology, and without digitization to enhance your company’s processes it’s very hard not to fall behind.
Business Process Automation (BPA) software makes it possible to digitize processes quickly and efficiently. Going with a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company as your software supplier makes the whole process even easier. After an easy implementation process, you’ll quickly see return on investment as the automation software speeds up processing, supports employee productivity, and improves the whole financial process.
1) Speed Up Processing
One of the first benefits you’ll notice when automating processes like purchasing or accounts payable (AP) is that the process happens more quickly. For example, the average time to process a vendor payment without automation is 8.6 days, but it’s 5.4 days with automation. If there’s already a purchase order in the software system, the AP software can typically process and pay invoices within 12 hours.
2) Take Over Mundane Tasks
BPA software takes over mundane, repetitive tasks. The software quickly and automatically handles duties that would take hours for a human employee to do. These tasks include routine data entry, cross-checking invoices with purchase orders, and ensuring that travel and expense (T&E) report claims include receipts. The longer you have the software, the more it “learns” about your company and the more efficiently it can handle automatic processes.
3) Reduce Human Error
No matter how meticulous your employees are, there’s always a risk of human error. A single typo in a financial document can cause a cascade of costly errors. Spreadsheets, for example, are notoriously error-riddled. By automating data entry and using software that checks for anomalies that might be a sign of error, your company can cut back on errors in financial processing and become more efficient at identifying and correcting errors that do creep in.
4) Streamline Compliance
Making sure that financial processes comply with national, regional, and company policies is vitally important, but can be time-consuming. Automation software lets your company build customized policies directly into the software. For example, employees submitting a T&E report in your expense management software can see which expenses comply with company policies. With purchasing, using the software to set up punch out and item catalogs ensures that employees only make pre-approved purchases from selected suppliers.
5) Automate Approvals
For financial processes that require approvals, waiting for someone to approve things manually can slow down productivity. If employees need to send multiple approval reminders manually, that also makes the process less efficient. You can set up BPA software to automatically approve invoices, expenses, purchases, etc. that meet specific, customized thresholds. For transactions that still require manual review and approval, the system handles sending approval reminders automatically. Plus, SaaS software allows for cloud-based access to the software so approvers can log in and submit approvals from any internet-enabled location.
6) Provide Real Visibility
Whether your department is trying to get through an audit, generate reports about business process data, or simply check on the status of a transaction, visibility into financial processes increases efficiency and productivity. BPA software automatically logs data related to every step of processing, including metadata about the process as well as associated documents (like invoices, POs, receipts, approvals, etc.). You get real-time visibility into every financial process that runs through the software. Plus, you can easily generate reports and look up data related to financial processes.
7) Improve Security
With so much of modern business taking place digitally, it’s essential that your company has good cybersecurity. Automating with a SaaS provider means you’re hiring a software expert who supplies the software to your company. The provider maintains the software, handles important updates, and ensures top-quality digital data security. Because they specialize in this type of software, a SaaS company can often provide more robust security than your company could easily manage in-house.
8) Support Virtual Vendor Interactions
If your AP department or procurement department is getting bogged down with customer service tasks, automation software can help. A self-service vendor portal allows vendors limited access to your software system. This lets them log in to update their details, check on payment status, and more. It’s easier on everyone since it cuts down on the need for phone calls, which might be time-consuming and involve playing phone tag a few times before finally getting questions answered.
9) Enable Collaboration
BPA software streamlines financial processes, making departments run more efficiently. At a higher level, it also enables more productive collaboration between employees. Since everyone is working with one centralized software system, it’s much easier to coordinate teams within departments. You can also better support inter-departmental collaboration as well.
10) Automate End-To-End Financial Processes
Some BPA software only lets you automate a single financial department. You might choose to automate accounts payable, and then the AP department will become much more efficient and productive. If you go with a software supplier that provides an end-to-end solution, though, you’ll get even more benefits from your financial automation.
Making your budgeting, capital expense (CapEx) management, procurement, and payments systems work together gives you far more control over the entire process. NextProcess offers the only suite of software with modules to power and simplify your CapEx, procurement & purchase orders, accounts payable, travel & expense, and payment disbursements. You can choose to use all the software modules, or just pick the ones most helpful for your company. Plus, all our software modules integrate seamlessly with your existing ERP system. To learn more or schedule a free software demo, contact us today.
