Amidst the current restrictions and uncertainties, it may be tempting to just focus on how to keep the most urgent, business-critical processes running efficiently. But many midsize businesses are investing in digital transformation projects; for example, upgrading to Intelligent ERP platforms which centralize information in the cloud, and enable people to work from home with the right level of authorizations and access control.
Improving financial visibility
Nearly half of finance executives from midsize businesses cite spend visibility (45%) as one of the top challenges for their function, according to new research by Oxford Economics.* The first step to this is making it possible to access a single source of truth, ideally in real-time. Without this, understanding working capital and cashflow can be difficult, time-consuming and often inaccurate.
Businesses are driving massive process and technology simplifications with Intelligent ERP systems that remove data replications, reconciliations, and redundancies. United VARs members are working with their customers to provide more analytics in the cloud where people can bring together the data sources they have to get a better view of what’s going on.
Finance systems, such as SAP S/4HANA Finance, can give true visibility and bring many benefits from automation and real-time insights, such as:
- Use real-time operational data to eliminate time lags and redundancy
- Automate receivables and payables processing and revolutionize shared-services delivery
- Run on-the-fly financial analysis at any level of granularity using a single table
- Create ad hoc simulations of organizational changes or new business models directly in your ERP system
- Run real-time reporting with complete drill-down by any dimension
- Use a single, unified data model to simplify processes, increase productivity, and reduce risk
- Get real-time visibility of bank balances and currency exposures
- Respond to fluctuating market dynamics rapidly
Automating workflows and processes
The current situation is very different from past challenges which have affected business continuity. Not only is it global, affecting every single business, but it also impacts the workforce specifically. Which of course affects manual processes, and so automating workflows and processes has become very important for many finance departments.
With the right technologies in place, it is possible to automate the vast majority of routine processes, so they can run without any manual intervention which frees up finance professionals for more strategic tasks. Intelligent monitoring and alerts enable approval processes and raise any exceptions which the finance department need to deal with directly.
*March 2020 interim results from an ongoing survey by SAP and Oxford Economics of small and midsize businesses
Contact your local United VARs Member
Clearly, by implementing intelligent technologies such as real-time analytics and automation, many organizations can greatly improve their ability to thrive in these difficult times. United VARs members are using SAP intelligent technologies to help finance leaders in midsize companies weather the current storm and create a foundation for future success.
Contact your international United VARs SAP solution provider to discover how your midsize organization can automate key processes and have real-time visibility into payments and spend and look at our new catalogue to find bespoke analytics and ERP solutions based on SAP technologies.
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