How turning your finance function from a cost to an asset is closer than you think.
In providing SMEs with in-house based, outsourced bookkeeping and CFO services, we’ve found that over 80% of SMEs are paying too much for their finance function. What’s more, most time people spend in finance roles are heavily entrenched in history – what’s been – rather than using their time to get things done efficiently and then using what they know to drive future decisions.
Make no mistake, old legacy software, finance staff that need training or have been in the job for a long time and manual data processes, are costing you money. In over 80% of cases, your investment in your financial process is not working hard enough for you.
The key questions to ask yourself? Here’s our top 5:
- Do you have the right accounting program for you? Accounting software has developed so much since the days of the desktop dinosaur. Cloud provides every business, no matter your size or industry, with an agile, productive solution that will give you exactly what you need, on a pay-by-the-month basis
- Do your other systems talk to each other? Most SMEs have between 2-4 software systems operating at any one time – CRM, Inventory, Project Management software, as well as their accounting system. Many contain duplicate data that is manually entered into each every time a new client, product of staff member comes on board
- Who is your finance gatekeeper? If you think about how important your financials are to you then you need to know who’s looking after them. Are they qualified? At the cutting edge of new developments? Do they take leave regularly? Is their role documented? Is what they do measurable? What’s your back-up plan?
- Are you an Excel junkie? Don’t get me wrong, we love Excel, but look closely at inefficient finance departments and you’ll see a swarm of spreadsheets. as back-up, just-in-case, I just want to make sure it balances! If your system works, it doesn’t need verification. Time to ditch the security blanket
- How much of your finance process is manual-process-centric? These are easy to spot – anything that will take exponentially more time the greater your growth. Manual processes aren’t scalable. Worse than that, anything heavily reliant on manual entry is open to error
Making changes in any of these five key areas will reduce your costs that drop straight to the bottom line, unlocking the knowledge gold in your numbers as a bonus.
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