Managing Business Finance With The Right Tech Tools

Finance is at the centre of an organisation’s activities. Without solid financial practices, it is impossible to pursue your business goals, employ the right people, and even prepare your books to raise extra funding. Here are quick tips to help you incorporate the right tech tools in your finance department.

Automate the Process

Paying suppliers and vendors is critical to your company’s growth. It ensures you receive the right goods at just the right time. However, making manual payments to partners not only takes time, it increases the incidence of errors. Rather, you should employ tech tools that allow you to make payments if certain criteria are met. For example, once a vendor delivers supplies, ticking the right checkbox should automatically start the process of payment to said vendor. Also, payment can be automatically initiated once an invoice is keyed into the software and approved. This reduces the need for folders and files to designate individual finance transactions.

Automating the finance process with the right tech tools makes execution faster and more efficient.

Reduce Manual Entries

Manual entries increase the risk of error in recording sensitive financial data. They take time to record and verify, and can lead to excessive disputes where characters are not clear. To boost productivity in the finance sphere, use tech tools and processes like lockbox processing. Lockbox uses the bank as a medium of accepting payments, thus, doing away with the need to enter customer data manually in the office.

At the same time, internal expense reports like invoice data, transport and other petty cash entries should be collected via an in-house tech tool. A simple Microsoft Excel sheet configured with the right functions could make it easy to track, verify, and input transactions.

Another way to reduce manual entries is by working with the digital marketing team to implement a seamless online payment process. Making the payment process smoother reduces the chances of having to make manual entries during purchases.

Work on The Go

Mobile applications have grown in leaps this past decade, and finance tech tools have not been left behind either. Thanks to cloud computing, data spreadsheets can be shared with colleagues from across different regions at anytime of the day. Cloud computing means invoices can be entered at any place in the world so long as there is an internet connection. And, because of tech tools like mobile applications, members of the finance team don’t have to wait till they have access to a desktop computer to make to update data.

Cloud computing also makes workflow automation possible, as data are entered in real-time to allow the process flow unimpeded. As with all tech tools connected to the cloud, working on the go makes your finance team agile and always primed to take up opportunities as they appear.

Integrate With CRM

One way or the other, finance is connected with all sections of an organisation. Integrating your finance and accounting books with a tech tool like Gesatech’s CRM solutions helps boost cooperation with the sales and marketing teams. By reducing the number of manual entries, integration boosts productivity across departments.

Also, tech tools makes analysing big data more convenient. With real-time analytics pulled from all the different sources of data, finance tech tools make it possible to better understand the organisation’s financial status. At meetings and during collaborations, using finance tech tools creates on-the-spot scenario analysis, makes it feasible to project into the future, and to adapt the data to match the meeting’s demands.

Prioritise Security

Finance tech tools help get much done within a shorter time than all the manual processes combined. This in turn boosts productivity and can significantly improve the bottom line of any organisation. As with all tech tools, though, it is important to understand the security implications of all your finance systems before rolling them out.

Implement proper security analysis from the on-set and ensure you have a well-defined disaster recovery plan on hand. Ensure that your network security is not compromised, otherwise company data might end up in the wrong hands. Also, make sure you have a clear BYOD policy to ensure your finance team understands the implications of logging into the company network on their own devices. Implement double-factor authorisation for all your tech tools, and make sure passwords are changed periodically.

Train Your Team

Deploying tech tools for your finance department is only effective if your workers use them efficiently. Lack of skills and poor security enforcement could render the most advanced finance tech tool obsolete. Organisations should therefore spend time retraining their finance department and also refreshing their knowledge and application of the security protocols needed to boost productivity. The focus should be to build a workforce that appreciates the strengths of your tech tools. and also understands the need to be secure at all times. It is not enough to have a functional technology system for finance if your workers need to refer to a manual each time they need to execute a function.