5 ways to ensure better AP Automation success
The benefits of investing in an AP automation system are endless, from helping finance teams complete their AP process with greater efficiency to reducing inaccuracies in financial reporting, AP automation systems are now as good as an integral part of a typical B2B fintech stack.
AP automation has grown in popularity and growth over the years, as more global finance teams think of relying on modern AP automation systems to optimize their cash flows and improve their finance processes and controls, it is crucial for senior leaders to adopt technologies that can be a smooth transition for the team while boosting their overall efficiencies.
Before investing in an AP automation system, here’s what you should keep in mind:
Identify the Core Objective or Challenges the System is to Serve, Based on Employee Challenges and Feedback
Any automation system is meant to ease the burden of tedious manual tasks for employees. When finance leaders look for better finance technologies to help streamline internal processes, understanding more about the core challenges and most repetitive and time-consuming processes that employees on the team are tasked with will help leaders shortlist platforms that provide features to address those issues.
AP automation systems can also help serve challenges related to customer-supplier partnerships, late vendor and other payments and savings. While identifying the objective the team plans to solve with adoption of a new technology is one part of the filtering process, involving real-time team and employee inputs into the selection process is crucial to overall success.
The Higher Picture: Including External Team and Key Stakeholder Thoughts
One of the biggest pitfalls to a quick and sudden change in tech investments – it leads to silos among teams. For an organization to truly benefit from the insights, data and reporting abilities of any tech platform they adopt across departments; there has to be a unified view and access among key stakeholders for better visibility.
Internal and other stakeholders may have other areas of importance that will drive the need for adoption of a more advanced fintech or AP automation system. Besides which, concerns regarding data privacy and costs will also matter.
For a more optimized end result, it is therefore critical that senior stakeholders and management staff align on the main business and department-wide challenges that a new automation system is meant to solve. Because at the end of the day, any new technology is meant to drive efforts and results, but for that to happen, the basics have to be in place; starting with choosing the right platform.
A System that Integrates Well with Existing Software and Other Legacy Platforms
Getting the team comfortable with the idea of a new AP automation system takes care of one part of the journey. While making a final choice, it is crucial to pick a system that will integrate well with existing financial reporting and accounting software as well as legacy systems. Besides which, any new tech investment has to be able to handle scalability when required, as business grows, this would mean more number of payments and invoices.
Making a smarter choice would also mean choosing platforms that offer 24/7 onboarding and support or training when needed and those that offer minimal to no set up costs.
A robust AP automation system in today’s business environment makes for absolute strategic sense, but to ensure your business benefits from it, the first step begins with identifying a technology that can serve your specific need for the short and long-term.
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