The digital CFO: How to lead your business to financial success
Effectively leading and expanding a business requires leaders to reflect on past performance to identify areas for improvement, while concurrently devising and executing strategies that drive sustained long-term growth.
This growth can’t be achieved without giving staff the tools they need to succeed. These tools include solutions that make it easier to get paid, collaborate on transactions, boost cash flow, and improve productivity. Keep reading below to learn how CFOs can lead their teams to financial success.
Use automation to streamline payments across the business
For finance teams, manual, repetitive tasks often take up over 20 hours per week in valuable working hours. These tasks include entering invoice and transaction data into accounting and ERP software, reconciling transactions, and addressing errors. Digitising these processes through solutions such as accounts payable automation, accounts receivable automation, and implementing an integrated payments platform can not only deliver cost savings of up to 75 per cent but also allows time to be redirected into higher value work. And when systems and processes are automated from a single source of truth for data (like payments, for example), errors are minimised, and cash can move more freely throughout the business.
Boost productivity with faster payments and seamless integration
It’s estimated that when humans perform singular data entry tasks, they will have an average accuracy rate of 95 per cent. With the complexities of spreadsheets and working across multiple systems added, this accuracy rate can significantly decline, causing delayed order cycles, slower payments, smaller profit margins, and damaged relationships with suppliers and customers.
A robust integrated payment solution streamlines business operations buy offering one single source of data truth, minimising errors, and accelerating payment processing. Additionally, it provides the following benefits:
- Diverse payment options, from credit and debit card payments to the ability to access third-party finance at the point of payment.
- Enhanced collaboration between trading partners, so that the cash flow needs of both the supplier and customer are prioritised and addressed.
- Improved cash flow management, by making it simpler to make and take payments so that investments in growth can be planned and executed with more ease.
Strengthen cash flow and increase resilience by enabling stronger B2B trade
With improved efficiency and cost savings, faster payments, and stronger cash flow, having the visibility to proactively identify cash flow gaps and address these in advance can make businesses more resilient. By having foresight over what shortfalls and surpluses are ahead, businesses can strategically execute growth plans and mitigate the risk of unforeseen negative cash flows. Leveraging technology streamlines financial processes and implementing an integrated payment platform is a game changer for businesses.
About the author
Spenda is an integrated business platform that enables businesses across the supply chain to sell better and get paid faster. We serve as both a software solutions provider and a payment processor and deliver the essential infrastructure to streamline business processes before, during and after the payment event.
