https://www.xperience-group.com/news-item/mobile-erp-technology-how-to-balance-procedure-and-convenience/
As a business, do you struggle to find a good balance between established business procedures, and convenience? You’re not alone. Most companies rely on their finance team to mitigate financial risk by controlling expenditures and procedures. The struggle for most is when convenience takes precedence over procedure, and this is were mobile ERP technology can help.
A notable example of this was during the pandemic when the working landscape shifted 88% of businesses across the world to remote working. (Gartner, 2020) This forced companies to act quickly, moving many financial teams from an in-office to a remote working environment. When this happened, it made it difficult for companies to control key established procedures and processes, especially for those whose systems were on premise and therefore not equipped for remote working.
According to further studies by Gartner 82% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely for some of the time, so finding that perfect balance between procedures and convenience really is critical.
Mobile technology is key to finding that balance, with so many technological advances for the finance department to avail of they can truly harness the power of data and technology to drive efficiency and growth, while still having the control to ensure procedures are being adhered to regardless of their working environment.
These tools will not only make it easier for your finance team to work remotely, reduce duplication of inputs, and control costs whilst maintaining control of key finance procedures, but they are also easy to deploy.
Purchasing
Purchase Orders are a great way to control operating costs, and many companies are realising the benefits of implementing a PO system.
Deploying a web-based purchase requisition solution that connects directly to your finance ERP system, enables an employee to easily raise a purchase request via a web portal or their mobile phone, with that request requiring approval, before automatically posting the purchase order.
Purchase invoice automation and approval
An article from August 2020 (CPA Practice Advisor) stated that 7 in 10 finance teams often end up spending up to 10 hours per week, which equates to 520 hours per year on their account’s payable tasks, that could easily become automated.
Document automation or OCR technology, once fully deployed, enables information contained in electronic purchase invoices to be extrapolated and processed in bulk. These can then be automatically routed for approval whilst still providing visibility of impending costs in the finance solution.
Employee expenses
One of the easiest ways to control and reduce operating costs is through a more focused and controlled expense management process. These systems enable employees to easily record personal and corporate expense claims remotely, whilst controlling the authorisation of these prior to posting directly to the relevant purchase ledger account.
Timesheets capture
For some organisations, the capture and processing of timesheet data is very manual and time consuming. Usually, this time is required for project purposes and results in a delay in producing up-to-date project costings. Enabling the employee to submit their time quickly via a web portal or mobile app, reduces the impact of this potentially mundane task, whilst providing the business with instant visibility and impact of this data.
