Why automating revenue management should be on your to-do list
Are you looking to boost productivity across your accounting function and achieve greater visibility of how your organisation is tracking on the revenue generation, collection and reconciliation fronts?
If you answered in the affirmative, you’re far from alone. Around the country, business leaders are becoming collectively cognisant of the advantages that can accrue when they enjoy a granular understanding of how customers are buying and paying for their products and services.
Exchanging legacy billing software for a modern, cloud-based platform that automates the way revenue is calculated, recognised and recorded is a surefire way to obtain these insights, and contain or reduce your accounting overheads to boot.
Transforming the way payments are calculated and recorded brings a host of benefits.
Here are some of the challenges making the switch can help solve for your organisation.
Errors and inefficiencies
Although most enterprises of size have modernised aspects of their revenue management function in recent years, many still have non-automated tasks somewhere in the end-to-end process – think manual data entry for non-standard orders, for example, or the use of spreadsheets to deconstruct complex price bundles for revenue recognition purposes. These tasks are inherently error prone, as indeed is any activity that relies on human input. Identifying and automating them can mitigate the risk of error dramatically and reduce the time spent detecting and remedying mistakes.
Data fragmentation
Complex revenue bundles or contracts are typically accompanied by multiple performance obligations. That can be problematic if the data needed to monitor those obligations comes from multiple sources and systems which don’t ‘talk’ to each another. An automated revenue management platform allows you to transform those disparate data siloes into a single source of truth, making managing and billing enterprise customers a straightforward matter.
Compliance and auditability
Keeping up with ever-evolving regulatory requirements and accounting standards can be a challenging task. So can adhering to the internal controls your organisation has in place. Unless, that is, you elect to invest in revenue management technology from a vendor that takes the hard work and hassle out of the process, by continually updating its platform to reflect the compliance requirements in your jurisdiction.
Reporting and insights
Compiling financial statements and reports is bread and butter work for accounting teams the world over. These days, though, they’re frequently being asked to deliver more than just an accurate set of numbers. Increasingly, senior leaders are demanding more information on what those numbers mean – greater visibility into the why, when and how of the financials, in other words. Those insights can be difficult to deliver if your organisation is operating in manual mode but a cinch if you’ve deployed automated revenue management technology that allows you to generate them in real time.
Choosing a platform that performs for your enterprise
Upgrading your revenue recognition and management function can be a complex undertaking and the platform you choose will have a material impact on project success.
That’s why it’s vital to work with a market leading vendor which offers technical capability, value pricing and expert, responsive service at every stage of your user journey.
Select a platform that connects seamlessly with your CRM system and incorporates a sophisticated data analytics function and you won’t just enjoy the benefits of automated revenue recognition. You’ll be able to monitor your customer base and access insights that will assist you to refine your company’s offering, to ensure it remains relevant and competitive long term.
Doing so will help ensure the time and money you invest in the transformation process is extremely well spent. So will working with an experienced partner that can help you streamline activities and optimise processes before going live with your new platform.
Setting your business on a stronger footing in 2025
Automating revenue recognition and management will supercharge productivity and efficiency across your finance function and deliver access to the insights you need to keep optimising your offering and improving your customer experience. Doing so is vital, for businesses that hope to remain relevant and competitive, and never more so than in today’s challenging economic times.
If these things matter to your organisation, putting revenue recognition automation top of your strategic projects list for 2025 is likely to prove a very good move.
