How has teleworking democratized the decentralization of corporate purchasing management?
The health and economic crisis has forced companies to question their organizational models.
The spread of telecommuting in service companies has highlighted the need for efficient processes and tools to enable employees to remain productive and have access to all the information they need, despite the distance. The habits and routines of the financial and operational teams were reviewed to avoid friction and frustration.
In such a context, how best to manage business expenses? How do you give autonomy to operational teams while retaining control over their purchases? How do you keep track of who spends what, and retrieve all payment receipts?
I'm going to share with you some of the trends I've observed in my discussions with finance teams, company founders and our customers.
Digitizing and automating the purchasing process
In these highly uncertain times, cash management is crucial ("cash is king"). In fact, according to a PWC study, it will be CFOs' No. 2 priority in 2021, second only to performance management.
The key to cash management is to have a clear vision of cash inflows and outflows. Even though business activity has generally slowed down considerably, companies have continued to make purchases.and it wasn't always easy for them to keep track of their spending in real time. Marketing teams continued to advertise online, developers continued to use their software tools, and in general, all employees needed to equip themselves to work well from home.
This meant adapting and rethinking the remote purchasing management process to avoid slowdowns or potential security breaches. This is exactly where the digitization of tools and processes comes into play!
For online purchases, it was unthinkable to transmit the company's credit card details by telephone, or even worse, by e-mail. However, it wasn't possible to block all employee spending. Some companies therefore decided to implement Spendesk at this point to streamline and digitize the validation and payment process: operational teams enter their needs into Spendesk and submit a purchase request, finance or the department manager validates it, the employee then has access to a secure, single-use payment method, and finance visualizes payments in real time.
| Spendesk gives small and medium-sized businesses control and visibility over their entire purchasing process. Whether in the office or at home, we simplify the management of business expenses: you validate, pay, reconcile and account all in one place. |
In concrete terms, when you "dematerialize" (or digitize) your purchasing management process, you move from a physical format (e.g. paper expense reports, a physical card passed from hand to hand, receipts archived in filing cabinets...) or a hybrid format (e-mail combined with a physical card and Excel) to a totally digital format (dematerialized expense reports, virtual cards and digital archiving of receipts...).) or hybrid format (e-mail combined with a physical card and Excel) to a totally digital format (dematerialized expense report, virtual cards and digital archiving of receipts).
Automating the purchasing process is the next step. This involves creating intelligent rules between the various stages of the process, or automating manual data entry to eliminate time-consuming actions with little added value (such as entering accounting entries or manually validating expenses by e-mail).
But automation is not possible without digitization!
If we look more specifically at the management of professional purchases, it is possible to dematerialize expense claims, digitize the validation and tracking of supplier invoices, digitally archive payment receipts, and even generate virtual payment cards.
None of this is really new. What is new is the ability to automate the entire purchasing process, integrating all stages of the process (from validation to accounting), for all types of expenditure, in a single solution.
In concrete terms, digitizing and automating the entire purchasing process means :
- Creating spending policies and validation rules directly connected to payment methods and your management interface, so you have control without manual labor;
- Automate payment receipt collection and accounting reconciliation;
- Enrich payment data in real time (analytical data, supplier data, team data, etc.);
- Gather all supplier invoices to be paid and automate payment schedule follow-up;
- Automate accounting entries using pre-defined rules...
This means you no longer have to worry about a large number of tasks. There's no need to chase down receipts at the close of accounts, or wait for your employees to submit their expense claims at the end of the month. You save time and reduce the risk of errors inherent in manual processing.
Dematerialization and automation bring tangible savings. Quite simply, because time spent on time-consuming tasks is reduced for all teams. ROI (Return On Investment) is the result of time saved and savings made (VAT not recovered in the past, non-optimal expense management, internal or external fraud, etc.).
In addition to saving time, automation takes a major mental burden off your shoulders.
Digitizing and automating accounting
Today, companies can also automate many accounting tasks using increasingly intuitive software. Expense management, supplier invoice processing, bank reconciliation and monitoring... all time-consuming but necessary tasks. Overworked accountants and finance managers can now spend more time on strategic decisions than on data entry.
For maximum efficiency, it's essential to put the right tools in place to manage every stage of the professional purchasing accounting process.
In concrete terms:
- Control purchases, with a clear spending policy, budgets defined in advance, and an intelligent means of validating requests and protecting against fraud.
- Pay, with access to secure payment methods, easy collection of supplier invoices, and the ability to reimburse expense claims in just a few clicks.
- Account for data, with easy collection of receipts, reconciliation of payments, tracking of transaction history and allocation of accounting codes.
By digitizing and automating these steps, you save time (automatic generation of entries, use of data present in invoices, preparation of VAT declarations) and data reliability, with minimal risk of human error.
Digitization and automation of financial reporting
The automatic integration of expenses into accounting software, the categorization of payments and the centralization of all financial data facilitate the construction of structured and rigorous audits.
In particular, these data help to improve company performance, monitor performance trends in real time, and anticipate changes in the company's financial situation. anticipate changes in sales cycles and growth, and adapt purchasing strategies to new market realities.
Decision-making reporting has never been easier, enabling CFOs to build a vision for the future of their company and become a strategic partner.
The CFO and his or her team are now seen as the company's true business partners.A good partner needs maximum visibility of the company's health in order to make the right decisions and provide the right advice.
To do this, they need two things:
- Make sure that the data he's working with is accurate.
- Have enough time to devote to analyzing this data.
And, once again, that's where automation comes in!
By automating your financial reporting, you can hand over all your time-consuming and unrewarding tasks to a more reliable, dedicated software package, and save time in the process. This report will centralize, process and format all your company's key data. You'll also be able to distribute it more easily to all your colleagues.
In conclusion, I'd say that telecommuting encourages our organizations to rely on good processes and tools that enable each employee to be autonomous in his or her work. Bringing a decentralized organization to life with serenity is a major asset in terms of performance and attractiveness.
That's what we believe in at Spendesk, and that's how we support our customers, every day.
If you'd like to find out more about our solution, please contact our team. We'll be delighted to answer all your questions!
Article translated from French